You might think that because you created a website, people will automatically find it. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. You need to take specific steps to optimize your website for search engines if you want it to be seen by as many people as possible. Here are some of the most common SEO mistakes people make – and how to avoid them.
Not Doing Keyword Research
One of the biggest mistakes that you can make when trying to increase the ranking of your site would be to not do keyword research, as you can read at Cozab here. Keyword research is essential for many reasons, and most importantly, to create content that people want.
For example, did you know that “how-to,” “top X,” and “what you need” are some of the top-scoring phrases for content titles? Doing keyword research will not only allow you to determine what content your audience wants; it will all also give you an idea of how difficult it might be to rank for those keywords.
Not Creating Engaging Content
The next mistake that many brands and businesses make when trying to rank higher on Google would be not creating engaging content. Many brands think that just creating content is good enough. However, the quality of the content is just as important.
For example, Google is smart enough to now know when someone has created content specifically to target keywords or has just created content to insert links. You should avoid creating “thin” content as much as possible. In other words, you should always write for people first and search engines second.
Not Performing On-Page SEO
Another crucial mistake that you should avoid making at all costs would be not performing on-page optimizations. What is on-page SEO? On-page SEO is anything that you do to optimize your website in any way, which could include things like internal links, fixing broken links, improving the speed of your site, reducing image sizes, and more.
Many businesses fail to perform on-page SEO because they are too focused on their off-page SEO efforts, such as guest blogging or social media marketing. The thing to remember is that you need to perform both to rank up.
Accepting or Linking to Anywhere
There have been many changes to Google’s algorithm over the last few years. However, there is one thing to note about these changes; they are to improve the user experience. Keep in mind that the purpose of search engines is to supply users with information that can answer their queries.
Back in the day, it was not uncommon for businesses to include as many links and keywords in a piece of content as they could. However, in 2022, linking to any site or accepting links from any site can hurt your ranking. In other words, you need to treat backlinks and links as a form of currency and be cautious when using them. Consult a backlink agency for expert tips on how to build links safely and effectively.
Not Optimizing for Mobile
Did you know that more than 6 billion people in the world are now using mobile phones? Google knows this, which is why one of its updates now focuses on crawling a site’s mobile version before crawling the actual site first.
What does this mean for you? This means that you need to begin optimizing your website for mobile users, not only for your ranking but also to increase sales. Another fact that you should be aware of is that more than half of people will visit a store within three days of visiting its website after finding it via Google My Business.
Not Linking Internally Correctly
Finally, a big mistake that many brands and businesses make when linking internally is not having a strategy when doing so. Did you know that Google will penalize your website if you have internal links that don’t lead anywhere useful?
What you need to do is have something like a content pillar, such as “What is SEO: A Guide to Understanding it in 2022”, and then have related keywords or subtopics that link to it. Why? Because this provides additional resources for the reader that might want to learn more about the topic as a whole.