Did you know that SEO drives 1000% more traffic than organic posts on social media? So if you’ve been focusing on organic social media marketing without considering SEO for your site, it’s time to shift gears.
The internet is busy, and it can be challenging to stand out. If you’re struggling to boost traffic to your site and you’ve been using SEO strategies, you may have been making one of the easiest to make SEO mistakes.
By changing your SEO strategy, you can have more visitors to your site, which results in more leads and sales. Therefore, SEO can help it thrive and grow no matter your business.
Are you wondering what some of the most common SEO mistakes are? Let’s take a look at nine you’ll want to know about.
1. Not Optimizing For Local SEO
Some businesses are national or international, but many small businesses focus on customers in their specific region or city. Therefore, you must practice local SEO so prospective customers can easily find you.
2. Not Knowing Your Audience
If you don’t know who you’re trying to talk to, there’s a good chance no one will listen. Establishing your target audience is essential before you begin any part of your marketing journey. Rather than trying to appeal to everyone, it’s necessary to define the exact demographic that your product or service is geared towards.
3. Not Having a Plan
One of the top SEO mistakes is not building or executing an SEO strategy. It isn’t enough to randomly try to boost your SEO haphazardly. Instead, it’s essential to have a plan and a roadmap to ensure success.
4. Not Understanding the Importance of High-Quality Content
Many businesses try to skimp when it comes to content. This is because they either don’t understand the value of SEO content or don’t want to spend money on high-quality content.
However, you only disservice your business when you have low-effort blog posts or none. Not only will this negatively impact your search rankings, but it also doesn’t do you much good in your customer’s eyes.
Your readers subconsciously build a positive association with your brand when you produce high-quality content. On the other hand, low-quality content with spelling mistakes and other glaring issues will leave your customers thinking you aren’t trustworthy, reputable, or professional.
5. Missing Quality Links
External links are essential when it comes to SEO. Unfortunately, while many know they are supposed to include links on their site, many don’t realize that you shouldn’t just link to any old link.
Instead, you’ll want to link to well-ranking websites with good reputations.
It’s also a good idea to link to sites that have sometimes linked to you. This can help increase the chances that traffic will end up cycling back to your site.
6. Not Being Methodical When It Comes to Internal Links
Another one of the most common SEO mistakes is not paying attention to which internal links are being placed. You must factor in which of your pages are the top performers. You’ll want to link to these pages in your content to help create additional traction and visibility.
You shouldn’t just throw in internal links for the sake of it. Instead, be methodical about using internal links to maximize traffic and SEO.
7. Not Optimizing the Experience For Mobile
More and more people are using the internet on their phones these days. If your website isn’t able to function correctly on all kinds of devices other than computers, you’re going to be losing prospective customers. Working with a web design agency can help you get set up so that your site is accessible as possible.
8. Not Prioritizing Page Speed
Have you ever gone to a website that wouldn’t load? Chances are, you hit the back button after only a few seconds and found what you were looking for elsewhere. Unfortunately, if you don’t have quick enough page load times, that’s precisely what your prospective customers will do.
Many search engines also consider your load time when coming up with their rankings. This means that not only will people likely leave your site if it loads too slowly, but they might not even find your site in the first place because it might not rank high enough on the results.
9. Not Using Analytics
Lastly, one of the best things about digital marketing and SEO is so much data available to you. However, if you don’t use this information to your advantage, you’re doing your business a disservice. Keep track of what tactics are working for you and what needs tweaking to ensure your site gets as much traffic as possible.
Avoid SEO Mistakes By Hiring Professionals
While it’s possible to take on SEO for your own company, many business owners decide to outsource this role to the pros. Managing your SEO can feel like a second full-time job, and the last thing you want is for anything to be taking you away from running your business. When you hire a professional SEO company, you can focus on doing what you do best while knowing that common SEO mistakes are being avoided.
Is it time for you to take your site and business to the next level? If so, contact us today!