Common SEO Mistakes to Avoid

As of January 2021, around 4.66 billion people are using the Internet worldwide.  

If you’re a business owner, you know that your chances of getting a sale are on the Internet. Try to compare the foot traffic of a brick-and-mortar store to organic traffic on a website and you’ll see that the former will give you around 20 people in a day while the latter can reach up to thousands!  

Albeit your scope is much wider digitally, it still has its limitations, but with the right SEO strategies, you can maximize your reach.  

What is SEO?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It is defined as the practice of increasing the quality and quantity of traffic to your website via organic search engine results.  

How Does SEO Work?

To help you understand how SEO works, consider this scenario:  

Let’s assume a customer wants to shop for a bag. Inarguably, the most convenient way to shop is to do it online, right?  

The customer can use a desktop computer, laptop, or smartphone. She then opens a search engine site (Yahoo or Google) and then types the name of the product.  

Obviously, this customer will not click on page five or page seven of the search engine results, but rather click on the websites listed on the first page.  

That is what SEO does. It puts you on the first page of popular search engine sites so that customers can easily find you. Without SEO, there’s very little chance you’ll be able to reach your target market.  

Why waste time, money, and energy building and designing a website when no one will know about it except you and a couple of friends perhaps?  

It’s safe to say that the success of your website relies largely on SEO.  

If you’re new to this, you might end up getting penalized or worse, banned from search engine sites. This usually happens if you take the wrong advice and attempt to do SEO yourself using ineffective and untested strategies.  

A friendly piece of advice: Don’t take the risk. You’ll only regret it later on.

What Are The Common SEO Mistakes To Avoid?  

To ensure that your website ranks at the top page of search engine sites, we suggest you avoid the following SEO mistakes:

Mistake #1: Foregoing Hiring An Expert

SEO is a complex job that requires knowledge, skills, and experience. It also requires you to know the current changes in trends, algorithms, and the latest strategies.  

Without these, your SEO campaign is bound to fail.  

If you have zero knowledge of SEO and you just watched a 30-minute webinar about it, don’t do it yourself. Hire someone who knows SEO best. If you have the budget, the best way to generate leads, increase conversions and boost sales is to entrust your website to SEO specialists.  

The last thing you’d want is to do a trial and error yet end up with a mountain of errors that are too expensive to fix.  

Mistake #2: Not Studying Your Audience

One of the core principles of Search Engine Optimization is identifying your target market. Aside from identifying who they are, you also need to study them.  

Scrutinizing your target market is crucial in SEO because your customers are the lifeblood of your business.

A lot of marketers are convinced they know their audience, yet they fail to understand how they behave. You need to microscopically study your target market so you can streamline your strategies based on their behavior.  

Mistake #3: Not Keeping Abreast of New Changes in SEO

SEO is always changing. What works now may not work next month or next year.  

This is because search engine sites are constantly modifying their algorithms and they do it to improve the quality of the searches. It’s also their way of preventing hackers from attempting to control the system.  

According to research, Google algorithms underwent significant changes over five years and countless updates that notably changed how Google ranks websites.  

To get good rankings, your SEO expert must be abreast of the latest search engine changes and updates. If you can’t keep up with the trends, you’re allowing your opponents to snatch your potential customers from you.  

Mistake #4: Using ‘Black Hat’ Methods To Get Fast Results

In the SEO world, specialists use two practices – black hat and white hat. Before you choose an SEO company to handle your website, ask them what strategies they use.  

Black hat SEO is a practice that manipulates search results by defying search engine rules. Examples of black hat practices include hidden texts and links, link exchanges or farming, blog comment spam, and keyword stuffing.  

Yes, you can instantly get leads and conversions using this method but it’s very risky. If your website gets caught, however, you will be penalized or banned.  

Simply put, you can never cheat the search engine system, so don’t risk it.  

On the other hand, white hat practices are standard practices that are acknowledged by search engine sites. These practices do involve a substantial amount of research and analysis, but they are effective, last longer and they improve user experience.  

Make sure the SEO expert you hire exclusively uses white hat methods.  

Mistake #5: Posting Poor Quality Content

Search engines exist because these systems want people to find relevant and good quality information if they make a query on the site.

Over the years, search engines have successfully filtered out poor-quality content from their results pages.  

One of the biggest mistakes business owners make is posting por content. If you want your website to be noticed, you have to start creating and curating unique and good quality content. Don’t just post content just for the sake of it.  

Content is an investment. It’s one of the key ingredients to a successfully optimized website.  

Are You Making These SEO Mistakes?

If you’ve set aside a budget to optimize your site, we congratulate you on making that decision. It’s an excellent method of making your brand known, generating leads, increasing your conversion rate, and improving your sales.  

Don’t rush it, take your time, and if you don’t have the bandwidth to optimize your site, we recommend you find a credible, experienced SEO specialist. Once you have your site optimized, get ready to hit the jackpot!  

At Digital Resource, our team of SEO experts can help develop an SEO strategy that is guaranteed to help your business boom this 2021! Ask us today to know how we can improve your current SEO.

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