Many business owners and marketers fail to get results from their search engine optimization efforts. Often, this is because they fall victim to common SEO mistakes.
This article consists of ten of the essential SEO pitfalls you should avoid getting SEO results in 2021 and beyond.
1- Not knowing your audience.
One of the fundamentals of SEO is to understand your target audience. This means getting to know your audience at the most minute and granular level. SEO is the voice of the customer.
While many marketers think they know their targeted audience, they often do not understand how consumers behave in their market and then on a granular level.
At the same time, consumers expect quick answers to their questions and results. They often want this in real-time. While historical data still gives SEO great insight into seasonal trends, marketers’ methods have to be holistic to understand their customers.
A common mistake in selecting keywords is to ignore the preference of search engines and users for long-tail keywords.
When you can define your products and services differently, it is more important to understand what words your potential customers use.
2- Missing SEO plan and roadmap
There is no point in knowing about your audience and then taking little or random action on that knowledge’s maximum opportunity.
Many organizations struggle to strategize or execute large enterprises ranging from small to medium-sized businesses.
According to reports, last year, only 36% of small businesses had an SEO strategy. Creating an SEO strategy and roadmap is critical to success. However, many plans fail because building a sustainable and efficient strategy depends on many stakeholders – website, PR, content, product, IT, and engineering.
3- Creating the Wrong Type of Content
Another common disadvantage in SEO is to produce content that is not really about your audience.
The only problem is that you want to rank for a particular keyword, but you do not focus on the content of the target topic. Search engines like Google want to serve the most relevant content for users in terms of search terms.
Thus, if your content does not respond to user needs, it does not rank well. Your fundamental goal should be to produce content that matches the needs and questions of the target audience, including using the correct search terms.
Then the search engine will be able to locate your content, the keyword for which you are optimizing.
4- Publishing Non-Original Content
The following specific mistake is related to the quality of your content.
Mimicking text is a common practice today, but the search engines penalize this approach. The content of copying and plagiarism is seen as immoral behavior and is greatly discouraged. Duplicate content does not work. Instead of removing the copy from other places or using software that transforms content into a new shape, it is worth investing in creating original and meaningful content.
5- Skipping Title Tags & Meta Descriptions to Provide Context with Schema
Optimizing your content after including the target keyword in your articles does not end. Meta descriptions and title tags are essential elements of Search engine optimization that should not be forgotten.
Leaving them out means that there is not a huge potential for your content. These optimization factors are considered by search engines when crawling your website; if done correctly, they can improve the performance of your content. Some marketers also forget to use schemas to mark their content and tell search engines what their site is.
Creating content is excellent, but search engines struggle to understand the context of your content without it. This means that you rank lower in specific searches and are less relevant in specific queries done through voice search.
Content marketers sometimes forget that another technical description is including image tags. Entire tags of the visuals you include in your content are essential, indicating how you are targeting the articles.
6- Not Using Analytics to See What Converts
SEO is not just about the massive amount of free traffic. It is also about conversion.
It is easy to see which phrases are sending you the most traffic, and then you may have to fret if you are not ranked for those super-competitive, high-traffic keywords. But traffic is not all that matters. Often, low traffic phrases will convert better because they are more specific, and achieving first-page ranking for many of them can drive quite a few sales.
The only way to detect it is to track it. Using an analytics package to set up conversion tracking for your keyword phrases and then comparing them against each other to see the best result will help you better optimize your site and help you know which efforts are worth noting and which ones should be let go.
7- Not optimized for local search
If running a business that focuses on customers in a particular city or region, it is essential to get more local search information. Most search engines, including Google, handle keywords slightly differently than those that are global.
Start including region-specific keywords in your page title and meta description. You’ll also want to include an address and local phone numbers on your pages, such as a header or footer, so you’ll appear in local results. Lastly, you will want to list yourself on Yelp, Merchant Circle, Google Places, Foursquare, and other locally based sites and review networks.
8- Not optimizing for the right keyword
This is the big one, and it is easy to fall into the trap of optimization:
- Generic keywords which attract visitors who have no interest in your product or services
- Global keywords, when you only serve local customers
- Keywords that only bring visitors to search for free information, not prospective customers who are interested in purchasing something
- Broad keywords, which have a lot of competition, may have many SEO experts working full-time to protect first page rankings.
This is the best possible. If you are successful, focusing on general keywords can get you a lot of traffic, but how long will it take you, and how real is it? Sometimes, you better go for more specific phrases, which usually leads to quicker rankings and more qualified traffic.
9- Focusing on link quantity over link quality
While there are many easy ways to get a high volume of links, you should usually emphasize quality.
A link to a popular blog can do more than hundreds or even fewer quality directory links for your search engine ranking. Yes, they are hard to get, but this is also why search engines rely so much on them. They are a more reliable measurement of the quality of your website.
So, focus on getting the link:
- Are relevant to your website and industry.
- There are not many outgoing links.
- Do not include links to adult, pharmacy, or gambling sites.
You can also use several free tools to check the strength of the domain and the links coming to the page.
10- Using the exact anchor text for each link
It is essential to optimize your anchor text, but do not use the exact anchor text for every link on the page. This is what visitors find fun, and some people say that it can hurt you with search engines as well because it sounds like you’re trying to “game” them.
So, mix it. Use the phrase, your company name, or sometimes, even a URL, making it more natural for both visitors and search engines. Try not to use more than 50% similar keywords.
Summary
Search engine optimization is an essential part of any content marketing strategy today. Even the best people can make many specific SEO mistakes.
It is better to become well acquainted with the challenges others have experienced and avoid them in your marketing efforts.
These ten errors have witnessed quite widespread, so it is now easier to identify them before making them. Have you also made any of the above mistakes with your SEO campaign? Other common errors made by other websites, and what can you think of to fix them? Please write to us, and our experts will arrange a free consultation call with you to resolve your SEO issues. Call now!