Search engine optimisation is (or will soon be) an old age trick in the book of internet marketing. It simply involves driving the maximum amount of traffic to a website by making it appear among the first results on Google search and other internet search engines. It encompasses quite a number of factors and takes a considerable amount of effort, but it’s all worth it in the long run.
An SEO tool is an essential part of the process of conducting SEO for a business website. These tools provide important metrics and other information to help business owners develop their organic traffic on the web. Knowing which tool to use can be tricky which is why Sitetrail has developed a list of the best SEO tools to use.
In a world where brand recognition, sales returns, and growth heavily rely on online presence, this is very important to businesses. According to the digital marketing professionals at Edge Online, ranking high on search engine result pages (SERPs) is one of the best ways to maximise your reach to your target clients, prospects, and existing ones. This is basically why you need experienced hands on this technical subject to stay ahead of your competition and at the top of the game in your niche or industry.
However, in addition to the fact that SEO may take time before you can finally acquire the top spot on Google, quality SEO services don’t always come cheap, and this tends to lead people into seeking cheaper alternatives, shortcuts, and making certain mistakes along the way. Without a legitimate, properly strategized SEO approach, achieving higher ranks and maximum traffic to your website can be next to impossible; and if it does happen, it might as well be so short-lived. This is where unexpected outcomes such as drops in organic traffic becomes the order of the day. But what is it that you may be doing wrong? Well, below is a list of some common SEO mistakes people make and how to fix them.
Technical mistakes
When creating your website, for instance, it is not out of this earth to inadvertently introduce bugs in the process, which may end up interfering with your search engine optimisation outcomes. For instance, some bugs may prevent proper page indexing, making your site invisible to search engines. You can fix this by being keen on your site’s analytics and having a website developer redesign your site so the bugs are fixed. You should also stay on top of the latest analytics and ranking info for your site so you can catch any anomalies as soon as possible. Other common technical SEO mistakes people make include:
- Slow page-loading – Talk to your web designer about your hosting, site design, image sizes, etc.
- Using dead/broken internal links – perform link audits and replace dead links
- Poor use of search directives – have this fixed
- Mobile unfriendliness – ask your website developer for a mobile responsive website
Hiring the wrong SEO service provider
In your quest to find a cheaper company that offers SEO services, you may be tempted to go with the first one that shows interest in working for you. Unfortunately, some SEO companies that come out of the blues and offer you amazing deals tend to be black hat SEO. Some of them will over-optimise your site to increase your traffic exponentially, in the name of pleasing you with the quick results. While this may work in the short term, it will come back to haunt you when the webmasters crawl your site, only to suspend your site and penalise you for using discouraged practices. You can avoid this problem by doing a thorough research and background checks on SEO companies before making an informed decision.
Using shortcuts
Many businesses out there are guilty of this mistake. They want to grow their online presence as fast as possible while using the least amount of resources. Out of lack of patience, they end up using black hat SEO practices. Traffic grows rapidly and all is well until, as mentioned earlier, Google catches up with them and bans their sites, perhaps accompanied by hefty fines that may bring the business to its feet. As mentioned earlier, SEO may take a considerable amount of time and resources before it materialises. If you’ve suffered the wrath of Google and other search engines, the best fix would be to talk to an experienced digital marketing company for advice on what your options are. If not creating a new site afresh, it could mean restarting your SEO campaign and rolling it in accordance with the webmasters’ guidelines.
- In addition to the above, other common SEO mistakes include:
- Wrong keyword choices
- Content duplication
- Poor link-building strategies
- Lack of social signals
- Missing meta descriptions and title tags
- Deceptive or irrelevant content
In a nutshell, SEO is the backbone of today’s online marketing, which is essential in this highly competitive business era. However, people make various mistakes in their SEO approaches, which are usually detrimental to their success. The above are just a few tips on common mistakes entrepreneurs make in SEO and how you can fix them.
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