8 SEO Mistakes That Could Be Hurting Your Business

Search engine optimization is just one part of the digital marketing world — but it’s a very important part. Without SEO, your content won’t be seen online, which means you won’t attract consumers and make sales. This is why it’s so important to focus on proper SEO, whether you’re doing it yourself or you’re working with a white label agency services. Unfortunately, because there are so many elements to SEO, it can be easy to do something wrong. But to help you prevent any major disasters, let’s talk about a few common SEO mistakes.

Failing to Optimize for Mobile Use

Nowadays, everyone conducts Internet searches on their smartphones and tablets. So if your website is only optimized for desktop use, you’re in trouble. When someone pulls up your site on their phone, if it doesn’t work properly or doesn’t even load, you’re going to miss out on a possible conversion. In fact, studies show that 67% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase from a business with a mobile-friendly site. This is why your pages must be responsive on all devices. You can either have mobile-friendly versions of your site pages or you can design the site so that it’s responsive no matter what device it’s being used on. This way, you can reach your audience on any and all devices.

Forgetting About Local Search

If you’re looking to attract consumers in a specific area, then you need to optimize for local searches. When someone makes a search that includes a city or region, you want your content to show up. To make this happen, you need to work location-specific keywords into your content. Additionally, make sure you have your business’ local address and phone number on most of your pages so search engines will recognize these pages as local.

Using the Wrong Anchor Text

Anchor text is essential when you’re utilizing internal links in your content. But oftentimes, businesses make the mistake of using anchor text like “click here” or “contact us”. While this can easily tell consumers where the link will take them, it doesn’t do much for SEO purposes. Instead, consider using relevant keywords as your anchor text — the anchor text used in a call to action, for example, could be something related to the industry or the services you offer. This way, you’ll have the internal link and it will be better for your SEO efforts.

Having Slow Page Loading Times

When a consumer clicks on a link to one of your web pages, they expect it to load almost instantaneously. Almost half of users say they expect a webpage to load in two seconds or less. If they have to wait for more than a few seconds, they’re most likely going to go to a competitor’s page instead. Page speed is essential — not only is it important for your site’s bounce rate and keeping consumers on the site, but it’s also a ranking factor. Search engines crawl web pages and will rank sites with faster page speeds higher because they’re more likely to get more use. So if you haven’t spent a lot of time on page speed optimization, now is the time to do so.

Creating Too Much Content

There certainly can be too much of a good thing and that’s especially true when it comes to content on your site. While it’s important to have content for your consumers to read, like blog posts and product information, you should not be creating content just because you feel like you need more pages. If you do this, you’ll ultimately create useless content that is going to do more harm than good. Instead, always choose quality over quantity. The content you put on your site should be relevant, informational, and something consumers will actually want to read. And with less content, you can focus more on optimizing what you have.

Not Mixing Up Your Title Tags

First off, you should definitely have title tags — these tags can be beneficial for SEO purposes and to let consumers know what the content is about. However, you should not be using the same title tag for every page. Many businesses simply put the business name as the title tag. Unfortunately, this does little for SEO and can make the content seem repetitive, even if it’s different. So when you’re writing title tags, mix it up a little bit. Each page title should be unique and relevant to the content on that page. This way, consumers know what the page is about and this information can easily be shared on social media and other platforms.

Settling for Low-Quality Links

While it may seem like having any link is better than no links, poor links can hurt your business in the long run. So rather than focusing on getting as many links as possible, focus on getting high-quality links instead. Having a few really great links from high ranking sites will do your business a lot more good than getting tons of links from low-quality sites. When you have links from reputable and popular sites, this is going to show consumers that your business is also reputable. Make sure you’re choosing links that are relevant to your business and are from sites with a high domain.

Letting Mistakes Build Up

It’s easy to make mistakes, especially when you have several pages or sites to manage. However, you need to regularly take a look at your site to make sure any mistakes that occur get fixed — letting mistakes stay and grow over time is going to cause a lot of issues. Mistakes and problems like missing links, poor or duplicate content, the wrong anchor text, or pages that don’t load can easily get missed but can significantly impact your ranking and conversions. So make sure your site is frequently audited so these mistakes can be caught and fixed as soon as possible.

SEO tactics are constantly changing and it’s important to keep up with them. Otherwise, your business may get lost in a sea of competitors. After all, 93% of online experiences start wiht a search engine like Google. While SEO isn’t always easy to figure out, taking your time, hiring some help, and avoiding these mistakes can help you navigate the complex digital world. So keep this information in mind to improve your web pages and search engine rankings for a better chance at increasing traffic and conversions.