With the growing number of online businesses and the numerous updates made to Google algorithm, marketers must make changes to their SEO tactics to stay ahead of the competition. It means even the slightest of mistakes may affect your SEO rankings and result in low traffic and fewer conversions for your website.
If you are still relying on outdated SEO tactics, then you should get rid of them to get successful results in your digital marketing efforts.
Here are some of the common SEO mistakes that require every marketers’ attention:
#1. Poor Internal link structure
One of the biggest mistakes in SEO is not having a solid internal link structure which can leave a poor impression on your target audience and distract them from your website. No matter how much exceptional content or great products you may have, they will not be visible on your website, unless you fix some basic linking errors including duplicate errors or 404 errors.
Internal links are key to SEO strategy as they provide smooth navigation to your website visitors and help to organize your web content based on keyword-optimized text.
#2. Presence of duplicate content
If the same content appears on more than one page of your website, this may confuse the search engines as they may not be able to decide which page to index. This dramatically reduces the chances of your website being displayed in the search results. Duplication can be listed under two types-homepage duplication and URL duplication.
You need to avoid duplicate versions of your homepage as search engines may not be able to decide on the best URL, which might affect your website rankings. Duplicate URL may result when both upper- and lower-case characters may be used with variations which may confuse the search engines.
#3. Keyword stuffing
No doubt, keywords are a core part of SEO strategy, but too much of it may cause harm. Ideally, it’s good to have keywords used uniformly across the entire content, and they must not sound spammy and unnatural. Focus on targeted keywords to achieve high rankings for your website and avoid using phrases that are repetitive and are less meaningful.
#4. Forgetting local SEO
Search engines such as Google provide local SEO that enables companies to provide information about their business via location and the clients that they are planning to target. Especially if you have customers located within a specific region, then it makes sense to have a local search. Thus, you can incorporate region-specific keywords in your titles and meta descriptions. Make sure to include your local address and phone numbers so that they can show up in the search results.
#5. Not doing keyword research correctly
Keyword research can be challenging and a time-consuming task and most often ignored by marketers, but it’s very crucial if you want your brand to gain visibility by the search engines. There are many tools such as Google Adwords Keyword Planner, UberSuggest, Moz Keyword Explorer that allow you to find specific keywords easily. With proper keyword research, you can be sure of what your target audience is looking for and use the most trending and popular keywords to describe your products.
#6. Not using image tags
A website with stunning images looks attractive and engaging to the visitors. However, they may not be visible to the search engines, and hence, you will require to use image tags. Make sure to add alt tags for every image and use an image description along with a caption so that the search engines can easily find them.
#7. Ignoring user-friendliness
If your website does lack smooth navigation and your visitors get distracted due to its slow loading speed, then it means that your website is not user-friendly. Also, if you have content all over the place without paying attention to specifics such as a call to action, social buttons, images, etc. then you are sure to lose your valuable customers.
Use catchy keywords, meta tags, good layout to make your site more appealing and exciting to your visitors. Use CTA’s in strategic places and make your website mobile-friendly.
#8. Overlooking Analytics
Most marketers do not track the performance of their website in the absence of which they cannot assess if their SEO strategy is working or not. Analytics is a vital part of your SEO strategy and can help you to measure your site traffic, bounce rate, conversion rate, page views, etc. It’s essential to use such useful site monitoring tools to save a lot of time on your SEO efforts and yield positive results.
In a nutshell :
SEO is key to the success of any digital marketing campaign, and your business can have more excellent opportunities by utilizing SEO strategy in the right manner. In 2019, it’s time to reevaluate your SEO tactics and make necessary changes to get lasting success in your marketing efforts. SEO New York service is best for you.