Search Engine Optimization (SEO) plays a fundamental role in online marketing. It places your content right on top results, attracting more traffic, and generating more conversions. The good things about this? You can do it for free! Although it takes some effort and time, SEO pays off in the long run.
Unfortunately, a lot of both small and big businesses fail to apply the best SEO practices. That results in low ranking and significantly lesser traffic. A recent survey showed that thousands of audited companies are repeating the same basic SEO errors.
Assertive Media, a search engine optimization agency, has the following definition of SEO:
“SEO, which stands for search engine optimization, involves optimizing a website so that it appears on the first page of Google, Yahoo, and other search engines when somebody is searching for specific information.”
Here are some of the common SEO mistakes to void to ensure your business’ relevance and profitability.
1. Duplicate Content
In the context of SEO, duplicate content refers to the same content appearing in more than one webpage within the same or different domain. Search engines find it hard to identify which among the duplicate content to index. Eventually, they do not show such a web page in search results.
2. Underestimating Content Marketing
You must have heard so-called online marketing experts saying that content is no longer that important. But the fact remains, content is king! It is not enough to rank high on Google with onsite optimization, and link building. You need a content strategy in place. Take note. Any SEO strategy without content marketing is bound to gain significantly low traction.
3. Poor Site Structure
When building a new website, your web developer doesn’t often integrate best SEO practices into the website structure. That is understandable because the web developer is not an SEO expert. Therefore, site architecture is one of the most underrated areas of SEO. But if you want to gain and sustain traffic effectively, you must work on to improve your site structure and make it responsive to SEO.
4. Not Mobile Friendly
Google is now putting a growing emphasis on mobile responsiveness when ranking websites. After all, the majority of website visitors are using mobile devices to seek an answer to their queries. The trend is going upwards, and if you want your business to stay relevant, then make sure it adapts well on mobile screens, including other devices.
To make it easy for you to create mobile versions for your website, you can make use of one of the three popular mobile design technologies. Among these include a dedicated mobile site, responsive design, and a native application. For beginners, however, experts recommend using a responsive design. That works for anyone with a limited budget for maintenance.
5. Unrealistic SEO Expectations
Don’t expect that SEO is easy, fast, or cheap! Gone are the days when you can easily exploit loopholes in the algorithms and gain traction. Another thing, many still believe that SEO is all about ranking for specific keywords. But according to Neil Patel, a global digital expert, long-tail keywords generate more conversions than short-tail ones.
So what’s the point? SEO success measurement should not merely rely on ranking. It should also consider factors such as traffic, more extended time visit, lower bounce rate, and, more importantly, more inquiries.
Interesting related article: “What is Search Engine Optimization?“