In this digital age, having a visible online presence is essential for any business to grow and achieve the long-term success it strives for. Since the arrival of search engine optimization (SEO) in the late ‘90s businesses everywhere have been able to boost their visibility on search engines, allowing them to increase their web traffic, and ultimately, improve their revenues.
Businesses that overlook this powerful digital marketing strategy risk being overlooked by potential customers and losing out to their competition. With 96.55% of the pages on the internet receiving zero-click searches from Google, SEO stands out as an invaluable and necessary strategy for businesses looking to reach wider audiences and drive organic traffic to their website.
While many businesses utilize SEO strategies as part of their marketing efforts, some continue to make mistakes that hinder their progress. In this article, we will outline some common SEO pitfalls and how to avoid them to ensure optimal success in this area.
Keyword Mistakes
Keywords are a fundamental component of SEO as without them a business is unlikely to rank highly and will fail to reach its target audience. Another mistake businesses make besides neglecting to use keywords is using the wrong ones. Many web pages are optimized for generic keywords which are highly competitive and can lead to low website traffic.
Keyword stuffing should also be avoided. This tactic is often used by businesses to manipulate their position in search engine results pages (SERPs) through the excessive use of keywords. However, search engines can penalize websites that employ these tactics by lowering their search engine rankings.
To avoid these pitfalls, businesses should be more specific and use keywords that are relevant to their products, services and target audience. These should be incorporated naturally into their web content, including URLs, meta tags and header tags to optimize visibility on SERPs.
Neglecting Local SEO
Local SEO is essential for businesses that serve a specific geographical location and rely on local custom. By neglecting this step these businesses risk losing the opportunity to attract the customers they wish to connect with.
To correct this mistake, businesses should incorporate local keywords and content that resonates with local audiences. In addition, they should make it easy for their customers to find them by creating local landing pages containing their location information and engaging content about their local store. By doing so businesses can optimize their online presence for local searches.
Ignoring Mobile SEO
Many businesses focus their efforts on optimizing their web pages for desktop users and overlook the importance of mobile optimization. With 58% of searches conducted on mobile devices, globally and 57% of all local searches made on mobile devices and tablets businesses cannot afford to ignore the importance of mobile SEO.
Alongside, the rise of mobile usage for conducting searches businesses also need to consider Google’s mobile-first indexing which prioritizes mobile versions of web content for indexing and ranking over their desktop counterparts.
Businesses can test the user-friendliness of their mobile web pages using Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test. This free tool can review a mobile webpage for its usability and suggest ways to make it more responsive and optimized for mobile devices. To ensure a positive user experience, businesses can hire the services of an experienced SEO Agency to ultimately assist them in driving more traffic to their site.
Overlooking Speed
The faster a website is to load the better. Not only does webpage loading speed affect user experience but it is also an important factor in determining a business’ web page ranking.
Slow-loading pages risk higher bounce rates, decreased satisfaction from users, lower conversion rates and lower search engine rankings. This is especially relevant since Google introduced ‘page experience’ as one of the factors that determine web page ranking in SERPs.
To overcome these issues, businesses can optimize the images on their website by resizing them or replacing them with smaller ones. Any unnecessary plugins should also be removed and the website code optimized. Performance and page speed can also be improved by employing a content delivery network (CDN) which can help to reduce bounce rates and website latency.
By implementing these suggestions businesses can ensure their websites are optimized across all platforms, providing them with increased visibility online and targeted web traffic to help them serve their customers and achieve their business goals.
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