Common SEO Mistakes And How To Correct Them (Part II)

This is an update to the blog Common SEO Mistakes And How To Correct Them (Part I)

As an experienced provider of organic search engine optimization services, we are looking into digital marketing mistakes that businesses should watch out for. This blog continues our discussion on SEO blunders you should know about and tips to avoid them.

• Ignoring local SEO (if you want to target a local audience)

If you run a local business or target customers within a specific area, then you need to focus more on local SEO campaigns. If you’re not doing this, you are losing out on a lot of traffic within that area. So, it is important to optimize your site so that it shows up for local search. Local SEO strategies help you to rank better for a local audience rather than a global one.

Listing your business on Google My Business (GMB) really works as it allows you to show up on Google Maps for searches within your area. You can also manually add additional locations in GMB if you want to be visible in more locations. Make sure to optimize your GMB profile and make use of local review networks such as Yelp and Google Places.

Encourage your customers to write reviews and feature reviews on your website to target more qualified, local traffic. Add location-specific keywords, mainly long-tail, in your page titles, meta descriptions and content and include your contact number and address on all pages.

• Not including right title tags and meta tags

Title tags and meta descriptions are key SEO essential elements that search engines use to understand the context of your content. Skipping these areas can lead to confusing search bots and your content not being found for relevant searches. Not optimizing your content for Schema markup can also affect web traffic and conversion rates. Schema markup is a structured data markup that helps the search engines to get more information about your website.

It is more important than ever for the search engines to know what your web pages deal with so that they can include them in the appropriate search results so that your target audience can find you.

Make sure to include title tags and informative Meta descriptions for every page, suitable keywords in titles and descriptions and alt text on embedded images. These elements, when done right, can improve your content’s performance. Consider optimizing for both voice search and featured snippets by identifying your audience’s queries and answering them. Add unique title tags for each page and avoid making them too long.

Not Focusing on Getting Good Links

If you’re not finding ways to get quality inbound links from highly authoritative sources, you may be losing out on the chance to rank higher in search results. External link quality matters more than quantity. Make sure you link to relevant, well-ranking websites with a solid reputation.

Focus on writing good anchor text to inform users and search bots what the link is about. Consider using the right anchor text like a call to action with relevant keywords for your internal links. Never use the same anchor text for every link and also avoid using the same keyword. Provide quality content that can naturally attract links. Also make sure to link back to sites that have linked to you, as this will bring back traffic in the future.

Not Optimizing Website for Mobile Users

In this age of rapidly growing mobile phone usage, not having a mobile-friendly website is a big mistake. You would miss out on a lot of potential customers. Most of your targeted audience is using a mobile device to do an online search. Google also counts mobile-friendliness of a website as a ranking factor, and not optimizing your site for mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones can affect your ranking.

How fast your web page loads is also important, as page speed is a ranking factor in mobile search and desktop search results. The more time it takes for a page to load, the greater the risks of higher bounce rates. Focus on optimizing speed in mobile search by reducing image size and avoiding flash or plug-ins. Use tools such as Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX), Lighthouse or PageSpeed Insights (PSI) to maintain ideal page speed for your website. Make sure your site is responsive and test your site’s browser compatibility.