If
you own a website, you would surely like to rank high on search
engines, especially Google. But with competition increasing by the
day, every website cannot find a place on the first page of search
results.
So,
how do you ensure that you rank well on search engines?
To
do well in the digital landscape, you need to master the art of SEO.
Without SEO optimisation, it is tough to rank well on search engines.
It is, therefore, vital to have a robust SEO strategy in place.
So, how do you get on top of the SEO game?
You
need to remain current with the ever-changing search engine
algorithms to drive traffic to your site and increase sales.
But
in the process of keeping up with the SEO trends, businesses tend to
make some mistakes that hurt their search ranking quest. Here are top
SEO mistakes you should avoid to rank high on search engines.
However, before getting into mistakes, let us first try and understand the meaning of SEO.
What is SEO?
According
to Wikipedia, “search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of
increasing the quality and quantity of website traffic by increasing
the visibility of a website or a web page to users of a web search
engine. SEO refers to the improvement of unpaid results (known as
“natural” or “organic” results), and excludes the purchase of
paid placement.”
Top SEO mistakes you should avoid to rank high on search engines
SEO
is a vast and ever-evolving field. That is why you need to remain
current on the SEO trends. Here are top SEO mistakes you need to
avoid to climb search engine rankings successfully:
1.Focusing only on on-site SEO – It is a mistake to only focus on on-site SEO. Though website optimization should rank high on your SEO agenda, ignoring off-site strategies is a mistake that website owners need to avoid. It is important for businesses to create engaging content for other websites. You should concentrate on link building activities as it forms the core of off-page SEO activity. You need to build high-quality external links and relevant internal links to rank high on search engines. But make sure that your external links come from trustworthy and relevant sites.
Not
paying attention to the speed of your site
– Another big and common SEO mistake is not to focus on the speed
of your website. If your site takes a long time to load, it cannot
rank high on search engines. On the contrary, search engines like
Google will penalise your site for slow load speed. Hence, you need
to ensure that your website loads faster so that it improves your
visitor’s users experience. You can check the load speed of your
website on Google PageSpeed Insights. In case the load speed of your
website is slow, then you need to take corrective measures to
increase the load speed of your website. Few things that you can do
to increase the load speed of your website are – image
optimisation, browser caching, and gzip compression.
Not
paying attention to your ‘Google My Business’ listing
– If you don’t manage your Google My Business listing properly,
you might suffer big time on local search results. And, staying
behind in the local search result means losing a lot of business to
your competitors. Google places a lot of importance on ‘near me’
searches. Hence, you need to make sure that you keep your Google My
Business page up to date.
Selecting the wrong keywords – If you want to rank high on search engines, especially Google, you need to make sure that you use the right keywords for every page. One of the most common mistakes that website owners do is to use generic keywords. For example, if you are a small business and you want to rank high on the keyword ‘car rental’, then it is a tall order. What you need to do is make your keyword more specific to climb the search engine rankings. If you are not specific, then you will have to compete with all the car rentals in the world. That is where longtail keywords come into the picture. You can add your location to make it more specific. If your keywords are longer and specific, your chances of making it to the top in search results become higher.
Page titles and Meta descriptions are also vital, don’t ignore them – Page titles and meta descriptions are important if you want to do well on the online circuit. When a website is displayed for a search query, it is the metadata that appears on the search engine results page. The page title and meta description constitute the metadata. Page titles are an important ranking factor; hence, you need to make sure that your page titles are optimised correctly. You should add relevant keywords for all your pages, and ensure that your page title is not too long. Google cuts off page titles that are too long. It means that your potential visitors cannot read your full title, which is not what you would want for sure. You need to understand that the meta description in itself is not a ranking factor, but it helps optimise your click-through rates. Your visitors get to know what to expect from your site, and that is why you need to pay attention to the meta description.
Not
paying attention to regular website audits
– You need to review the performance of your website regularly. You
need to know how your clients and search engines perceive your
website. And, a website audit is what helps you review the
performance. It tells you about your site navigation, how fast does
your mobile version launch, and whether it is easy or not to find the
relevant information on your site. And, an audit tells you how you
can improve the performance of your website. It checks your search
engine optimisation strategy, loading speed, content quality,
checkout process, mobile-friendliness, etc. of your website. You can
subsequently take corrective measures to improve the performance of
your website.
Not having high-quality content – There is nothing more important than creating quality content for your website. Ensure that all the pages on your website have at least 300 words. In case you want search engines to take note of your website, then you should provide an in-depth analysis of the topic you take up for writing. Writing four sentences about a topic will not help your cause, and Google will not see you as an expert in the field. You need to remember that search engines like Google have the policy to display the best results for each search query. You should not write your content for search engines; instead, you need to ensure that you write your content for the visitors. Search engines like Google organise the information and throw up the best results to its audience. Hence, you need to ensure that your content is of high-quality and relevant to those who are searching for a particular keyword.
Not
using ethical means to propel your SEO cause –
Search engines like Google can penalise websites that don’t follow
ethical means to climb the search engine rankings. Hence, you should
not indulge in buying backlinks. It can harm you more than it can do
you any good. You also need to avoid keyword stuffing and duplicate
content. You should also avoid cloaking and avoid abusing structured
data. Avoid unethical ways to climb the search engine rankings.
Not adding a proper call to action for visitors – When visitors come to your site, you need to ensure that they spend some time on your website and don’t exit your site immediately. Your aim should be to minimise your bounce rates. One of the best ways to keep visitors glued to your site is to add an enticing call to action button. For example, you should add the buy button at appropriate places or add a sign-up button for your newsletters. Always have one call to action on every page of your website to increase user engagement. But do remember that you should not overuse call to action buttons because it might just confuse your visitors.
Don’t
treat SEO as a one-time job
– Many website owners think that they only need to work on SEO
once. It is a mistake that can cost you dearly. SEO is an on-going
process, and you need to work on it continuously to do well on the
online arena. What you need to do is keep creating relevant content
for your audience and leverage user feedback and reviews to keep
doing well on search engines.
Don’t
forget to make your website responsive
– Google has switched to mobile-first indexing since 2018. Hence,
if you want to rank high on search engines, you need to make sure
that your website is responsive. If you have only concentrated on the
desktop version of your website, then you need to make your site
responsive. You can use Google’s mobile-friendly test to check
whether your website is responsive or not. Therefore, if your website
is not fit to display on mobile devices, then you need to take
corrective steps so that your site ranks high on search engines.
If you are not ranking high on search engines (read Google), and you want to climb the search engine rankings, you should get in touch with vStacks Software Solutions now. We will make sure that you get a smart SEO strategy so that your site ranks high on search engines.
