6 Most Common SEO Mistakes And How To Correct Them

Around 571 websites are created every single minute of every day, business intelligence company DOMO estimated in 2012 (ref: https://www.domo.com/blog/2012/06/how-much-data-is-created-every-minute/). You can expect that the number is bigger today.  This only goes to show that the online market expands significantly on a daily basis, creating a fierce environment where only the strongest survive—the strongest being those official online entities that are thoroughly committed to the best Web practices, which include SEO.

Unfortunately, the typical online marketer tends to have bad SEO habits that die hard, purely because he launched into it without very little knowledge about this crucial component of online marketing. So, he simply does what everybody appears to be doing without understanding the real impact of these practices on his online marketing performance.

The Danger

If you’re an online marketer, you need to rise above being “typical” or “average”; the digital realm is a highly competitive marketing arena—mistakes can cost your business. If you continue committing them, you can incur losses which may prove awfully difficult to recover from.

Your online reputation/brand is greatly at stake here, you can’t afford to make mistakes with your SEO strategy. Therefore, find out what errors you’re still making, perhaps, even employ the services of SEO specialists for a thorough audit, so you can take appropriate, timely action in salvaging your online presence and boost its performance.

SEO Boo-boos You May Still Be Committing

Mistake #1: Churning out content for the heck of it.

–    Constantly producing content for a website simply for the sake of activity remains to be a common SEO practice. This is proving to be counter-productive, actually, since Google is increasingly focusing on quality content and value. Most of what’s brought out there is really no longer “news” and the last thing you want is to be dishing out the same stuff that’s of very little value to your users.

How to Correct:

–    Focus more on producing valuable content than merely a large quantity of content. Present fresh angles for trending topics instead of just riding on their popularity. Likewise, consider presenting content in different media channels, since online users have varying preferences in consuming content. Less (but fresher more and interesting) content is far better than a great abundance of all-too-familiar ones.

Mistake #2: Producing content for SEO rather than for end users.

–    This is a common inclination: You learn the principles of SEO, and then you let it take over everything. It all becomes about SEO, instead of delivering great value to end users so that their activities will not just create traffic for the website but actual sales. SEO’s true and ultimate goal is to yield profitable conversions and not just climb up page rankings or generate traffic.

How to Correct:

–       Don’t lose sight of the ultimate goal: to provide visitors the most positive experience and value so they will be driven to act toward the best advantage of your business. The key is to spend on and use SEO to drive people into the sales funnel.

–       Also, get to know your users, use analytics so you can probe more into their interests and typical online activities. By securing these important data, you can make better and more relevant content for them to effectively secure their full engagement.

Mistake #3: Being “mobile-unfriendly”

–    Not making your website mobile-friendly is certainly one massive mistake if you want to rise on search rankings to improve visibility. Opting to stand by more traditional design instead of a responsive one will lose you a lot of visitors and potential customers, considering how more and more folks nowadays are using their mobile Web-connecting devices to carry out online activities.

•      Reports reveal an 80% spike in mobile browsing in 2014.
•      22.2% of men and 18.2% of women in the US use their smartphones for shopping.
•      20.4% of men and 16.9% of women shop using their iPads or tablets.
•     Lower-income shoppers and minority groups (particularly African and Latin Americans) use a smartphone more since it’s the only device they have that can easily connect to the World Wide Web.

How to Correct:

–    A responsive theme is clearly the best way to go because it automatically adjusts to the devices’ Web browser’s window size or screen resolution. The best Web developers can make the necessary transformation so your website can become easily accessible on today’s popular mobile devices.

Mistake #4: Not minding page loading time

–    Perhaps you’re not aware of it yet, but page load time is actually one of the leading ranking factors that Google takes into consideration. Typically, what slows down page loading are those high-resolution videos and images, which remain to be quite the trend especially among many global brands’ websites. Slow page loading is terrible SEO practice and business;  studies show that:

•      40% of people will leave a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load.
•     51% of online shoppers in the US say that if a site is too slow (takes 5 to 10 seconds to load), they will not complete their purchase.
•     75% of people will hurriedly visit a competitor’s website instead of waiting for a webpage to load completely.

How to Correct:

Determine which you place greater value on: the impressive visuals of your webpage, or making sure every visitor that clicks your page stays? If it’s the latter, it’s best to just stick to smaller image sizes and formats, avoid superfluous plug-ins, reduce redirects, et cetera.

Mistake #5: Forgetting to optimize images.

–    Quite often, images are not properly titled and captioned, and this form of neglect is simply bad news for SEO because it prevents images from showing up in search engines’ images searches under the right keywords or search terms. Photos are clickable and they can direct traffic to website—you’re diminishing the potential for fruitful SEO by simply forgetting these simple steps.

How to Correct:

–    Change the title of your original images before uploading them so they will pop up in Google image searches under relevant keywords. Likewise, if you’re a WordPress user, include an alternative text and provide a description.

Mistake #6: Pages that can’t be indexed.

–    Broken links, blocked and missing pages, and redirects are the main causes of indexability issues. If pages cannot be indexed, naturally, they will not be included in the SERPs. Your website’s traffic will decrease and you’re likely to see an increase in its bounce rate.

How to Correct:

–    Make sure you consistently monitor the pages of your website because if search engines cannot access your page, then your users can’t, either. Check all the links and determine the reasons why the pages have been blocked; it may have something to do with Google updates. Find out the potential causes and the solutions you must apply to outwork them.

These common SEO mistakes prevent businesses from reaching their full potential and only lead to lost opportunities and profits. Guilty of one, a couple, or all of these SEO mistakes? Now is the perfect time to do something about them.

Hire expert SEO services today — undoing the impact of these boo-boos requires great technical know-how. Let SuperFastBusiness’s  SEO professionals help you out.

References:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/ericenge/2014/05/20/the-7-most-common-seo-mistakes/
https://www.jeffbullas.com/2015/08/06/12-reasons-wont-buy-from-your-website-2/
https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2014/12/10-most-common-seo-pitfalls/
https://healthywealthyaffiliate.com/big-seo-mistakes-2015-34/
https://www.ibtimes.com/men-shop-online-just-much-women-shop-mobile-devices-tablets-more-study-1600592
https://inspiredm.com/web-design-statistics-infographic/
https://www.domo.com/blog/2012/06/how-much-data-is-created-every-minute/

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