Managing your own SEO campaign, whether as a small business owner or a newcomer to the SEO industry, is no small feat. Still, it’s an interesting and challenging notion. The problem, nonetheless, lies in the fact that a lot of people try to figure it out intuitively even though it’s a field that requires an unusually high level of technical prowess. This makes inexperienced marketers repeatedly make several common mistakes that end up undermining their end result. With that in mind and without further ado, here are the top six SEO mistakes that you need to avoid at all costs.
Picking the wrong keywords
The first thing you might be doing wrong is poorly researching your keywords and picking suboptimal ones for your campaign. You see, when picking your keywords, it’s not enough just to be industry-specific. You also need to be unique. First of all, you need a proper SEO research tool. This will allow you to find the most competitive unique keywords out there. Second, you need to focus on figuring out how your audience uses search engines. By managing to emulate this, you will have an easy job picking all the right keywords for the brand in question.
Keyword stuffing
Another rule that you need to hear of is keyword stuffing. You see, while it is important that you get your keyword out there in the right volume, by pushing this too hard you might end up getting penalized. In order to avoid this, you need to ensure that your keyword doesn’t appear more frequently than 2 percent of the entire word count of the post. So, for instance, for a post that’s 700 words long, you will have the luxury of using your keyword about 14 times. Either way, this should be more than enough.
Ignoring the importance of analytics and reporting
The next mistake that a lot of newcomers to the SEO industry make is trying to do everything manually. The problem with this lies in the fact that it robs you of all the advantages of automation and advanced analytics that you would otherwise have access to. On the other hand, with the right SEM reporting tools on your side, you will have an easier job of interpreting your success and adjusting your strategy to your company’s long-term marketing goals. It really doesn’t get more pragmatic than a dashboard-style reporting system that you can access at your own behest.
Ignoring your non-human audience
The next grievous sin that a lot of SEO marketers make is – assume that the entirety of their audience is human. You see, this is only partially true, seeing as how SEO optimization also requires you to optimize your pages for Google crawlers, which are algorithm-operated entities. So, how do these machines interpret your content? Well, through its metadata. Make sure to use all necessary meta descriptions while optimizing your page and you shouldn’t have a problem with getting your pages indexed.
Non-organic link implementation
Link implementation in content marketing is one of the things that plague the world of digital marketing. Why is this so? Well, because some people feel a strong urge to force the keyword into the content at any cost or try to insert it into an unrelated topic. So, what happens next? People interpret the attempt as a hard-sell effort and immediately think less of the content in question. A lot of them might even immediately leave the page, thus reducing the conversion rate, as well as the average time of retention. Not to mention the fact that they won’t click the link, to begin with, which is probably the worst side-effect of them all.
Not checking the SEO rank of links you use
Another mistake that a lot of marketers make is linking towards content that’s… well, either sketchy or of low quality. This makes a bad impression on both human and bot audiences and can cause an SEO disaster quite easily. Therefore, make sure to read the entirety of any post that you intend to link towards, as well as to check its domain authority. After all, this is the least any serious SEO marketer can do in the editing stage.
Keep in mind that this is just the tip of the iceberg and that there are many other mistakes which, sadly, couldn’t get a spot on this list. Honourable mentions go to ignoring internal links, not providing fast enough mobile experience, ignoring the power of influencers, etc. Nonetheless, you have to start somewhere and fixing the above-listed six issues will provide you with more than a decent head start.
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