13 Fatal SEO Mistakes That Could Kill Your Site
Content is the most important part of SEO but it should be SEO-friendly. Publishing an article on web isn’t just about publication but about the online reputation of your website; traffic and above all the page rank of your site. Also the content must be properly optimized with relevant and high traffic keywords.
How would you make sure that your content optimization is according to SEO guidelines? We’ve prepared an exhaustive list of common content optimization mistakes that you and every SEO should take care of while optimizing content.
1. Writing Poor Quality Content Won’t Rank Your Site Higher in SERP
It is relevance and presentation that matters most in content. Whatever is published in the name of your website must reflect your business in letter and spirit. And there should be no silly grammar and formatting mistakes like spacing between the lines, paragraph making and using subheadings to introduce important ideas. Always hire an experienced writer to produce quality content for your website.
2. Not Researching Your Niche and Keywords is Bad Practice
Research your niche and keywords to find what sells the business you’re doing. You can use a keywords research tool like Keyword Planner by Google or spy on your competitors to find the keywords they are using to sell their products. Use Brand Mentions to spy on your competitors. It’s a free tool.
3. Optimizing for the Wrong Keywords Will Never Get You Results
It is the most common mistake SEOs make in the rush to build website traffic. Where relevant keywords would improve credibility of your site in addition to bringing targeted traffic, using irrelevant keywords would only pollute your site and confuse the visitors to the point. It isn’t that you shouldn’t take advantage of trends but you need to be smart while using the trends.
4. Using Similar Content in the META Tags
It is difficult to understand why SEOs use similar descriptions in meta, title and keywords tags. It could save time but similar content makes it difficult for search engines to match search queries with web pages. You couldn’t find your web pages displaying on relevant keywords. Use Webmaster Tools to check pages with duplicate content and make it unique.
5. Missing Title Tags and Meta Descriptions
Always write title tags and meta descriptions to get placed in SERPs and increase your CTR by driving relevant traffic to your site. Meta and title tag descriptions are crucial as they educate visitors on relevance of the content. For CMS like WordPress and Blogger, you can use plugins for writing meta and for a programming language, you should have HTML tags.
6. Missing Alt Description for Image Optimization
Just like content and tags, images also need to be optimized. You need writing alt description for each image as an image without description won’t help in driving quality traffic to your site. Images are important in web page designing as they add value to the content and also make the page look attractive.
7. Optimizing Just for Short Tail Keywords Won’t Bring You Traffic
Divide your keywords into short tail and long tail. Keywords having two words are called short tail and they are used for broad search. On the other hand, keywords with more than two words are called long tail and used for specific search. Optimizing site you short tail keywords won’t be as beneficial as optimizing for long tail keywords. Broad search is vast hence could dilute your website but specific search could connect your site to relevant traffic.
8. Ignoring Local SEO Won’t Differentiate You from Your Competitors
SEO stands for associating your business with a physical search. If you’re looking for a restaurant then you’ll want to search a particular area or region instead of searching all the restaurants in the world. The best way to optimize your site for local search is to use Google My Business tool and also you can try optimizing your site with local SEO keywords like in title tag, H1 tag, URL, page content and image alt description.
9. Optimizing for Extra Long Tail Keywords with No Traffic
Using long tail keywords is beneficial but the keywords must not be too long otherwise they will become too specific. If you use Keyword Planner, you’ll see that extra-long keywords have very thin traffic and also the results of extra-long search queries might not match with your business.
10. Leaving Title Tags Automated Won’t Help You Increase your CTR
Title tags are important as they tell about web pages and the information available in the content. But you shouldn’t use automated title tags as they could irrelevant for your site. Always write unique title tags for your web pages.
11. Writing Short Form Content Won’t Build a Long-Term Relationship with Your Customers
Writing short content could save time but it might not be sufficient to provide information. And also it couldn’t accommodate quality links needed for driving targeted traffic to a site.
12. Optimizing Multiple Pages for the Same Keyword – content cannibalization
Over-enthusiasm with keywords could be harmful to your site Always use a tool like Yoast to optimize content otherwise you could make mistakes and mislead the Google bots with mistakes. The tool will tell whether a specific keyword has already been used. If yes, you can avoid using the same keyword again and again.
13. Not Adding Keywords in the Heading Tags
There is a direct relation between heading and the body of content. Search engine sees content from heading hence H1 tag is the most important tag in content optimization. Use keywords in heading tags.
Conclusion
Relevant and properly optimized content could strengthen page rank and boost the traffic but if the content is irrelevant or the information is misleading or optimization improper, you won’t be able to take advantage of it. On the contrary, mistakes like missing tags and using short content could impact your website reputation in a negative way. But you can easily avoid mistakes with content. Keep the above-listed mistakes in mind when optimizing your website content.
