If you’re a business owner or online marketer, then chances are you have heard of SEO. And if you haven’t heard of it, that’s ok! We’ll be going over some common strategies and some common mistakes people make when doing their own SEO.
SEO is the process in which a person or company optimizes a website to rank higher on the search engine result pages (SERP). It can be done through many different SEO avenues but there are also many wrong ways of doing SEO.
Some of the most common mistakes include things like:
1) Trying To Please Google Rather Than Your Customers
To rank highly on search engines, you have to follow certain rules. But conforming to what search engines want often conflicts with what your customers may want. This is why you have to understand your target market first. You should never try to do SEO because it’s “what Google wants” – if it doesn’t benefit your customers. Many people think it is beneficial to “rank for every keyword” when simply this is not the case. Practicing good common SEO principles will teach you to find intent-based search queries and focus on the ones that will get your customer the best conversions for their specific goals and objectives.
2) Not Knowing Your Target Market/Audience
If you’re an e-commerce store, then your main goal should be selling products and providing great customer service. If you don’t know what your customers want, then how can you sell to them? What problems are they struggling with? What questions do they have? The more info that you know about them, the better. Most people will fail to explain to their customers that in order to be successful in e-commerce, you need to be able to deliver the message in a beneficial way to your different target markets. For example, the way you present a page or product to a 20-year-old might be significantly different than presenting that same product to a 40 or 50-year-old. Understand and resonate with your audience to provide a better landing page experience that allows the user to resonate with your message easier.
3) Poor Titles & Descriptions
A very common mistake is little, no, or bad titles and descriptions. As part of on-site or on-page SEO, it’s important to use a proper title and description so that the search engines understand the basis of each page. Adding things like appropriate keywords in your titles help Google understand a more intent-based search. This in turn can increase your chances of coming up more appropriate for specific searches. However, it should be noted that using SEO to spam keywords just for the sake of using them, is frowned upon and considered a black hat tactic that can cause your site to be flagged by Google.
4) Keyword Spamming Your Content
A lot of people do this when writing their content – they throw it on the page without thinking and it ends up looking spammy. Keyword relevancy is extremely important but also something that many companies bypass. It is a common rule that If you absolutely have to include your keyword in your content, make sure that you only have your targeted keyword appear 3-5 times per page or article. This way you’re not overdoing it. Spanning keywords all over our content not only looks unprofessional but also increases your chances of being flagged by search algorithms.
5) Trying To Get A High Page Rank Too Quickly
How many times have you heard “I can guarantee your website will rank on page 1.” I mean, I think we have all heard this. Well, the truth of the matter is that proper SEO principles and strategies take months if not years to implement, and like other industries, there are always cheats out there that will try and convince people that they can rank higher quicker. This may be true, and you might rank in the interim, however, you may find yourself being flagged for black hat SEO tactics.
Running a proper SEO campaign takes a lot of project planning and commitment. There are over 400+ ranking factors of SEO and some of these quick rankers online-only touch on a few of these factors. Conducting a solid SEO plan involves things like titles, descriptions, image tags, size reductions, blogs, layered/structured content, markups, internal link building, external link building, citations, profiles, PR outreach, and much more. Don’t fall for the guy who can offer you SEO for $500 as you will get what you pay for.
8) Too Many Keywords & Poor Content Quality
It’s true that having many keywords in your post helps you rank, but only if you can effectively write about them and have them targeted towards different pages of your website. If you’re just looking for a way to stuff as many keywords into one post, then your content is going to be poor and it will hurt your rankings over time. Trying to list as many terms as possible without even thinking about what you’re writing is a common mistake. If your content isn’t high quality, then don’t expect the search engines to favour it over other pages that are up to their standards. Keyword Cannibalization is often used when a company tried to rank multiple identical keywords throughout the content of a website. As a result, it causes competition within your own pages, which often leads to lower rankings for all of the shared keywords.
Are You Still Asking Yourself, “Have I Learned Everything I Need To Know About SEO Mistakes?”
How many of these SEO mistakes have you made? Do any of them sound familiar to you? Now that we’ve covered some of the basic mistakes, it should be easier for you to identify where things may go wrong and how to fix them. If all this seems overwhelming or if there is anything else about your marketing strategy that isn’t working as well as expected, get in touch with Beanstalk! Growth Marketing!
Our team is always happy to answer any questions about our services which include Search Engine Optimization so feel free to contact us anytime! We can help make sure your digital marketing campaign is running smoothly from start to finish.
