SEO or Search Engine Optimisation is an essential component to a successful business plan. Whilst you may think that having a website full of information about your brand is enough, when it comes to pulling in new business from the internet, it might not be enough and this is where SEO helps. Optimising your website will help get your business seen by more potential new customers and that can only be a good thing!
SEO is time consuming and the boundaries are also changing regularly with advances in technology meaning you need to be ready to adapt and move with the trend. For most, hiring a digital SEO agency is the easiest option, working alongside experts leaving them to tackle this whilst you concentrate on your business.
On top of implementing new tactics on the website, there are some common SEO mistakes to avoid also and we’re going to be looking at these below.
Broken Links
Contents
Links offer value to content and are essential in a long-term SEO plan, however sometimes links can become broken. Broken links are those that have been placed on the website but are pointing to an error page. It’s important to check your website for broken links on a regular basis to ensure your content is as up to date as can be and that it offers the value consumers expect. If left broken, then these links can have a negative effect on your SEO and lower your rankings.
Taking the time to therefore fix and update broken links is essential.
Irrelevant Content
Having irrelevant or unuseful content on your website has shown to have a detrimental effect on a sites SEO with Search Engine Algorithms penalising poorly written, repetitive and irrelevant content. Ensure that all content has been written to a high standard and with consumers in mind, no keyword stuffing and it must offer value.
Taking these simple steps will count towards your SEO strategy long-term.
Targeting the Wrong Keywords
Producing great content is one thing, but failure to include the correct keywords will mean all that work goes to nothing. Keyword research is an essential early SEO step, it helps pin point the best keywords for your business, which keywords are going to be the most successful to target and which keywords to avoid. At the same time competitor research is also recommended, this enables you to look into your competitor’s profile, and offers an insight into what is likely to be working for them and what you need to be doing to beat that.
Failure to Promote Content
Producing great content on your site is perfect, but not enough! What’s the point of creating this amazing content if no-one gets to see it? Make sure you share all content through social media channels and enlist help from others to share the content further.
Having a newsletter is also recommended, this way you can share all new content in one place too. To take this even further, building links, paid campaigns and targeted sharing is also worth considering.
Failure to use Analytics
With any SEO strategy you should always be looking at the analytics, seeing what’s working and what isn’t. Far too often businesses watch and measure the traffic numbers coming to their site but without a conversion, it doesn’t mean an awful lot. Setting up an analytic tool to help measure your successes and failures is essential long-term. Knowing what is and isn’t working will help you optimise your site as a whole.
Local Search
If your business targets your local surroundings then a key area that some forget is ensuring your site is optimised to include region-specific keywords into meta-descriptions and page titles and adding an address and phone number to your pages so it shows in local results. Set up Google My Business, ensuring the information is exactly the same throughout this and website and finally building citations from the likes of Yelp, Foursquare and other local based sites.