5 Common SEO Mistakes To Avoid
In the early days of the internet it didn’t take much work to get your site to rank highly. Back in these days you could make all kinds of SEO mistakes without dropping very far in your rankings. In those days you would spend the majority of your time submitting your site to the various search engines. The hard part was making sure you had given them every little detail they wanted for you to show up in their results. Unfortunately like the Dodo bird those day are long gone and they aren’t coming back.
Today’s search engines don’t wait for you to submit information to them. They crawl the web looking for it! They also aren’t near as forgiving as before when it comes to SEO mistakes you have made. In recent years SEO has become an interesting and ever changing component of the online space. To those who don’t understand it SEO is sometimes viewed as a bit of a dark art. To those that do understand it it can be a bit of a snow ball rolling down a mountain. Search engines are constantly changing their algorithms and ranking rules so it takes hard work to keep up with the ever changing landscape that is SEO.
With that said there are basics to everything and we have compiled a list of 5 common mistakes you can avoid. Making sure you steer clear of these common mistakes will help ensure your site isn’t lost in the ever growing number of results pages.
1
Not Using Analytics
There is an old saying that goes, “inspect what you expect”. The point the saying is trying to make is that you can’t just blindly assume and trust that the desired result is happening. You have to go back and look at what is happening and the result you are getting. In the online world it can be really easy to just set it and forget it. Without using some kind of analytics you are unable to look at what results you are getting. When it comes to SEO mistakes this is by far one of the easiest to avoid.
2
Not Having Quality Content
When it comes to generating content you need to make sure that it is well thought out. It can be really tempting to create content that doesn’t have much effort behind it and isn’t well written. This tends to just become part of the online noise and can actually hurt your SEO efforts rather than help them.
3
Bad or Broken Links
When it comes to links you need to make sure they work. Although this seems like an obvious one we see it all the time and especially with links that go off site. In these cases the site links to somewhere else and that somewhere else moved. These can be tough to track because you don’t have the ability to control the other site you are linking to.
4
Over Promotion
Most people don’t like broken records that repeat themselves. Search engines are the same when they are looking at how to rank you they don’t want to see you repeating the same thing over and over without any real meaningful content. If you are going to have an article you should make sure that it has real substance and that it isn’t just an attempt to see how many times you can repeat the term you are hoping to rank on. When you mix this with mistake number 2 and you can almost guarantee the your page rank will suffer.
5
Not Going Local
Local pride is more than just supporting your community when it comes to search engine rankings and SEO it is a must. When a search engine is looking for information most will try to show their users local content. If you haven’t setup your site in such a way that the search engines can quickly determine your location and present the information to local potential customers you could be missing out on business that could literally be right around the corner.
When it comes to SEO there is always going to be an element of keeping up with Jones, but this list should help you avoid some of the most common SEO mistakes. Leave a comment below and let us know what you thought about this list and if it was helpful!
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