Do you struggle for your website to appear on the first page of the Google search results?
Are you running out of patience to see the winning results for your website?
You have done almost everything from keyword research to optimizing your website.
But you are still exhausted and you are nowhere to hit the line.
You can’t stop questioning “WHAT TO DO?”
Hold the gear and don’t be frustrated.
Above all, there is some point something is not working well.
Undoubtedly, there are some common SEO mistakes done by SEO experts.
Before jumping into what the mistakes are.
Let’s have a clue on what SEO is?
Search Engine Optimization
Is the process of optimizing web pages and their contents to be easily discovered by search engines such as Google.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is mainly divided into three parts;
- On-page SEO
- Technical SEO
- Off-page SEO
On-page SEO: is the practice of optimizing individual web pages to rank higher and earn more relevant traffic in search engines
Technical SEO: refers to the process of optimizing your website for the crawling and indexing phase
Off-page SEO: focuses on increasing the authority of your domain through content creation and earning backlinks from other websites.
To have a broad understanding of SEO read more on the following blog post;
🔥🔥 Related blog post: Beginner's Guide: Create a SEO friendly website in the digital marketing world.
Getting back to the point,
SEO is a fast-changing industry and what worked a few years or months ago may not work today.
🔥🔥 PRO TIP: As a SEO expert you should always be up to date due to variations of the Google Algorithm. 🔥🔥
Below are the common SEO mistakes to avoid
Slow-loading website
Speed is very important for a website.
Statistics show that 40% of polled internet users report abandoning a site if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load.
At Google, users come first.
This means that if a user has a bad experience on your site Google won’t rank your website.
Thus, it will lead to low ranking and affect SEO generally.
How to improve speed
- Optimize images and videos
- Improve server response time.
- Leverage browser caching
- Enable compression of CSS, JavaScript files.
What you ought to do, is to test if you are on the safe side.
❤️❤️ TIP: Add your website link on the PAGE SPEED INSIGHT tool to test your website’s speed. ❤️❤️
If it happens the outcome is negative, consult Bridging Technologies.
Low-quality content
The first thing a user sees after visiting your website is content.
Qualities and proper navigation of your website are what make a user leave or stay.
Let’s have a brief look at low-quality contents;
Writing very ordinary content
People who search online are all looking for informative and high-quality content that corresponds to their queries. Nonetheless, we come across websites that write very poor content for their readers. Irrelevant content written in a disorganized manner has no benefit for your search engine.
Quality content has well-organized wordings and sentences, no grammatical errors, and at least 1000 words. Short, undescriptive, low readability or irrelevant content leads Google to believe that you lack sufficient knowledge of the subject.
Content being unsuitable for mobile use
Heading back to 2018 Google officially announced optimizing contents for mobile visibility.
So, content that is not mobile-friendly will find a hard time ranking on Google search engine.
Helpful advice: Test your website to check if its mobile-friendly or not.
As Google is always interested in serving its users, if your content is deficient or irrelevant, it will indicate to them that your content is not the best-searched result to match the searcher's query.
Have you succeeded in your approaches? if not visit Bridging Technologies for more consultation.
Excluding Meta descriptions/Title and image tags
One of the most important things to never forget is adding your title tags keyword-focused on your industry.
A title tag is the introduction phase of what your website is all about.
For instance, every person has a title such as Mr., Miss., Dr., etc.
One of the SEO mistakes to avoid that is done by most developers is not prioritizing title tags with keyword-rich.
For example; a title tag of a website may be “WELCOME”. This is not a best practice.
The same implies to meta descriptions and image tags, these tags should be keyword rich.
SEO experts should try to avoid these common SEO mistakes to reach the goal of a website ranking.
These are among the on-page SEO mistakes which can easily be eradicated.
- Improper use of anchor text
Have you ever seen on a webpage links like “click here” etc?
From a SEO perspective, it’s not reasonable to add a link without being keyword-rich.
A good practice is adding a link that will be keyword-rich.
For example; You are doing free SEO analysis as a service you may add a link on your homepage free SEO consultation in Tanzania.
Adding an anchor text which gives out a description of what it deals with is more crucial rather than the ones stating “click here for more service”.
How to improve quality of contents?
Make sure your contents have the following attributes online;
- The contents should be well organized i.e. no grammatical errors
- They should be long enough with at least 1000 words
- High readability and relevant to the specific niche you’re serving.
Note to take; If you want people to find your website, you'll need to spend time and money creating high-quality content that informs, educates, and even entertains your visitors.
Not adjusting to changes in search engines
Search engines update their algorithms regularly to boost the accuracy of their results to users.
Statistics shows by 2018 Goggle made almost 3,200 changes.
This shows that SEO experts need to be up-to-date and adjust to changes in Google Algorithms.
If you don't have the time or resources to keep up with the latest SEO trends, you should collaborate with SEO professionals who do.
In-activeness on social media
Did you know Social media acts as a Search engine as well?
People ask for products, look for business jobs, etc. on social media as well.
One of the best and most efficient ways to promote your website or new content is through social media.
It is among the biggest SEO mistakes if you’re not active on any of the social media platforms.
You need to find which platform is best suited to your audience and try to build authority and trust sharing informative and useful content.
Social media acts as a source of good traffic to your website.
Poor heading formats
Header tags are a series of different emphasized lines of text on a page that signify the various headings and sub-headings for the content.
When a google crawler is reading a web page it uses several techniques to interpret what the page is about.
One of the on-page SEO mistakes to avoid is the proper use of Heading tags.
Best practises on formatting heading tags
- Don’t use more than one H1 tag on a web page.
- The heading tags are used in a sequential order respectively such as H1, H2, H3, H4, etc.
- Include Keywords on your header tags.
- The heading tags should be clear and descriptive to help users quickly and accurately understanding all of the content on any given page
Targetting keywords with high traffic
Keywords; are the words and phrases that people type into search engines to find what they're looking for. For example, if you were looking for digital marketing services for your company, you could type on Google “digital marketing agency in Tanzania” the whole phrase you typed on the search is termed a Keyword.
Keywords are of two types
- Short tail keywords
- Long-tail keywords
Short tail keywords; These are keywords that are short consisting mainly of two specific words as Digital marketing
Long-tail keywords: These are the keywords that have more than three words such as Digital marketing agency in Tanzania is an example of long-tail keywords.
More importantly, long keyword phrases are precise enough to draw your target customers. Since they head specific and more into detail what your audience is searching for.
Short tail keywords tend to have high volume searches but it’s very difficult to rank for since they have lots of competition to rank for.
Best practice on choosing the right keyword
- Perform keyword research using various tools such as Google Keyword Planner
- Choose keywords with medium to low volume
- Plan keywords depending on your buyer persona.
😊😊 Pro TIP: Make convenient use of Google suggest 😊😊
Poor link building strategies
Link building is the one strategy used for SEO experts to ensure website ranking.
Link building is divided into two types:
- Internal link building
- External link building
Building Internal links within the website increase page authority. Also, it helps on increasing potential ranking for each page.
External/backlink building Is a strategy that adds trust to your website and it’s the most important ranking factor.
One of the biggest SEO mistakes to avoid is buying backlinks.
This approach is mostly used by SEO experts to increase website ranking. The bad news is that you will not only waste your money but will be penalized by Google.
Even if you haven't received a Google penalty for devious links or strategies, that doesn't mean you're secure. Your website may still get a penalty today for links that you built years ago.
Steve Jobs once said, “Quality is more important than quantity”.
The quality of backlinks you add to your website should reflect their domain authority (DA).
If your website is attaining backlinks from websites with high domain authority it ensures positive ranking.
It doesn’t matter how many backlinks you have, but if the backlinks are of low domain authority it’s not important.
🌟🌟 ADVICE: For free SEO consultation in Tanzania, you can click here. 🌟🌟
Separating SEO with other digital marketing strategies
There is no doubt that setting up clear goals on any movement is the best approach.
SEO as part of strategies outlined on Digital marketing.
One of the common SEO mistakes done in the digital world is regarding SEO as a standalone strategy to ensure website ranking.
If your tactics are only based on SEO, you are on the wrong track.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) should be incorporated with other digital marketing strategies such as Content marketing, social media marketing to ensure website ranking.
🔥🔥 ADVICE: GET A HANDFUL OF DIGITAL MARKETING STRATEGIES FOR YOUR BUSINESS. 🔥🔥
Bridging Technologies offers free consultation on digital marketing services.
Not utilizing proper SEO and analytical tools
You can only know if your content and SEO strategies are working by doing ongoing tracking and evaluation.
SEO practices are not a one-time game.
There are lots of tools online.
Prioritize to use tools which are lining with your SEO strategies
On keyword research and optimization among the tools, you can use are SEMRush and Google Keyword Planner.
In case of tracking your SEO activities, how well are they performing the best-recommended tool to use is Google Analytics.
Setting up a daily, weekly, monthly analysis session is important from the point of site optimization.
Implementing SEO without having an aligned tool for measuring the effectiveness, is among the biggest SEO mistakes to avoid.
These tools enable users to fix their common SEO mistakes letting them understand its performance analysis
🔥🔥 Tip: To get more insights on SEO read this blog post 5 reasons why SEO is the best strategy for the website achievement 🔥🔥
Rectify your SEO mistakes to rank your website
Now that you have ample knowledge and clue on the common SEO mistakes.
Its high time to correct them
The bottom line is that most of them are very easy to avoid. All you have to do is go through the list and make the necessary fixes.
To achieve your online marketing goals there is no substitute for proper implementation of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques.
There are hundreds of SEO tips and tricks that Google searches generate for users. However, these methods are often difficult to put into practice. As a result, you must determine which SEO method to use.
The best decision is to hire a digital marketing agency in Tanzania to sort all your problems.
Bridging Technologies offers free SEO consultation in Tanzania.
About Author
A content writer filled with a desire to create engaging online content for innovative brands.
