While trying for a better rank in search engines, business owners spend a lot of bucks on promotion and marketing. In this due process, they often neglect the basic SEO structure of their content. Sometimes, all one need is discontinuing every paid promotion and revising the fundamental SEO of the content. No doubt the search engines change their algorithms with time but the age-old principles of SEO remain the same. This post is directed towards the 8 most common mistakes in SEO that hampers your site’s ranking.
Not using specific keywords
Many a time people tend to chose a mere generic keyword. For example for a person who gives away English coaching, the keyword of ‘English coaching’ won’t save his day. The keyword here is much more generic with high competition. Rather if he goes for a more specific long-tail keyword, the chances of ranking in the search engines become much higher. Additionally, make sure you are not stuffing your valuable content with tons of keywords. This will also affect your site performance.
Not converting visitors into customers or a poor conversion rate
This happens when your site lacks a ‘call to action’ (CTA) button on your pages. Imagine that 1000 people are visiting your website weekly, but they are clueless about how to subscribe or sign up for your regular updates. Use a similar option and highlight it with a different colour (preferably a bright and gaudy colour to attract visitors) so that your visitors don’t bounce back to other websites when they are done. The main aim behind this point is retaining your customers on your site without a rebound to other sites.
They neglect the content quality and freshness
While running after less competitive long-tail keywords, people frequently overlook the content quality. Most of the search engines expect a minimum content size of 1000 words to make it worth. Business owners must keep in mind that the content should be ‘charming’ both for the search engines and humans. Generating content favouring search engines only won’t play a fair game. In addition, your website must have original and fresh content. Neither human nor search engines will accept plagiarism or copying and playing with it in any form are surely going to hurt your business.
You can check for content plagiarism here: Small SEO Tools
Your site does not load fast and lacks mobile-friendliness (and other devices)
Just imagine you are looking for some search results and the site appears ‘loading’ with a blue circle. How many seconds will you take to press the red ‘Cancel’ button? This just happens with your site as well when it doesn’t have a proper loading speed. Besides using tools and plugins for speed optimization, compress your images and videos for better site performance. Nevertheless, you must also check your site speed for mobiles (and other devices) for gifting a better user experience to your visitors.
Here is Google’s OWN TOOL to check your website speed.
You are not using the free Google tools
Google Analytics and Webmaster tools are some of the best tools for analyzing your site’s performance. Prior to using those, don’t forget to submit your site map while setting up the account. Google tools help in presenting an overview of your site’s operation and execution and how you can optimize it further using various campaigns and strategies.
Forgetting titles, headlines, metadata and tags
Catchy titles and headlines are a must-have for unique content. Try to make your headline more appealing, crispy and out of the box. Additionally, your metadata also needs proper attention. This is the space that first appears to your readers in the search engine. Make it more attractive and informative to your readers. Use of proper and relevant tags is also a high not-to-miss thing in your post. Appropriate tags bind your content into a cluster that makes it easier to find and read.
No outbound or inbound links; even not fixing broken links
People often ignore proper internal linking to their poor raking pages from the higher ranking ones. While both human and search engines expect a relevant internal linking to the content, the criteria remain the same for the outbound links as well. However, broken internal links if any also happen to loosen the connection to other website pages. Internal links keep the readers in a flow of words. And any hindrance in form of broken links (or bad links) is surely going to drive them away from your site.
They lack appropriate backlinks
Backlinks are one of the sure things to give you a boost in the rankings. But building up a backlink from any websites having any XYZ content and brand won’t do the magic. Look for a relevant high DA website of your niche and then approach for establishing a backlink. While the recognized backlink will be a worthy asset of your web, search engines will also tend to push you up among the top results.
