Search engine optimization goes well beyond helping you increase your brand awareness. A site that uses the best SEO strategies will rank higher on SERPs and will bring in more valuable organic traffic than their competitors that don’t. However, the opposite is also true; outdated SEO techniques can penalize your website resulting in no traffic and loss of business. Below are 5 common mistakes you need to avoid.
1. Not Having a Responsive Website
With Google’s mobile-first indexing, not having a responsive website for your business is a mistake that can cost you dearly. Not only are you losing out on potential customers but your site’s ranking is also hampered. It also affects user experience, since most customers today use smartphones to search for products and services and to get information. Thus, making your site responsive is a must. Plus, ensure that your website is compatible across all browsers.
2. Lack of Local SEO
If you are a local business and want to rank your website higher in the search result for local search queries, then you need to optimize your website according. Not making use of Local SEO techniques, results in you losing valuable traffic to your competitors. Thus, make sure that you optimize your website based on your target market. This will help boost revenue.
3. Not Fixing the Broken Links
One of the main reasons for a high bounce rate on your website could be broken links. Be it internal links or external links, it is important to audit it on a regular basis and rectify 404 errors post-haste. This will ensure better indexing by search engines and will help enhance user experience.
4. Ignoring ALT Tags for Images
An important part of on-page SEO, ‘alternative text’ a.k.a. ALT tags can help drive traffic for search engines like Google Image Search. It can also help with accurate search engine indexing. So, if you are ignoring ALT tags for images, then it is important that you rectify it. Ensure that your ALT tags are descriptive yet short and simple. Also, avoid stuffing it with keywords.
5. Not Using Social Media
Social Media can be a great way to drive relevant traffic to your website. Social media helps boost your site’s visibility, enabling you to reach a wider and global audience. Having a social media profile for your business is also a must if you want to improve customer engagement. These days it’s critical to have social media profiles and staying engaged. Create a business profile on top social sites (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Instagram) and make sure to stay engaged with your followers to get the most benefit from using social media to grow your business.
Other Common SEO Mistakes Include:
- Slow Page speed and website response time
- Poorly designed landing pages
- Not optimized for mobile
- Too much clutter and hard to navigate
- No sitemap
- Not testing for different browsers
- Not optimizing for local search
- Not using social media
- No clear CTA (call-to-action)
- Old and outdated content
- Poorly written content
- Ineffective outreach strategy
- Inconsistent content publishing
- Not taking the time to promote your content
- Not using alt tags with your images
- Using boring headlines
- No creating engaging content
- Using generic stock images
- Not optimizing images
- Using black hat strategies like keyword stuffing
- No internal links
- Not fixing broken links
- Not performing keyword research
- Failing to use analytics to track the results
- Not linking to external quality sites
- Not properly implemented redirects
Conclusion
SEO mistakes can have severe repercussions and can hamper the growth of your online business. Familiarize yourself and make sure to avoid these mistakes at all costs. By following the best SEO practices you will reap many benefits including a boost in traffic, higher ranking, improved CTRs, and lower bounce rate.
INFOGRAPHIC: 25+ Common SEO Mistakes That Are Killing Your Website [Infographic] by the team at Hosting Clues
Author: Sudhir Bhushan is a Tech & Social enthusiast. He is also a Web Entrepreneur by Profession and loves to write about latest trends on Social Media & SEO. You may also follow him on Twitter | Facebook | Pinterest
