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Last updated on April 18th, 2024 at 10:44 am
Your website is your most important marketing tool, and it should be given the attention it deserves. But with so much going on in your business, it’s easy to get distracted by other things and forget that a high-ranking search engine result page (SERP) isn’t just an arbitrary goal. It’s also the destination where people go when they’re ready to buy something. If they can’t find what they’re looking for quickly and easily on your site, it won’t matter how good you are at converting visitors into customers—they’ll go somewhere else instead.
To avoid this problem, we’re going to discuss 5 SEO mistakes you were probably making all along and how to fix them.
Keyword stuffing
Keyword stuffing is a common mistake that many people make. This is when you overuse your keyword in a page, post, paragraph, or sentence.
To correct this error:
- Don’t use the same keyword too many times in a page, post or paragraph
- Don’t use too many variations of the keyword in post or page
Keywords should be used naturally and not unnaturally. If you find that your website has been stuffed with keywords and it looks unnatural, then consider hiring someone to help fix this issue for you.
Ignoring Mobile Experience
Mobile is a huge part of the internet, and ignoring this is a surefire way to lose your rankings. Mobile-friendly websites are a key factor in SEO because Google prioritizes mobile results for users searching through mobile browsers. Mobile users also tend to have lower average engagement times than desktop users, so having an optimized experience for them will help you keep their attention longer and get more conversions from every visit.
Forgetting metadata
Metadata is the information about your content that helps search engines understand what it’s about. It includes things like the title, description, and keywords for each page.
It’s important because it helps search engines show your website in more relevant results and the best place to put metadata is within the HTML of a webpage (rather than on a separate meta tag).
In order to use meta tags effectively:
- Make sure you have at least one paragraph description per page that describes what that particular page contains or provides value to searchers looking for content similar to yours. This should be between 150-250 words long but no longer than 300 words; anything more than this won’t be read by bots or people so don’t waste time!
- Include at least five keyword phrases that describe what your site offers or sells so people can find you when they search using those terms (e.g., “buy cheap handbags online”). Don’t overdo it though because Google doesn’t like spammy sites – keep them in natural language with no special characters like parentheses or brackets around them either!
- Make sure your page meta titles and descriptions contain the keywords you want to rank for.
Duplicate content
Duplicate content is a big SEO mistake that can be caused by copying and pasting text from another website, duplicating your own content, or simply having multiple versions of the same product description. This can lead to your site being penalized for duplicate content which will decrease its rankings in search results.
To identify whether your site contains duplicate content, you can check it with an SEO tool such as Copyscape.
To fix this problem, remove any duplicated content from your site and make sure that you aren’t using the same words or phrases repeatedly.
Poor internal linking
Internal linking is a great way to link to other relevant content within your website. An internal link is when you add a hyperlink to a word or phrase which links to another page on your website. A poor example of internal linking is linking to pages or posts that have nothing to do with the content on the page. For example, if the post is “Easy Chicken Pie Recipe” and there are links that go to a page about making pasta sheets, that’s unrelated, irrelevant linking. Don’t do that.
You should utilize internal linking to link to products and services advertised on your site that are related to the content. We have done a few internal links right here in this blog post!
Conclusion
So there you have it, five common SEO mistakes that can be easily fixed. If you avoid these mistakes, your website will be more likely to do well in SERPS.
Avoid spammy keyword stuffing. Trust us, people can tell if a keyword has been forced into a post or page too many times. The wording doesn’t sound natural, and makes you look like a try-hard. Make sure your website is mobile friendly, and mobile users have a good experience.
Check the meta tags for each page and optimize them with target keywords. Remember to add sensible internal links to your content, and clean up any duplicate content.
All this can be quite overwhelming if you don’t have experience. Contact us and we’ll help you kick start your SEO the right way!