How to Fix the Top 10 SEO Mistakes Common to Newbies in Digital Marketing
Have you recently started your first website? Are you wondering why it’s not ranking as high as you’d like on search engines like Google, Yahoo, or Bing? Sometimes even the simplest mistake can completely jeopardize a website’s SEO rank. Here’s the most common SEO mistakes new websites make and more importantly, how to fix them.
Bad title/content.
Sometimes a website doesn’t rank well because, plain and simple, the content’s not very good. Producing visually attractive content that’s meaningful, informative, and authoritative is what drives organic SEO growth and ranking your site on the first page of Google.
Social media.
A strong social media presence on relevant sites like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and others works in your favor. It lets the SEO algorithm know how to better index your pages and signifies there’s some authority to your brand.
Lack of text.
Images and graphics are wonderful. If they’re replacing text, however, this may be affecting where content’s ranking on search engine directories. Always use text headings and banners as this will make it possible for search engines to properly classify your page in accordance with a relevant keyword.
Google Console.
Google Console is a wonderful SEO tool but a lot of websites either don’t use it well or they altogether ignore that it’s there. Use Console and Analytics to understand where search engine traffic is coming from, and the changes you need to make to improve your situation.
The wrong keywords.
Select keywords optimized for what you’re actually selling and the audience you’re looking to appeal to. Use a keyword research tool to see what’s popular, what’s working, and to arrive at some definition for how you want to approach your SEO keyword strategy.
Improper <H1> tags.
The heading-1 tag should be used to identify the title for the whole page. They should not be in multiples across a page. This will confuse search engine bots. Always ensure a page is properly formatted with heading-1s, heading-2s, etc. as needed.
Slow server.
The speed at which your website loads can have a massive effect on SEO ranking. One of the more common SEO mistakes is a slow server. If your website’s not loading at the speed it should, consider optimizing its web design or move to a faster server.
No organized link structure.
All pages should be properly linked together and structured in an orderly way. If you don’t have an intuitive architectural layout of your website with an XML file to make updates or corrections as needed, it’s a mistake. Always ensure the structure of your website is easy for search engine bots and users to navigate.
Flash compatibility.
Websites using Flash may encounter some difficulty in browsers, even though it can be a very attractive web design component. If you’re definitely using Flash, you’ll want to create an HTML alternative for this content in case it does not come up as well as for search engine bots to understand what’s supposed to be there.
Internal linking.
Internal linking done wrong or not done at all is a huge missed opportunity for SEO. Proper interlinking helps a user discover more pages of your website, increases the importance of individual pages, and gets pages ranked higher on search engines.
These are all avoidable SEO mistakes. If you have a website, any of these could easily take you down and lower your organic reach. If you want to rank higher on search engines, see more organic traffic, and learn more about the secrets of successful SEO, contact Unlimited Exposure.
