The 8 Common SEO Mistakes You Should Avoid

The content marketing strategy for any website starts with search engine optimization. Through SEO, marketers drive business online. But it is important to understand that the landscape of SEO is fluid. It is always changing as search engines constantly revamp their metrics. For your business to stay on top of searches it is important that you are always on top of your SEO game.

To do this, you must make sure you avoid common mistakes. These mistakes can drastically change the outcome of your SEO strategy, for the worst. So you need to avoid them at all costs if you want an effective content marketing strategy.

 

1. Optimizing for the Wrong Keywords

It’s obvious that any SEO strategy starts by identifying the keywords that need to be used. However, many businesses have trouble selecting the right keyword to optimize.

In order to decide which keyword is right for your business, you need to keep users’ and search engine preferences in mind. You may have already thought of specific keywords for your products and services. However, if it doesn’t match those that users generally search then they aren’t going to be that effective at driving business to your website.

To avoid such a mistake and to gain insight into users’ search preferences for your product and services, there are specific tools you can use. Some of the popular options are Google AdWords, Google Trends, keyword planner, and Moz Keyword Explorer can help you select the perfect keywords for your SEO strategy.

 

2. Stuffing Keywords

Once you have the right keywords picked, you need to carefully craft content around it. This means you don’t stuff the keyword in every other sentence. Keyword stuffing is a big “NO” in SEO. In fact, overuse of keywords causes more harm than good as search engines will register your content as spam.

Plus, you want to make sure your content reads well and makes sense. Keyword stuffing makes the content seem unnatural and most of the time doesn’t make much sense. The keywords you select should make up around 2% of your content and not more. This will ensure that search engines recognize it and the words aren’t overused.

 

3. Using Duplicated Content

The quality of the content you have on your website isn’t just important for the reader but SEO also. Search engines are much smarter than before. While you could get away with duplicated content before, you can’t anymore. The use of plagiarised content ends up penalizing websites.

The best way around ‘spinning’ or copying others’ content is to invest in creating your own content. You can use the internet as a source of information but the content needs to be original. There are numerous different tools online that help you check for plagiarism, be sure to use them to help determine the originality of your content.

 

4. Not Utilizing Title Tags and Descriptions

It is important that you use every chance you get to optimize your content. To get the most from the selected keywords, there are other places besides the main content in which you can use them. The title tag and meta descriptions are prime examples. Don’t leave them blank, you can seriously enhance your SEO strategy by utilizing them and incorporating your keywords. Not doing so will be a missed opportunity to make the most out of each content you post.

Image tags are another aspect of the content that you can use to get more out of your strategy. When you utilize every little aspect within your content to highlight the keywords, search engine bots can easily pick them up. Which will improve the content’s performance.

 

5. Missing External Links

External links have become a major aspect of content marketing; you want to use them in the content when you can. It allows you to link your content to quality sources which helps back up your claims while also allows search engines to rank your content higher due to the use of quality links. When it comes to external links, you need to focus more on quality than quantity. Links to quality, reliable websites that have a good reputation are vital.

You also want to focus on the anchor text you use to insert the link. Make sure that the text you use is related to the link. Using “click here” as anchor text is not very effective.

 

6. Website Isn’t Optimized for Mobile Devices

A little over 50% of traffic online is on mobile devices. This means if your website isn’t optimized for mobiles, you are losing a lot of traffic. Even search engines now give preferences in their ranking to those websites that are optimized for mobile devices. So being mobile-friendly has an impact on your website’s ranking and your overall SEO strategy.

 

7. Using Too Many Internal Links

Internal links present you with a chance to link visitors to other pages within your website through the content. But like keyword stuffing, you don’t want to use too many internal links within your content. You want to make sure that the links you use are relevant to the topic of the content. This will allow you to get more traction on your website and also allow the visitor to get more information regarding your business and services.

When overstuffed, it puts the visitors and search engine both off. Search engines tend to mark content with too many links as a fraudulent practice that harms your strategy.

 

8. Not Having Any Analytics in Place

You don’t really know how your website and content perform unless you have a way to measure it. Checking the progress of your website is important so you know whether the strategy you have in place works or not. There are numerous different tools that can help you with analytics like Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics. Such tools will help you streamline your SEO strategy and develop one that is best suited for your business.

Edited By: Umar Saeed