We’ve heard complaints and stories of people who spend time and money to optimize their content, research for keywords, and implement a strong SEO strategy yet end up with low ranking and traffic.
Does this sound like you?
If it does, best believe that you are not alone. Almost every business, from startups to big corporations, has had its rounds of issues with SEO. The good news is that you can fix it. In this article, we discuss some SEO mistakes to avoid in 2022 for better website performance.
Let’s go.
13 Common Mistakes To Avoid To Get SEO Right
If you are making mistakes with your SEO, then you will find it hard to rank, increase traffic and boost user experience. Here are some common mistakes people make with SEO and tips to fix them:
1: Using Incorrect Keywords
An essential part of SEO digital marketing is using a great keyword strategy. Most people, when searching for products or services they need, often type in a set of words or phrases. It’s up to you to identify the common words people search for when looking for your products to give you a chance of showing up on search results.
The goal is to show up on the first page for relevant search time, and the best way to do this is by using the right keywords. When it comes to keywords, it’s not just about stuffing words in your content but ensuring you include the right words and placing them properly. If you get the keyword part correctly, you will be able to attract more visitors searching for similar phrases on the web.
One of the best on-page SEO tips is focusing on relevant and specific keywords instead of generic ones. Let’s say you run a restaurant in Ikeja, Lagos. In this case, ‘restaurant’ is a generic keyword, and millions of pages will appear if you search for it, so it’s best not to use it. However, a more specific keyword would be great restaurants in Ikeja as this will help you rank higher and reach customers searching for restaurants in your location.
There are great tools and SEO analyzers like SemRush, Hubspot, Google Adsense, and Keyword Everywhere, which are suitable for finding rich and low-competition keywords in your niche.
2. Overlooking Meta Descriptions and Page Titles
There are different things to focus on when optimizing your website for excellent SEO performance. Meta descriptions, ALT texts, page titles, and image descriptions are one of them. These things may look insignificant, but don’t underestimate their importance for SEO strategy.
For instance, MetaTags help search engines understand what your page is about and match your page for keywords from searchers. So, get rid of default metadata and instead describe your page or your content with keywords. Also, create unique meta titles and meta descriptions for all the indexed pages on your website.
Page Title is an important ranking factor for Google, so it’s best to optimize them for SEO. A good SEO marketing tip is to ensure your title is not too long, so it doesn’t get cut off in search results. Also, add keywords to your title if possible.
3: Not Including Internal Links
A great way to keep people on your website is by directing them to other content or pages they may enjoy. To do this, you can add internal links within your content so that visitors can see pages related to each other.
Speaking of links, audit your website regularly to make sure there are no broken links that lead to “404 Page Not Found.” Broken links can lower your ranking opportunities, damage your reputation and reduce leads.
4: Stuffing Content With Keywords
Keyword stuffing is one of the most common and biggest SEO mistakes people make. When you overuse keywords within your content, it becomes ineffective and can hurt your search engine rankings. Also, keyword stuffing is considered a black hat technique and may result in penalties.
5. Failing To Add A Call To Action (CTA)
What does a call to action (CTA) have to do with SEO, you may wonder?
I will explain.
The primary intent behind SEO strategy isn’t just to get people on your page but to get them to take action. You don’t want your visitors to bounce back once they read something on your site, so you encourage them to take action.
This is where a Call To Action (CTA) comes in.
A CTA is usually a button with action words like Buy Now, Sign Up, and Order Here, to direct visitors on what to do next. One of the common SEO mistakes people make is failing to add this CTA button that offers an action to your visitor.
6. Not Focusing on Your Target Audience
SEO is essential, but your audience is more important. Don’t lose sight of providing value to your customers while focusing on SEO. Instead, follow SEO guidelines that help you rank higher and, at the same time, help you provide value to visitors on your site. Also, to create a great SEO strategy, it’s essential to understand your business type, your competitors, and your target audience.
7. Creating The Wrong Type of Content
One of the most common SEO mistakes is failing to provide high-quality content. Bad content is bad for SEO, will affect your brand reputation, and will make you lose leads.
People come online to search for things because they need relevant and helpful information, and if you provide this for them, they will engage you.
So, focus on creating content that addresses your customer’s needs and provides value to your visitors. This will encourage them to visit your website more often and will help Google understand that you provide something of value.
Some more SEO copywriting and content writing tips to consider are:
- Don’t use keywords unrelated to your brand to rank higher.
- Don’t place keywords in a way that appears unnatural.
- Don’t overstuff keywords in your content.
- Only public original and unplagiarized content.
- Update your site regularly with new and fresh content to increase your website perceived value.
8. Underestimating Image SEO
One of the biggest SEO mistakes stems from not optimizing images for websites. Too large images, poor quality images, and missing alt text can increase loading time and reduce ranking levels.
This is easy to fix.
One, try to always compress your images to suit your website. Also, use high-quality and original and always add alt text with relevant keywords to aid recognition and accessibility.
9. Building Low-Value Backlinks
There are two types of SEO: on-page SEO and off-page SEO. Link building falls under off-page SEO and involves getting other websites to link to your website. Google uses backlinks to rank content and websites, so the more backlinks you have, the higher you’ll rank.
One of the mistakes people make when link building is focusing on quantity ahead of quality. Low-quality backlinks, especially from irrelevant sites or spam websites, will do more harm than good to your website.
10. Treating SEO as a One Time Task
SEO isn’t a one-time strategy. It’s a combination of different techniques, all directed at improving your website performance. For this reason, it is a continuous process, and it is best to stay consistent with your SEO plans for great results.
Also, you should know that search engine marketing is constantly evolving, so keep up with the latest trends to avoid getting left behind.
11. Disregarding The Importance of Mobile-Friendly Websites
A major aspect of SEO is user experience and website friendliness. If your website design is poor or your pages are hard to navigate, you will have a problem ranking on Google.
Google loves mobile-friendly websites. People also want a comfortable user experience. So, invest in great designs, fast load time, and easy navigation. Also, test your website from time to time to see how mobile-friendly it is.
Another common SEO mistake people make is not optimizing their images. Large images take a lot of time to load and make websites slower for visitors. Resize your images to speed up loading time, or install a plugin that does that on your WordPress site.
12. Doing Your SEO Yourself Rather Than Hiring an Expert
SEO is complicated, and if you don’t know your way around it or have trouble staying up to date with new trends, you may have an issue. A good SEO digital marketing tip is hiring a professional with knowledge and experience optimizing websites for business owners.
13. Not Using Google Analytics Tools
It’s essential to know your SEO performance and run an audit on your website to get feedback from search engines. One of the best SEO tips for your website is to use analytics tools to track and improve your website performance. With the webmaster tools, you can identify the pages or content that are performing well or underperforming. This will help you identify techniques that work and put you in the right direction with your SEO strategy.
- Leverage the use of technologies, tools, and experts to help with your SEO strategy
- Keep up with SEO trends and techniques to outrank your competitors
In Short
The key to boosting your website traffic is by doing SEO right. A good way to start is to get familiar with the common SEO mistakes to avoid in 2022. Also, use the right tools, stay up to date with common SEO trends and be consistent.