8min
We all make mistakes. That's a fact of life. Think about SEO teams – when you deal with massive websites and sites which are in constant change, there are going to be occasional slip-ups along the way. The important thing is that mistakes help everyone learn. This applies to the SEO industry as well whereby people that made SEO mistakes don’t anymore because they've already learned how to successfully doing things.
How Does Your SEO Performance Affect Your Site?
Generally speaking, three main factors influence your website's SEO.
Technical factors: A few of these include server hosting, indexing, and loading speed.
On-page factors: this includes factors like website content, target keywords, and their related terms.
Off-Page factors: These involve the links from other websites to your website.
Periodically auditing these factors is an excellent way to stay ahead of the game. Even if you’re not feeling anything is wrong, it’s better to be safe than sorry. The frequency at which they should be assessed will depend on what industry you're in and what activities are your "normal routine". Keeping up with online trends so you're prepared for upcoming changes is highly important as well - especially if you already have a website!
Is There a Way to Find SEO Mistakes?
Technical SEO audits are often run in specialised tools such as SEMrush to find errors that negatively impact the search performance of a website.
Technical SEO Audits: When to Perform Them?
Search engine bots scrape the web looking for pages and websites to rank. The bots then check your pages for factors that aid in ranking before listing them on search engines. Due to an ever-changing search engine landscape and competitors that are playing catchup, it’s important to stay connected with the most recent updates so you don't fall behind.
Taking time to perform mini health checks each month can alert you to any issues with your competition or website structure, allowing you to keep up with the robots and win more business by creating a better overall user experience than your competition can provide. We recommend checking in on these health scans at least once a quarter because higher page ranks indicate a more satisfying experience for your visitors overall, resulting in more repeat visits from them in the future!
What To Consider When Conducting a Technical SEO Audit
To ensure the greatest chance of success for your website or application, it's important to have predetermined benchmarks and goals so that you know exactly what you hope to accomplish in terms of results. Digital Marketing technical audits involve monitoring key performance indicators (KPI) as well as SEO and UX metrics to show how a site is performing.
Technical audits are similar to checkups a doctor provides his patient to keep tabs on their overall health and diagnose problems early on before they become unmanageable in the future. By tracking metrics, you can anticipate any issues before they occur and make sure that the smooth functioning of your website or application isn't disrupted by unexpected setbacks.
One of the most important tasks that any site manager must do is to keep audits up to date regularly. You must be able to know what needs adjusting, especially when it comes down to technical details like site speed or for larger business enterprises internal linking!
As much as you would like to keep abreast of all your site's content, doing so can be rather daunting. I like to recommend updating your product page metadata regularly this ensures that your pages are consistently updated with accurate information and result in higher search engine rankings for the keywords you're targeting.
Time and Resources
For businesses with their technical audit teams, it is much easier to schedule technical audits regularly than for those with to find time and budget between client projects. Make use of our free site audit tool instead if you are struggling with time and finances - it will provide you with relevant insights throughout. You should then check in with an expert every six months or a year to see if any items require additional attention. Staying on top of Google updates is essential these days with all the changes they make.
SEO Mistakes to Avoid
1. Not Keeping Tabs on Conversions
Traffic isn't the only benefit of SEO. It’s about the quality of that traffic and converting visitors into paying customers. As an SEO professional, it’s easy to get caught up in watching which keywords are sending traffic my way and what the overall rankings look like for multiple keywords. We can get bummed when we aren’t ranking well for some of those high-traffic phrases because we may think this will mean fewer potential customers and therefore less income coming in.
There’s only one way to know what keyword phrases produce the best results. That is, of course, by setting up conversion tracking. Find out which keyword phrases lead to the most conversions on your site and also learn more about your customers by seeing what keyword phrases they use to find you.
2. Inadequate Local Search Optimisation
Start by learning more about your customers. Are you looking for local customers or global ones? Local search is harder to master than other types of search, such as those in a single country or worldwide. Luckily, some people and tools can help you with the specific aspects of online marketing.
Consider using region-specific keywords in your page titles, meta descriptions, and headers/footers in your web pages to begin gaining traction through local search engines such as Google (as previously mentioned), Yahoo & Bing! Now, when it comes down to boosting local search via location listing sites like organisations or business listings – start by learning more about your audience’s habits and needs. Free up time to be able to assess them closely so that you may have better insight into their wants and desires. One such tool which has been shown to improve local optimisation is called: Localsearchapp. It also provides additional local business discovery options via Facebook!
3. Incorrect Keyword Selection
There's a lot at stake here. Keywords should be specific to what you offer. Generic keywords may bring people in who are not a good fit for your business and they won't excel in their jobs or potential transactions with your company. Keywords that only attract visitors looking to get something for free probably won't be interested in buying something anyway so they're not going to be much help when it comes time to generate sales through leads either. Broad keywords will have lots of competition and could even put one at risk of some SEO experts working tirelessly to defend their ranking on the first page of Google results.
4. Non-Unique Meta Descriptions and Title Tags
There is a certain error I find baffling whenever I see it. That is using a company's name as the title for every page on its website except your home/main page. Titles of each page are usually shared in tweets and are used as the text when someone bookmarks your site, hence making them incredibly vital to optimisation and branding. A web page title should be descriptive enough so that anyone searching for the keywords mentioned will immediately know what they'll get by clicking on that link. Shuffling around words can harm.
For a web design company, web design services could be the main keyword in your portfolio. Your portfolio might also include more specifics on other pages. For example, Graphic design services, logo design, and SEO services could be some of the keywords featured on each page of your portfolio but with a focus on web design services being prioritised as the most important keyword at the end of each page's description.
Meta descriptions really can help you drive traffic to your business. They are 160-character pitches of your page or site within the search results, with each character delivering a percentage of SEO value. So, make sure to craft compelling meta descriptions because they could very well be what gets an internet user interested in visiting your domain before anywhere else!
That being said, every page on your site should have a meta description of its own. One rule of thumb is to keep them unique and creative around relevant keywords so people can easily find relevant information about the brand you offer directly from the rest of the results presented by Google (or whatever website).
5. Links With No Anchor Text
Have you ever seen the body of a web page filled with “click here” links? An SEO specialist knows those click-here links are just wasted space. Sure, using a call to action as your link can increase clicks, but it also costs you the opportunity of tailoring your anchor text, one of the most important components of SEO. For example, if you write a blog post strategically including keywords in your links will give Google something to work with. A good example is “eCommerce website design services” or for that matter anything where you simply want more information about eCommerce because that’s what your business provides. Alternatively, use the content on social media pages to place this type of improved anchor text within since search bots live there too and they mark up your site's search engine too so it ends up being better off than a well-placed URL anyway.
- Prioritising Link Quantity Rather Than Quality
A high volume of quality links tends to help with search engine rankings, but people tend to use the number of links as the only criteria when in reality this is not a useful metric. While it might be easy to get lots of low-quality directory links, for example, using them won't do much for you in the long run - whereas one link from a popular blog/article gets read by lots of people who then link back on their sites could have a huge effect. These kinds of links are harder to get so they are more trustworthy and therefore well-regarded by search engines too.
Get links that:
- Provide relevant information about your website and industry.
- Keep your outgoing links to a minimum.
- Don't link to adult, pharmacy, or gambling websites.
Additionally, you can check the incoming links to the page and the strength of the domain using free tools like SEOquake.
6. Ineffective Content
Entrepreneurs can take the easy way out by using meaningless content to build their authority online, but how is this a good idea? This displays to potential customers that you don't know what you're talking about, and trust us when we say that it doesn’t exactly scream respect or quality. There are many other options for building your website's credibility without resorting to cheap tactics - including participating in forums, answering questions on Quora, or publishing high-quality articles in your niche.
The internet has grown way too big for any business owner to handle by themselves. That’s why you need writers who are capable of original content so that your site can live up to your standards and keep customers coming back for more. It’ll take a lot of research to find the right people, but when you do, it will be worth it.
7. Creating Unlinkable Content
The content you publish for link-building purposes may not get the number of links you want, because those who link to it are convinced that it will be valuable - so if you want a lot of people linking to it, consider offering exceptionally useful content, whether in the form of top ten lists, video or text tutorials, or infographics.
8. Not Utilising Great Links Design
Do you know that using a template is considered a best practice in terms of design? That’s because templates have all the important features when it comes to what webmasters and designers look for when they are reviewing your site. For one thing, your website will be significantly easier to use if you use templates, as well as simpler for search engine bots to index -all things you want for your website.
There are a few hundred CSS galleries out there and they all follow the same formula. You will probably get featured as long as you're following their formula. All it takes is adding something creative to get your foot in the door with this kind of showcase site (some may even have you fill out a questionnaire before accepting your website). The best part about getting featured on galleries like this is that they sometimes can place banners on your profile. This will help drive lots of traffic, likes, and shares to your site! It's great because viewers of these galleries not only tend to link back to the showcased sites but can also be on the lookout for good examples within your industry and help make others aware of your services by linking back liking, or sharing.
Lastly,
The internet is a very large place, and there is a lot of competition out there. To stand out from the crowd, you need to be smart about how you run your business and how you market yourself. You need to make sure that you do all of the right things to succeed and achieve your goals. Hopefully, this article was able to help you identify some of the common mistakes that you should be avoiding, and that you can now start implementing the changes that you need to make sure that you are putting your best foot forward. If you are interested in learning more about how to improve your SEO, or if you have any questions about the content in this blog, please contact us anytime.
Tammy Duggan-Herd