Apart from some fundamental principles, a lot of things are constantly changing in the SEO world. A decade ago targeting keywords was the only focus of improving your website ranks. Now choosing the right keyword is more significant than that. Similarly, with the release of new algorithms, there are a few software helping in your marketing strategy.
Google Searches results provide you with a number of SEO tips and tricks. But, most of these might hurt your website in the long run rather than benefits you. It is very important to know what you’re doing wrong with SEO. Avoiding these common mistakes will provide you a good platform to go further and try new strategies in 2021.
Every New Year is an opportunity to meet new and higher marketing goals. If you are new to the digital marketing world, it becomes almost impossible to choose or ignore the right strategy. With so many questions as well as guides out there it is no surprise that you can make some common mistakes. Here, we listed some of the mistakes and a few suggestions to overcome here that will be beneficial for you.
1. Not Knowing Your Audience
It is one of the fundamental pillars of successful SEO. Know your audience. Failing to identify your target audience is the last thing you want to do. It is no surprise that the company understanding its audience to the granular and minute level is always steps ahead of its competitors. Heading straight to the technical part without knowing more about your audience can make your work void.
Here are a few tips that will help you to understand your audience better.
– Spend some time doing a market study. Know your macro trends and keep up with them.
– Analyse some historical and real-time data to extract the general interests of your audience.
– Make your timings right with Google analytics tools
– Try to map out the consumer intents to your keyword selections.
2. Not being up to date
Quality content on your website always helps in SEO. But, making them more relevant and related to the time might be a good strategy too. Be up to date and it will help to minimize the unsatisfied search intent.
Especially if you have just started working on your website, quickness and fresh content will generate better organic visitors. Similarly, it is very important too if you are taking over a website doing well before.
These tips will be helpful for being up to date.
– Subscribe to different newsletters relevant to your business/website.
– Make a proper schedule if you post a different variety of content.
– Join a community that is similar to your business. Also, join some marketing channels to be up to date with the technical part.
3. Just Wing it: Not having a roadmap or SEO plan
This might be your lack of experience but you can’t capitalize on other data and information without a plan. Random acts can give you results sometimes but it won’t do any good in the long run. Trying too hard can harm too. Make a roadmap and plan leading towards your marketing goals. Stats show that only one in three small businesses had SEO strategy and it will play a great role in your successes.
Here are some tips to help you start a part of your SEO roadmap.
– First thing first, look for technologies (platforms and tools) that will help you manage your workflow.
– Set roles for content, digital alignment, and site updates.
– Break down different tasks and actions, work on the goals and key stakeholders next.
– Evaluate your competition and be open to learning and studying their strategies.
4. Publishing Non-Original Content
Publishing Non-original content is a huge ‘no-no’ for SEO. It is a beginner’s mistake as for a new website, preparing content instantly might be problematic. If you were looking at this some years ago duplicating content was a common practice. It doesn’t work and thin contents are discouraged more than ever.
Here, are some tips to create original content and check plagiarism.
* Do not mislead your readers. Create strong Headlines.
* Always remember spinoffs can degrade your content quality. Invest some time in research and creation instead.
* If needed quote trustworthy sources.
5. Ignoring Search features and Structured Data
Fact, structured data is very essential to make your website stand apart from the crowd. If you glance at the first SERP it is all structured data helping to get even small websites above the more obvious ones. Improving internal search functions is also important. People visiting your website must find it easy to look for the relevant information.
Here is a list of different structured data fitting different types of contents in your website: –
* How to: For ‘how-to’ Content
* Product Review: For Product Reviews
* FAQ: For FAQ content
* Books: For books
* Address: For Company address
* Events: For Events
6. Not using enough headings and lists
Quality content must have a good and readable format. Using headings, sub-headings, and lists makes your content more presentable. The featured snippets have ruled the SERP through controversies. And the best way of making your content highlighted is by using infographics.
Here are some tips to utilize these in your content.
* Break your long paragraphs and assign subheadings if appropriate.
* Use more bullets so it will make it easier to skim for the readers.
* Table of contents at the beginning is helpful.
7. Not Focusing on Branded Anchor Text
Anchor text is simply the keyword that is the exact match that mirrors the page it is linked to. As you link to the page, Anchor text includes a variation of the keyword to that page. It is significant for boosting your search engine rankings. Unl0ike earlier times you have to be smart about these rather than stuffing more Anchor texts. Finding the sweet spot between optimizing but not over-optimizing is a key here.
* Filter the links from Toxic sites i.e., sites engaging in spammy practices.
* Use no-follow links in case you have to reference a bad website.
* For internal links avoid using keyword-rich Anchors.
8. Skipping Meta Descriptions and Title Tags
This step is almost underrated once anyone has fixed their target keywords in their articles. Skipping Meta description and title tags will lead you to miss out on potential traffic to your website. Using schema is a very important tool for telling the search engine what your site is about. Great content might fail to make search engines understand the context of your content if you skip tags and descriptions.
* Provide unique tags for each page which if possible should be brief but descriptive enough.
* Be careful on the placement and intent of your keyword.
* Follow the best Google practices on good titles and snippets.
9. Not getting your website Mobile Optimization
Website quality is one of the most important factors in determining the success of SEO. Mobile devices are the top choices for users and it is crucial for your website to perform great here. Mobile-friendly websites are recognizable and help to lower the bounce rate a lot. Also, give extra emphasis on load speed as it encourages visitors to engage more on your website.
* Make sure your website has a responsive design.
* Create mobile-oriented content for a better mobile experience.
Some general tips for SEO starters
* If anything is slowing your website, remove them. Speed is your key.
* Choose relevant content while linking to other websites
* Create content for your audience, search engine comes next.
* Connect and encourage other sites to link to you.
* Have your web-analytics set from the beginning.
* Try writing unique and relevant Meta descriptions for every page.
* Try making your URLs short and meaningful
* Prepare to build some momentum with Social Signals.
* Don’t forget to use the right keywords in your images.
* Post according to a schedule and timing generating more traffic
It doesn’t matter you are starting as a B2B or B2C marketer, mistakes are bound to happen. It is what you learn from these mistakes and your audacity to introduce some positive changes that will assure your success in this field.