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.

With website CMS or content management systems, getting a site up and running is not all that difficult. However, optimising your site for user experience is not all that simple.

It is no secret that there is too much competition on the internet these days. And, if you want to do well in the digital world, one thing that you must focus on is the user experience. Search engines like Google put a lot of emphasis on user experience. It is almost impossible to rank well on Google if your website does not offer an excellent user experience.

And, if you cannot rank well on major search engines, it is quite tough to do well in the digital landscape. To propel your online journey in the right direction, you need to make sure that your website offers an excellent user experience.

Hence, as a website owner, you need to ensure that you offer the best user experience to all your visitors. Let us, therefore, take you through what you need to do to improve the user experience on your website. But before getting there, let us try to understand what is user experience and why is it so important.

What is user experience?

People often confuse user experience with usability. User experience or UX is the way how your visitors feel about your website when they interact with it. While usability is about functionality, user experience is about the overall experience.

The way your users perceive your website based on how easy and pleasant it is to use is referred to as the user experience. The more you improve the user experience, the more it becomes desirable for your users to interact with your brand.

Why is user experience important?

As the owner of the business, it should be your endeavour to ensure that you deliver value to your visitors in a fast, easy, and clear manner. There is more to user experience than just pretty web design. If you are unable to give your users what and how they want, then you are sure to lose your prospects and their business.

You can lose a lot of business if your website doesn’t offer an excellent user experience. User experience is crucial for businesses because it offers insights into what your customers want and expect from you. Hence, if you cannot give your customers what they want and expect from you, then it is difficult for you to climb the success ladder in the online arena.

So, what should you do to improve the user experience of your website?

How to improve the user experience of your website?

There is a lot that you can do to improve the user experience of your website. Some of the most important things that you need to do to improve the user experience on your website are:

Use of white space is extremely important – When it comes to a good design, white spaces are a must. If you finish your entire article on user experience in one paragraph, it becomes difficult for your users to read and grasp the article. Many would leave your site without even bothering to read.

So, what should you do?

You need to split up your article into paragraphs and leave white spaces so that it becomes easier for the readers to read the article. There should be sufficient white spaces between the images, paragraphs, and other media to make your text more appealing.

White space around your titles and text can increase the attention of your users.

But you need to ensure that you balance the white space and text correctly. Don’t overuse white spaces and don’t under use it either.

Optimise the load speed of your website – It is very annoying and frustrating for the users to keep waiting for the website to load. If your website takes too long to load, many of your prospective visitors would abandon it and move to another site. Hence, you need to ensure that the load speed of your website is lightning fast.

Check the load speed of your website on Google, and make sure that you offer an excellent user experience to your visitors.

Page/s consistency is also important – You should properly align everything that is there on your website. Consistency here refers to the selection of your fonts, heading sizes, spacing, colouring, illustration styles, button, other design elements, and everything else that is there on your website.

And, you need to ensure that you follow the same consistent pattern throughout your website and not just on one page of your website. Your website should be properly themed so that it provides an excellent user experience.

If there are sweeping changes from one page of your website to another, it can confuse your users.

Don’t forget to use a clear and appealing call to action – Using a clear call to action is extremely important to enable your website users to navigate your site easily. And, don’t forget to mark your call to actions.

When you create a call to action, make sure that you pay attention to the colour and its psychology. Also, ensure that you use the correct words on your call to action buttons.

Use website animation wherever you can – People respond to visuals more than they do to written texts. There are various modern animation website design techniques that you can use to make your site more appealing.

But do remember that you need to maintain a balance between written texts and animation. You cannot animate your entire site – animation should be good to look at and placed appropriately.

Use bullet points to segment key information – If you use bullet points to segment key information, it allows your users to reach where they want to reach quickly. It makes your propositions more attractive and saves a lot of your user’s time.

There are many attractive icons available in the market, and you can use them to highlight your important points.

It is important to identify and fix your 404 errors – It is true that search engines don’t penalise you for 404 errors (page not found), but remember that it is not something that users like to see quite often. A user clicks on a link with some expectation, and when he or she gets a message that the page is not found, it can frustrate your user. 404 errors can ruin the user experience. Hence, make sure that you fix all of them.

Make sure that your website is responsive and mobile-friendly – If you want to improve the user experience of your users, you need to make sure that your website is responsive and mobile-friendly.

People these days access the internet mostly on their phones. Hence, you need to ensure that your website should be mobile-friendly. Your users should not have problems accessing your website on their phones.

With the use of mobile devices on the rise, it becomes imperative for the website owners to ensure that they provide the same experience to their users on all the devices. That is why you need to ensure that your website is responsive.

In case you are facing user experience issues, you can get in touch with vStacks Software Solutions. We are a digital marketing and software development company, and we know what it takes to improve the user experience of your site.

A website on the internet alone cannot guarantee your success. Unless you optimize your website, it is difficult to do well in the digital landscape. And, to optimize your website, you need to play the game of SEO correctly. Irrespective of the place of origin from where you do your business, you need to have in place a robust SEO strategy to get the desired traffic. Whether you are in the UK, the US, or the UAE, you need to be on top of the SEO game to find a place on the first page of Google. Yes, it is crucial to focus on your SEO. There are two ways of doing your SEO the right way. You can either do it yourself or hire an SEO company to do all the SEO work for your website. It is true for businesses operating out of Dubai as well. However, SEO is a vast field. So, if you don’t have enough time or in case you are not an expert in the field, it is a good idea to hire the best SEO company in Dubai.

However, selecting the best SEO company in Dubai is not an easy task. You will find many in the market claiming to boost your online presence in a jiffy. But most of them may fall flat in their promises when it comes to the delivery of results.

So, what should you do?

And how should you select the best SEO company?

Let us take you through how you should go about selecting the best SEO company in Dubai. However, it is crucial to understand what is SEO and things that an SEO company can do for your business.

What is SEO?

Search engine optimization or SEO is the process that optimizes your website presence on search engines. It helps increase the organic traffic coming to your site. A robust SEO strategy makes your website more visible, leading to an increase in the quality and quantity of your website traffic.

SEO has two main parts – on-page SEO and off-page SEO. To make your website visible, you need to work tirelessly on both of them. SEO has several aspects – content, backlinks, directory submissions, pay-per-click advertising, and more. You need to work on all of them to improve your search engine rankings.

It is crucial to remember that SEO is a dynamic field, and you need to keep up the pace with the updates and changes that search engines make from time to time.

You also need to be patient and persistent with your efforts.

Before we move on to how to select the best SEO company, let us share with you what SEO companies can do for your website.

What can SEO companies do for your website?

A reliable SEO company has a dedicated team of experts working in tandem to create robust SEO strategies for clients. They work and make your website more visible on search engines like Google to increase your organic footfall. Some of the prominent services include:

• Website optimization
• Pay-per-click advertising
• SEO content creation
• keyword research
• Local SEO
• Website link building
• Website and SEO audits
• Website SEO updates
• Data analytics
• Google whitelisting and penalty removal

How to select the best SEO company in Dubai?

It is vital to rank well on search engines. If you are not present on the first page, it is difficult for you to do well in the online landscape. In the digital age, SEO is a full-time job. And, if you don’t have the time and resources to do the SEO work, then it is advisable to hire somebody who can do the job with full dedication.

And, an SEO company can fill the gap perfectly.

If you get a reputed and reliable SEO company, they can significantly enhance your online presence. But it is vital to get the best SEO company for your business. Here is how you should select the best SEO company:

Don’t fall for companies that guarantee you overnight success – It is almost impossible to get instant success in SEO. You should keep a safe distance from companies that promise you instant success. You should look for someone more reliable. You need to put in constant and persistent effort to get success in the field of SEO.

Google search is not the only way, word of mouth is good enough – While selecting a reliable SEO company, don’t rely only on Google search. Make sure you also ask your friends, colleagues, and other channel partners (not your competitors) to suggest a reliable SEO company.

Check out their past performances – This is one of the most important considerations. You can only handover your work to a company that has performed well in the past. After all, your customers choose you only when you meet their expectations. The same applies to your SEO search. Check out their past performance – look at their portfolio samples, client testimonials, industry awards, or case studies.

Do meet them and ask relevant questions – There is no point in signing the deal in a hurry. Take your time, meet them virtually or otherwise, and ask them relevant questions before you finally sign up with any of them. A one-on-one meeting will tell whether the SEO agency can meet your requirements or not.

Make sure you ask for an SEO audit – Before you finalize the SEO company, make sure you ask for an SEO audit. In an SEO audit, you can get to know the weakness and strengths of your website. The audit will also throw up how you can grow and succeed in the online arena. You can also find out how you can improve your search engine rankings. When you ask for an audit, you can get to know whether the company will live up to your expectations or not.

Pay special attention to communication – The SEO agency you plan to hire should know how to communicate effectively. The company should assign a person who can explain things to you in a simple way. They should be willing to share and make you understand the analytics part of the SEO. Any communication gap can result in mistrust, which can spoil the dynamics.

Select a full-service SEO agency – Make sure the company you hire is a full-service SEO company. It is not easy to deal with numerous agencies. The agency you hire should have the capability of handling your entire online presence.

If you are looking for the best SEO company in Dubai, you should get in touch with vStacks Software Solutions. We are a full-service SEO company, and we can enhance your online presence significantly. From website optimization, pay-per-click advertising to SEO content creation, and more, we can propel your online journey in the right direction.

If you want to make your website more visible to your users, you need to have a firm grip on SEO. Without a robust SEO strategy, it is difficult to do well in the online landscape. However, SEO is a dynamic field, and changes here happen frequently. Search engines keep changing their algorithms to deliver the best possible result for each search query. After all, they want to provide the best customer experience to every user. Hence, if you want to make your website more visible, you need to remain current on all the SEO developments.

That is the reason why website owners should know a thing or two about what works in the field of SEO and what doesn’t. It is in this context that you need to understand what is white hat SEO.

Let us, therefore. Take you through what is white hat SEO and things that you need to know about it.

What is white hat SEO?

According to the Webopedia, “in search engine optimization (SEO) terminology, white hat SEO refers to the usage of optimization strategies, techniques, and tactics that focus on a human audience opposed to search engines and completely follows search engine rules and policies.”

White hat SEO is SEO tactics that are legitimate and are in line with the policies of the major search engines, which include Google.

White hat SEO are practices that help improve your search rankings on a SERP where you need to maintain the integrity of your website and follow the terms of service of the search engine/s. The tactics should stay within the parameters of Google.

Some white hat SEO examples include:

1. You should offer high-quality content and services.
2. Your website should load fast.
3. Your website should be mobile-friendly.
4. You should use descriptive and keyword-rich meta tags.
5. You should ensure that your website is easy to navigate.
6. On the other hand, black hat SEO tactics are illegitimate, which includes purchasing links or using misleading cloaking techniques. Following black hat
7. SEO tactics is risky because as Google Algorithms evolve, they are less likely to work for your website.

Why is it important for you to focus on white hat SEO techniques?

It is important for businesses to engage only in white hat SEO techniques because failure to do so can result in Google and other search engines banning your site.

And, Google being the number one search engine, there is no way you can ignore it. Billions visit Google every day, and the prospect of finding new visitors organically cannot and should not be ignored if you want to do well on the online circuit.

Hence, if you want to get traffic on the most powerful search engine, you need to play the game according to their rules and policies. You cannot afford to get blacklisted on Google because it could mean a drastic drop in traffic for your website on the most commonly used search engine. You certainly don’t want to harm your business interests.

After all, you toil hard to develop your website and make a mark for yourself in the business world. And, following unethical practice/s can ruin your effort. You certainly don’t want to tread the path of destruction. Therefore, that is why it is important for you to follow the white hat SEO techniques.

You should, therefore, check out the details of Google-approved SEO techniques at Webmaster Guidelines. It is the go-to place to learn about Google white hat practices.

How to ensure that your SEO methods are strictly white hat

If you implement white hat SEO practices, it is the best way to create a legitimate, successful, and sustainable website and business.

So, what should you do to follow the white hat SEO techniques?

Some of the ways that can ensure your SEO methods are strictly white hat are:

1. You should always ensure that you offer high-quality content and services – It is not for nothing that content is considered the king. What you need to do is create high-quality content for your users, which meets their needs and solves their problems. Do thorough research for your keyword and always use relevant keywords for which you need to optimise your content. Focus on using the relevant keywords in your content, for example, how-to blogs/ articles and videos. Make sure that your content matches the intent of the keyword and that of your end user.
2. Make sure that you use descriptive and keyword-rich meta tags – It is important for website owners to understand that meta descriptions are extremely crucial. It is the meta descriptions through which the search engines and your users discover your content. Hence, it is vital for you to use descriptive and keyword-rich meta tags so that the search engines and users can pick up your content quickly.
3. You need to ensure that your site is easy to navigate – If your site is not easy to navigate, it is difficult to do well in organic search results. Hence, it is important for website owners to ensure that their site is easy to navigate. Your users should not have difficulty in reaching where they want to go.
4. You need to make your website mobile-friendly – Another white hat SEO technique is to make your website mobile-friendly. With the rise in smartphone usage, you need to make sure that your site is mobile-friendly. The user experience should be seamless on all the devices, namely the desktop, laptop, tablets, and smartphones. Google penalizes websites that are not mobile-friendly. Mobile unfriendly websites are known to take a hit in the SERPs.
5. Always focus on improving user experience – Providing a good user experience to your audience is extremely important. And, website owners should focus on delivering good user experience because Google and other search engines reward sites that offer an excellent user experience. What you need to do to improve the user experience is to determine your user’s intent and then develop a methodology for seamless navigation. Keep finding what is working for your audience and things that hamper their navigation so that you can offer good user experience to your audience.
6. Pay attention to local listing on Google – Mobile search and local search are interrelated, and you cannot ignore any of them. What you need to do is keep your Google My Business profile current, accurate, and up to date.
7. Also, focus on link building – Link building is important for the success of your website. What you need is the right kind of links – those that are relevant to your site. The best thing is to earn links. You need to pay attention to both internal as well as external links. Make sure that your external links are trustworthy and authoritative. Never fall for illegal means of getting links for your site because search engines including Google can penalize your site in that case.

If you are looking for a company that can help improve your website visibility and search rankings, you should get in touch with vStacks Software

Solutions now. We are a digital marketing company specializing in the field of SEO, and we can help you climb the search engine rankings.

If you have a website on the internet, you must be aware that it is crucial to rank high on Google. Those websites that fail to make it to the top page are unable to get the desired traffic. And, if you don’t get the requisite traffic, you should not expect to do well in the online circuit.

So, what should you do to rank well on search engines like Google? You need to get on top of the SEO game to rank well on search engines like Google.

To do well on the internet, you need to play the SEO game the right way. SEO is a field where you need to be patient, persistent, and ethical. If you use unethical methods to climb the search engine ladder (read Google), then your website can be penalized.

And, the use of unethical means to climb the search engine ladder is known as Black hat SEO.

Often, website owners don’t even know that their website is suffering from Black hat SEO. But in case your website follows unethical ways, it is likely to get penalized.

That is why it is vital to know a few things about Black hat SEO.

What is Black Hat SEO?

According to Webopedia, “in search engine optimization (SEO) terminology, black hat SEO refers to the use of aggressive SEO strategies, techniques, and tactics that focus on search engines and not a human audience, and usually does not obey search engines guidelines.”

Essentially, there are two types of search engine optimization – White hat and Black hat SEO. Websites that follow White hat SEO use legitimate methods to rank for keywords that are pertinent to its content. On the contrary, Black hat SEO content is specifically designed for search engines and not for humans. It is designed to mislead both the readers as well as the algorithms.

Why should you avoid the stigma of Black hat SEO?

It is vital for businesses to understand that it does not pay in the long-term to deceptively optimize your website. That is why you should avoid the stigma of Black hat SEO. Some of the main reasons why you should steer clear of Black hat SEO are:

It creates an awful user experience. Imagine, clicking on a website where the content does not match the headline you read on Google. It is not just unethical, but it also does not pay you well in the long run.

Another reason why you need to avoid Black hat SEO is that search engines will downgrade the ranking of your website, which ultimately will reduce your traffic. Earlier, it was fine to use unethical methods to promote your website, but it is no more the case now. But because search engines have become smarter these days, you stand to lose more than gain anything if you follow unethical means to promote your website.

Finally, Black hat SEO not just lowers your ranking, but it can also cause a site to disappear completely.

Black hat SEO tactics which you need to avoid

It is important for you to keep both the search engines as well as the users in good humor. To do this, you need to follow ethical ways of promoting your website, which means you need to avoid the use of Black hat SEO. Avoid these Black hat SEO tactics:

Avoid low-quality content – It is important for websites to have a lot of high-quality content because this is what search engines prefer. And, since it is difficult to generate high-quality content continuously for some, black hat marketers try to fill the gap by publishing low-quality content. Hence, it is always advisable to generate content that is relevant and valuable for the readers, and this is what search engines prefer.

Avoid spamming blog comments – To gain links back to your site, if you start commenting on scores of blog posts with a link back to your site, it is a Black hat tactic which is wrong and needs to be avoided.

Avoid keyword stuffing and duplicate content – When you try to indiscriminately use the keyword in your content to rank your page on the search engine for the target term, then it is called keyword stuffing. It is a Black hat tactic, which goes against the search engine guidelines. Hence, you need to avoid it.

When you publish the same content on several pages of a website to attract search engines, it is duplicating the content. It is again a wrong practice which you need to avoid.

Don’t abuse structured data – Schema markup or structured data is added to a webpage to inform search engines about the rich information which needs to be displayed on the search results page. But when you try to manipulate structured data to get the search engines to put out false information in search results, it is a Black hat tactic which should be avoided.

Avoid cloaking – When you try to trick search engines into ranking your content for a particular search term that is not relevant to the context of the webpage, it is called cloaking. In the case of cloaking, you show one piece of content to your users and a different piece of content to search engines. It is again a Black hat SEO practice which needs to be avoided.

Don’t buy backlinks – If a lot of high-quality sites link to your site, it can boost your search engine rankings. But it only helps if it happens organically. If you pay high-quality websites to link to your site, it is a Black hat SEO practice, which is unethical and wrong. You, therefore, need to avoid it because it can hamper the progress of your website on the SERP.

Avoid using misleading redirects – False redirects are used to mislead the audience as well as search engines. It is a Black hat SEO tactic which should be avoided. A redirect link is used to take the users and search engines to different pages. Or, when a high-quality page is redirected to a low-quality page to boost its ranking.

Don’t falsely report your competitor’s site – If you falsely report that your competitor is indulging in Black hat SEO tactics, then it is an unethical practice for which your site can be penalized. Hence, you need to avoid it.

Avoid using link farms, and private blog networks – Private blog networks and link farms are two Black hat tactics that are used to build links inorganically and climb the search engine rankings quickly. If you use or pay to use a network of websites that are created only to link to other sites for ranking purposes, then it is an unethical way for which you can be penalized. Hence, it should be avoided.

If you want a robust SEO strategy for your website, you can get in touch with vStacks Software Solutions now. We are a digital marketing company specializing in the field of SEO, and we know what it takes to improve your rankings on Google.

If you have an online presence, it is highly unlikely that you don’t know a thing or two about search engine optimization or SEO. Having a website alone on the internet cannot guarantee you all the success. Unless your website ranks well on SERP, it is difficult to climb the success ladder in the online space. To rank well on the search engine results page or SERP, you have to work smartly and diligently on SEO. Yes, it is SEO that makes it possible for websites to break into the top search results page. Hence, if you want to rank high on the search engine results page, you need to have a robust SEO strategy.

SEO has a lot of aspects – on-page SEO and off-page SEO. Some of the SEO activities include content creation, meta title and meta description, keyword, link building, social media, and online directories.

If you are a website owner, you need to work hard on all these aspects. But one thing that you need to focus on more is the keyword research. Many website owners make some common keyword research mistakes, which costs them their ranking.

Here are some keyword research mistakes you need to avoid if you want to climb the search engine ladder.

But before getting to the mistakes let us take you through the importance of keyword research in the game of SEO.

What are keywords and why are they so important?

According to Moz, “Keywords are ideas and topics that define what your content is about. In terms of SEO, they’re the words and phrases that searchers enter into search engines, also called “search queries.” If you boil everything on your page — all the images, video, copy, etc. — down to simple words and phrases, those are your primary keywords”.

The keyword on your page should be relevant so that people who are searching the net can get to your content among the search results quickly.

SEO keywords could be singular words or complex phrases that are used in website copy to attract relevant and organic search traffic.

Why are keywords so important?

Keywords are important because these are what people use to search the content on the internet. And, if your visitor’s keywords match those that you have used in your content, then they reach your site conveniently. When it comes to ranking on search engines, the keywords you choose for your content is what drives organic traffic to your site. For example, if you have a ‘golf shop’, you would like to rank for ‘new clubs’, but if you do not choose your keywords properly, you might attract traffic for something else.

Keywords not only pertain to your audience, but they are also about your content because you can describe your offerings in a different way than how some of your visitors search for it. In case you want your content to rank well organically on search engines, you need to understand the psyche of your visitors which means you should know the language they use and the type of content they want. You can speak to your customers, visit forums and community groups, or do keyword research on your own with a tool such as Keyword Explorer to find out the relevant keywords for your offering.

So, what is keyword research?

Keyword research is a vital SEO task that helps you identify those words and phrases that are popular among the people which they use to search for the content they want. Keyword research gives you a sense of how high the demand is for a particular keyword and how difficult it would be to compete for them in the organic search results which provide you the insight into your search optimization efforts.

7 top keyword research mistakes you need to avoid

Many people make several common mistakes when researching the keywords. Here is how you can avoid these common mistakes and formulate a successful keyword research strategy.

• Not doing your keyword research properly – Keyword research is a daunting, time-intensive, and exhaustive process. Don’t just go by your gut feel; you need to know what your audience is looking for and that is what you need to provide. So, if you are making this mistake of going by your gut feeling, you need to change your strategy and follow the proper process of keyword research to get the desired results. Try to find out the language of your audience, the terms they use, and the words they are fond of using.
  You should have in place an extensive list of keywords that you want your website to rank, and this should form your keyword research. Update your keyword research list regularly so that you can cater to your new audience.
• Don’t aim for unrealistic keywords – Realistic keywords are key to successful keyword research. Not all niches are the same, some of them are very competitive, and it is hard to rank high in competitive areas if you have just started your operations. At the start, you should not aim for the competitive head keywords. Try instead to focus on long-tail keywords because they are easier to rank, and you have a better chance of conversions.

  But if you are an old warhorse, and you rank successfully for longer-tail keywords, then you should try to rank for more head terms. Include competitive keywords as your long-term keyword research strategy.
  

• Don’t use irrelevant keywords – You should use those keywords which are used by your customers. What you need to do is use the language of your audience. For example, if you are selling dresses for gala events, and you refer them as gala dresses, then you are not hitting your audience the right way because they mostly search for keywords like evening dress or gown.

  that is why you need to use appropriate keywords and never use irrelevant keywords.

•  Not knowing whether to use singular or plural – You need to know whether you should use singular or plural form of a particular keyword to target your audience. You should know what your target audience is searching for and accordingly use the proper keywords. For example, you need to know whether people search for a holiday home or holiday homes. Or, whether you should use evening gown or evening gowns to rank higher on the search engine. You should check out Google Trends to find out whether you should use singular or plural.

  You also need to know the intent of your audience. People searching for singular keywords are generally looking for information, whereas people searching for the plural version are usually interested in either comparing the product or buying it.

  Hence, it is important that you don’t make the mistake of using one for the other. Think carefully before using the keyword.

• Don’t aim for those keywords that don’t bring in traffic – It is always a great way to start your keyword strategy with long-tail keywords. Though these words attract less traffic, still you have a better chance of converting them into buyers when they visit your site. Those who use specific terms as search queries for which you are writing about are generally a good match for your business. But, one thing that you need to remember is that if your keyword is too specific and is not generating traffic for your site, then it will not help your SEO efforts.

  Hence, you need to ensure that your long-tail keywords should at least attract some traffic.

• Not evaluating your results – It is always advisable to check how you are faring on your strategy. Hence, if you target to rank for some terms, you need to evaluate how you are performing on those terms. It is important for you to find out whether people are getting to your site or not. Make sure that you regularly Google your main keywords to find out whether your keyword strategy is working or not. But you should know that the search results could be biased because Google offers personalized search. Hence, you can use a private browser session to check the results.

  If you don’t evaluate, you will never come to know whether you should aim for more competitive keywords or you need to focus on long-tail keywords.

• Only focusing on one keyword in every post – You should aim to rank for more than one search term if you write an average blog post. For example, there can easily be two keyword terms for this blog post namely keyword research mistakes and successful keyword research strategy. Make sure to optimize your post for more than one keyword.

As mentioned earlier, keyword research is a time-intensive process. What you need to do is invest some of your time to find out the terms you want to rank for so that you can have a successful keyword research strategy.

If you want to do keyword research the right way or in case you are looking for a smart and successful keyword research strategy, you can get in touch with vStacks Software Solutions now. We are a Dubai based digital marketing company specializing in SEO, and we can help you climb the search engine ladder.

Off-page SEO or off-site SEO are the techniques used to improve your search engine results page ranking or SERP outside of your website. If you think off-page SEO is just about link building, then you are wrong. Minus the website design, off-page SEO activities are promotional methods that are used to improve your website’s search engine rankings.

If you have a website on the internet, you would certainly like it to rank high on the search engine results page. But there are only a few websites that can rank on the first page of the search results.

So, what should you do to ensure that your website climbs the search engine rankings and lands in the top search results?

In case you want your website to rank high on the search results, you need to make sure that you have a smart SEO strategy in place. But don’t forget that you cannot have a sound SEO strategy without factoring in off-page SEO.

On-page SEO

On-page SEO refers to the measures that are taken directly within the website to improve its search engine rankings. Some of the important on-page SEO tips are:

• You need to optimise titles and descriptions.
• You need to have proper URL structures.
• Your website should have user-friendly navigation.
• You also need to optimise internal links.
• You need to optimise the images and format the text.
• You need to have user-friendly 404 pages.
• Your website should be mobile-friendly.
• Your website should have a fast load speed.
• You need to have top quality and fresh content.

Off-page SEO

Off-page SEO, unlike on-page SEO, refers to the activity undertaken outside of your website to improve your website’s search engine rankings. Off-page SEO mainly revolves around these three activities:

• Link building
• Social media marketing
• Social bookmarking
• But before getting into these, let us try to find out the importance and benefits of off-page SEO.

Why is off-page SEO important?

For long the search engines have been trying hard to find out a way of throwing up the best results for the searcher. And, to get the best results, the search engines take into account the on-site SEO factors, a few other quality aspects, and off-page SEO. And, off-page SEO activities give the search engines a fair idea of how your website is perceived by others on the web.

A high-quality and useful website would have links (references) from other websites. Also, such websites are likely to be mentioned more by others on social media. And, these websites would be bookmarked and shared more among communities.

Benefits of off-page SEO

If you have a successful off-page SEO strategy in place, it has several benefits to offer to the website owners. And, some of these are:

It improves your website’s rankings – a successful off-page SEO strategy can improve your website ranking on the search engine results page.

It increases your traffic – A successful off-page SEO strategy can also increase the number of people visiting your website. As your rankings improve, your traffic is bound to increase.

It also increases your website’s PageRank – It is an algorithm which is used by Google Search to rank web pages on its search engine results. A successful off-page strategy can increase your page rank.

It gives your website more exposure – A successful off-page SEO ensures higher ranking which means more exposure for your website because it then gets more links, visits, and social media mentions/ shares.

Let us now look at link building, social media marketing, and social bookmarking.

Link building

Link building forms the core of off-page SEO activity. It is by far the most popular and effective off-page SEO method. When you build external links to your website, you get positive votes which help you climb the search engine rankings.

The more good quality links your website gets, the more search engines learn that your website contains relevant information which boosts your search engine rankings.

As mentioned earlier, link building is at the heart of off-page SEO. Depending on how you earn the link, they are categorized into three main types – natural links, manually built links, and self-created links.

Natural links – These are links when other website owners or bloggers link to your content (could be in the form of blogs, videos, images, products, etc.) because they find it useful and relevant for their readers.

Manual link building – You get these links through deliberate link-building activities. A manual link building exercise is a process of actively trying to increase links to a website. You get these links by asking customers to link to your website or requesting influencers to share your content.

Self-created link building – These are links that are created by adding a backlink in an online directory, blog comment signature, a press release with optimised anchor text, or forum. A few self-created link building strategies meander towards black hat SEO which search engines don’t approve of; hence you should tread cautiously.

Irrespective of how you get the links, those links that pass on maximum link juice (or link equity) to your website generally work well for your SEO strategy. And, some of the things that positively contribute to the link juice passage are:

• The popularity of the site that you are linking to makes a big difference.
• How relevant the linking site’s topic is to your site also makes a difference.
• How the anchor text is used on the linking site also makes a big difference.
• Another thing that matters is the freshness of the link.
• The reliability or trustworthiness of the site that you are getting the link from also makes a difference.
• The number of other links that are present on the linking site also makes a difference.
• Another thing that makes a difference is the authority of the linking domain and page.

Social media

Social media is also a form of link building, and it is a part of the off-page SEO. What you need to understand is that almost all of the links that you get from social media sites are nofollow links, but it is not that they don’t have any value. Social media is gaining traction, and if done in the right manner, it can improve your rankings on the search engine results page.

Social bookmarking

Despite social bookmarking losing some ground of late, it is still an effective way to increase the number of visitors to your website. You can promote your content on websites like reddit.com, scoop.it, and stumbleupon.com, etc.

To get the desired results you need to work on both – off-page SEO as well as on-page SEO. Both have their relevance.

If off-page SEO activity is bothering you, you can get in touch with vStacks Software Solutions now. We will make sure that you have a smart off-page SEO strategy in place so that your website can rank high on the search results. You can also contact us for a complete SEO strategy.

It is difficult these days to climb the success ladder without a website. Businesses now understand the importance of having a robust online presence. But a website alone cannot guarantee you success. To do well on the internet circuit, you need to make sure that you rank high on the search engines. Talking of search engines, one search engine that you cannot ignore is Google. Google is the leader in the search market.

According to Search Engine Watch, Google has 72.48% of the world’s search market, which makes it the undisputed king in the search market. Whether it is a paid campaign or organic reach, you cannot do well as a marketer if you ignore Google.

If your website is not ranking high on Google search results, then you are missing big time on opportunities. Studies show that the first page of Google gets most of the web traffic, and the subsequent pages get very little traffic. It is, therefore, important for businesses to try and reach the first page of Google so that they can do well on the online arena.

So, what is it that you need to do to improve your website visibility on Google search results?

Google algorithms keep changing at regular intervals. Hence, if you want your website to rank on the first page of the Google search results, you need to be creative, persistent, and you should know how to utilise the resources smartly.

Here is what you should do to improve your website visibility on Google search results.

Though it might seem difficult initially to climb the search engine ranking and reach the top, if you work diligently, you can realise your goal sooner rather than later. Here is what you should do if you want to improve your website visibility on Google search results:

Try to understand the Google ranking algorithm – As mentioned earlier, the Google algorithm keeps changing at regular intervals. According to Moz, there are around 500 – 600 changes every year. You do get to know some of the major changes which Google makes in its algorithms, but the exact working is still in the realm of speculation by the industry professionals. Some of the major Google updates that it has announced in the recent past are the mobile-friendly update, Pigeon, Hummingbird, and Penguin.

You can check out Moz’s Google Algorithm Change History which organises updates in chronological order. Google Webmaster Central and The Webmaster are the other two places you should check out for the updates.

Make sure that your website is mobile-friendly – Estimates suggest that 60% of searches take place on mobile devices, and it is a growing trend. It is not surprising then that in the US more searches take place on mobile devices than on desktops. Though some of Google’s algorithms remain in the realm of speculation, Google is pretty clear about its mobile policy. If your site is not mobile-friendly, it cannot rank high in the Google search results.

You can check your site’s mobile-friendly status on Google’s Mobile-Friendly checker. In case your site is not mobile-friendly, then make sure that you get a responsive web design ASAP so that you can rank higher on the Google search results.

There is also a connection between mobile and local SEO search results. Google is very systematic when it comes to mobile and local search because it wants to connect consumers to brands without any hassle. Hence, you need to ensure that your Google My Business profile is current and that it offers the complete information.

Check out your present search ranking – If you want to improve your search ranking, you need to know where you stand currently. There are a lot many resources and tools available on the internet to check this out.

You can use SERPs.com to find out your website’s keyword rank. If you are using specific keywords in your page content, you can use SERPs.com to find out your rank. You can type in your keyword along with your site URL. There are various other options available as well like viewing at Yahoo results, selecting the device type like mobile or desktop, and checking out on local rankings by putting in your zip or city code.

You will get the following things on the results page – your site ranking for that particular term on search engines, your first website page that throws up in search results for that particular keyword, your average searches on a monthly basis, and the average cost per click for the keyword.

Find out your site speed as this is a major ranking factor for Google. You should not expect a high search position if your site speed is slow. Slow site speed also adversely affects your conversions and sales. Google is harsh on sites that have slow load speeds. You can run your site speed test to find the load speed of your website. Again, there are a lot of resources available on the internet that can help you out in checking the load speed of your website. You can check it out on Google PageSpeed Insights, WebPageTest, or Rigor.

You need to make sure that the load speed of your website is less than two seconds and for mobile devices, it should be less than one second.

You also need to find the health of your site. Do you think there is a sudden drop in your organic traffic? Or, is the thought troubling you that Google might have banned your site? Again, the internet offers you the resources that can check out details on five major categories – general site problems, mail server, blacklist, DNS, and web server. You can try MxToolBox Domain Health Report to check out the details. Click the boxes for each category to find out the errors in your website. If there are errors and problems, you can resolve it one by one.

You can also find out if you have been penalised by one of the major algorithm updates. You can try FE International’s Website Penalty Indicator tool.

One of the other factors that affect the site health is the domain age. In a study by SerpIQ, it was concluded that domain age does contribute to site ranking. What you need is a bit of patience because your search engine ranking should increase as your domain ages.

Keep a tab on all the right metrics – Keeping a tab on all the right metrics is yet another factor that affects your ranking. It gives you an idea what you need to improve on. Some of the vital metrics to check are:

Check out the organic traffic. You need to know the number of visitors that come to your site via Google. Organic search is the highest source of revenue for most of the verticals barring the media and the entertainment industry. In these verticals (media and entertainment), email, display, and referrals have a slight edge. You can go to your Google Analytics account to find out (check the acquisition channels report) the number of visitors coming to your site via Google.

Also, check out organic traffic conversions. It is important to keep a tab on the keywords that generate maximum traffic for your website. You can use SERP Scan to find out the keywords that convert organically for your website. When you do a SERP Scan, you get a 12-month report of the keywords that have generated organic traffic for your site.

Keep a tab on keyword ranking for commercial keywords. It is vital here to note the difference between informational keywords and commercial keywords. Informational keywords can generate organic traffic for your site, but it is difficult to convert them into buyers. Hence, the need to pay attention to commercial keywords. Generally, visitors for informational keywords are not in the mode to buy. For example, “home remedies to clear acne” is an informational keyword and “best acne products” is a commercial keyword. The bottom line is that commercial keywords are more likely to convert.

You can set up an SEO dashboard in Google Analytics so that you can keep track of all these vital metrics.

Work on your backlinks, and find out your present penalties and fix it – You should not expect your site to rank higher if it is not healthy. Link building has changed over time. Bad links will hurt your site irrespective of on-page SEO which also results in a penalty. It is therefore vital that you generate your links in the right manner. Links should not just appear to be natural; they need to be natural. What you need to do is identify unhealthy links and get rid of them.

The first thing you need to do is analyse your inbound links. Again, you have a lot many tools that will help you analyse the links. For example, you can use SEOprofiler or Majestic to analyse the links. The result will throw up some interesting facts about your backlinks:

• Unique active backlinks – The result will tell you the number of links that affect your Google ranking directly or indirectly.
• Nofollow links – You need a combination of dofollow links and nofollow links. Dofollow links are those that pass ranking value and nofollow links are that don’t pass ranking value.
• Industry – The analysis gives an insight into which industry you belong to, and it helps you identify the relevant links that improve your backlink profile.
• Link influence score – You can get to know how your links are influencing your search engine ranking.
• Anchor text – It is the text that turns into your link and points to your page. It is recommended that you diversify your anchor text.

You also need to identify and get rid of the harmful or unnatural links. You can use Monitor Backlinks or Linkquidator to identify the links. You can get rid of the harmful links in two ways. You can get in touch with the site owner from where the link is coming from and request them to manually remove the link or ask them to add a nofollow tag. Or, you can use Google’s Disavow tool to remove the unhealthy and unnatural links successfully. But, doing this authorises Google to stop passing on the value from these links to your page.

Improve your on-page SEO with keyword research – Keyword research is an integral part of an inbound marketing strategy. Find out the keywords your audience uses to reach your site. Use your Google account and visit Google Keyword Planner. Next, you need to click “search for new keyword and ad group ideas” on the dashboard. Now, put in your main keyword and click on the “keywords” tab. A table gets displayed that will show your keywords and the search volume that it generates over a month.

Keyword research helps you to understand your target audience in a better way. You get to know what they (your target audience) want and how you need to present it to them. It is always helpful if you know your target audience well. And, when you give them the content that is relevant to them, it helps you climb your ranking. You can use Alexa to assess your audience demographics. With the help of keyword research, you can easily find out the intent of your buyers which helps you address conversion issues.

If you want to improve your Google rankings, you should always use a mix of informational and commercial keywords in your page content. You can use commercial keywords to target your buyers and use informational keywords to build a strong rapport with your audience who are yet to become your buyers.

Another thing which you should not ignore while researching keywords is long-tail keywords. Long-tail keywords not just increase your traffic, but it also improves your Google rankings.

Also, if your competitors are ahead of you on the Google search results, then you need to check out the reason. And, it will not harm you in any way to copy their strategies and surge ahead on the Google rankings. You can use Google Keyword Planner because it gives you on the spot estimate of competitors’ keyword targets.

You can use keyword analysis to improve your content. The basis of keyword analysis is to know which are the right keywords to target. Keyword analysis is the starting point of the search marketing campaigns. When you know what qualified visitors type in to search your website, you can customise your landing pages to increase your conversions.

Work on on-page SEO to improve your Google ranking – You should do some meaningful on-page SEO changes to climb the search engine rankings. What you need to do is optimise your title tags. You need to ensure that all your title tags are unique, descriptive, and it should cater to your targeted keywords. Try not to repeat the keywords and title tags over and over again. When it comes to title tags, avoid using all caps and use pipes and dashes between terms to maximise its effect. Also, you should not overuse your keywords. Title tags that are relevant, contextual, and natural are valued more by Google. It is not recommended to use default title tags like “Home” or “Product Page” as these are viewed suspiciously by Google, and it is also not too convincing from your user’s perspective.

Though meta descriptions do not have any significant impact on your Google ranking, still they help in determining your search snippet and adds uniqueness which in turn can influence your click-through rate.

You should also use structured data markup or schema markup. It (schema markup) helps Google to understand your website in a better way, and it also drives additional traffic to your site. You can use Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper to implement schema markup on your website.

You can also build a search engine sitemap. It helps Google to know about the organisation of the content of your website.

Create good content by using your keywords – It has long been known that your content should be of high-quality, useful, and valuable to your visitors, and it ought to target a particular set of people. You should write resourceful, descriptive, and detailed content to improve your search engine rankings on Google by optimising informational keywords add descriptive meta description and title tags. With this process, you can attract many fans who share your content on the social media platforms which ensures that you get relevant and authoritative links. So, how can you write resourceful and detailed content? Here is how you should do it:

• Back up your articles with accurate data to increase your traffic and improve your search engine rankings.
• Storytelling is another way of captivating your audience which also increases your conversion rates.
• You can also start your content with something that has a unique flavour which resonates well with your target audience.
• You also need to share your experience, be it good or bad.
• You also need to ensure that you add a call to action or CTA at the end of your content.
• Also, make sure that your headline is catchy, attractive, and sharable. Shareable headlines are not only shared, but they are more likely to be clicked.
• You should also try to add a number to your headline.
• You can also invoke curiosity, create a multimedia experience for your readers, and get rid of duplicate content to increase your ranking on Google.
• Always ensure that you build the links in the right way – You should focus on building your links in the right manner. You should use anchor text linking, which are links in between your text.
• You should also use image links in your content.
• Also, you can use editorial links in your content.
• You also need to concentrate on scale link building. You can use link diversity to generate Google-friendly links and improve your rankings.

If you want to do well in the game of search results, you need to make sure that you work on all these factors. However, if you think you need help at any stage, you should get in touch with vStacks Software Solutions now. Our dedicated team of experts knows how to take your website up the search engine ladder.

vStacks Software Solutions has been working with clients in almost all the verticals, and we have delivered what we had promised, and we can surely do the same for your website.

The online revolution has opened up a lot of opportunities for businesses across the world. Now with a website in place, you can add wings to your existing business or start and make it big only on the internet. But with more than a billion websites on the internet, the competition is stiff, and not everyone is doing brisk business. To succeed in the online arena, you need to have in place a smart online strategy for your website. And, one factor that will determine whether you will succeed or not in this competitive environment is the kind of content you create for your website. After all, it is not for nothing that content is considered the king.

With competition on the rise, you cannot rank higher on the search engines if you don’t have a flawless content marketing strategy in place. So, if you want to avoid committing common content marketing mistakes, then this piece is for you. Read on to find out how you can avoid making common content marketing mistakes.
But before getting into the content marketing mistakes, let us try to understand what is content marketing.

What is content marketing?

Content marketing is a method that focuses on generating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract and retain a specific audience which helps drive profitable customer action.

Customers these days have become smarter and intelligent. Slowly and gradually, traditional forms of marketing are becoming less and less effective. Therefore, to remain relevant these days, you need to move on to methods that are more effective and productive. And, content marketing is one of the most effective ways of delivering your message to your target audience.

In this form of marketing, you don’t need to promote your products directly. What you do is offer relevant and useful content to your customers and prospects which help them solve their problems.

It is for this reason that experts believe that this form of marketing is so effective. Therefore, what you need to do as a marketer is to make sure that your content marketing strategy is current and without any flaws.

7 content marketing mistakes you need to avoid

Thanks to the technological advancements and the growth of social media, a lot has changed over the years in the content marketing industry. Whether you are a small business house or a big conglomerate, content marketing is the best way of reaching your target audience. Content marketing is not just effective, but it is affordable as well.

But you cannot get good results if your content marketing strategy is flawed. So, if you want to increase user engagement, then you need to make sure that you avoid making common content marketing mistakes.

Here are seven content marketing mistakes you need to avoid:

1. Not having a long-term and definite plan – It is important for every business to have a long-term strategy in place for the success of the organisation. And, when you have a long-term strategy for everything, there is no reason why you should not have one for your content marketing. But on many occasions, it is seen that businesses don’t have a concrete content marketing plan in place. It is a flawed strategy to plan just a few blogs and pages for your website.
You need to have a robust content marketing plan in place which should be on a piece of paper. You need to ensure that your content adds value to your customers. You also need to make sure that you track the responses of your customers so that you can make necessary changes to your content to increase user engagement.

2. Doing inadequate research on the type of content your audience wants – If you don’t know what your audience wants, you are in for trouble. And, when you don’t do adequate research on the kind of content your audience wants, then it is a problem because consumers these days are not just smart, they are also very intelligent. You need to know the pulse of your audience. You should know what your readers would like to read about your business. You need to ensure that your content relates to the business you do.
The best way to find out what your customers like is to do thorough research on what your audience wants. What you should do is start thinking from the consumers perspective and don’t just develop content that you like. For instance, if you specialise in SEO, and you start writing too much on PPC, then it not going to bring in the desired results.
It is wrong to think that irrespective of the kind of content you create, your traffic would keep on increasing. It always pays to find out the interest of your customers first. And, to know more about your customers, you can visit Facebook’s Ads Manager, and then click on Audience Insights. Select the audience type, and then go to the interest section to decipher your customers likes and dislikes.
It becomes easier for businesses to develop quality content when they know about the interests of their customers.

3. .Misquoting facts and figures – If you start misquoting facts and figures in your content, then it is a serious issue. It is difficult to take people for a ride in today’s times, especially when there is no dearth of information. You should always cross-check your facts and figures before publishing your content. Always pick up the facts and figures from reputed sites.
One thing that is difficult to earn is trust. And, once people lose faith in you, then it is very difficult to bring them back. So, if you want to succeed in your content marketing strategy, then you should never misquote facts and figures.

4. Don’t run after quantity, instead focus on quality – Another mistake people tend to make is trying to run after quantity over quality. If you keep on creating content that is not relevant to your audience, it will not work well for your content marketing strategy. Backing up your content with weak references also does not work well for your content marketing strategy. Also, restating what has already been stated in a blog before doesn’t work well for your content marketing strategy.
Hence, make sure that you concentrate on quality instead of quantity. And, one of the best ways of creating quality content is to try and learn more about the behaviour of your audience. You get better results when your readers like and share your content.
Therefore, don’t just run after filling up the pages. Make sure that you concentrate on developing high-quality content for your audience.

5. Not producing content that is evergreen – Content that remains relevant for a long time is referred to as the evergreen content. Try and write content on topics that you think will remain relevant to your readers and drive traffic to your site for years. For example, you can write something on SEO or social media which are evergreen topics.
Don’t keep writing on the trending topics alone, make sure that you write something on topics that are evergreen as well. But ensure that you comprehensively cover the evergreen topics.

6. Using content in only one form – If you think that producing content only in the textual form and adding one image to it makes your content great, then you are wrong. People these days want more than just text and one image. Therefore, make sure that you add videos and infographics to your content wherever you can to make it more engaging.

The video is the new in-thing on the internet. Customers tend to engage more with content that is in the form of video and infographics. The reason why videos and infographics appeal more to the readers is that our brain processes images and visuals faster than content that is in textual form.

7. Lacking professionalism – It is important that you write your content professionally. It reflects poorly on your business if there are grammatical errors and spelling mistakes in your content. You need to ensure that your content has no grammatical errors, it is credible, engaging, relevant, and interesting. You should, therefore, consider hiring professionals to write your content.

Therefore, if you want to climb the success ladder in the online arena, you should ensure that you don’t make these common content marketing mistakes.

Alternatively, to improve your content marketing strategy, you can get in touch with vStacks Software Solutions now.

vStacks Software Solutions is a digital marketing services company, and we are a one-stop shop for all your online marketing, hosting, and development needs.