In the world of SEO, you get what you give. In other words, if you use high-quality, proven strategies, Google and other search engines will reward you handsomely; however, if you are using outdated – or worse, “black hat” strategies, there’s a high likelihood your website is going to suffer at some point. Of course, when your site suffers, so does the success of your business.
Unfortunately, a lot of website owners end up making serious mistakes when it comes to SEO. If you want to increase the ranking of your site, beef up your reputation, and boost your business, you need to make sure that you are using proven SEO strategies. Take a moment to look at your search engine optimization practices. If you are making any of the following mistakes, you really need to ditch them, and ditch them immediately.
Not Focusing on SEO in Your Website Content
As the saying goes, “content is king” when it comes to SEO. Why? Because it’s what sets your site apart from the billions of other sites on the Internet.
When it’s written properly, it engages your audience, delivers valuable messages, and establishes your authority. But, your website’s content not only has to be well written; it needs to be optimized for search engines.
What is SEO content? It’s content that’s written for the purposes of getting noticed by search engines, as well as your targeted audience. In other words, it should contain keywords that are relevant to your site, the products or services you sell, and the message that you are trying to deliver.
If you aren’t optimizing your content, search engines are going to prioritize other sites over yours leading intended audience finding your completion before they find you. Instead of being on the first page of the search results, it’s going to get lost on one of the other millions of pages, where users usually don’t look.
How do you make your site content SEO-friendly? Invest in keyword research, optimize your content with the best keywords for your site, and make sure it’s organized in a logical way using plenty of headings.
What content should be optimized? Blog posts, product pages, articles, guides, lists, and even videos and infographics; in other words, all of it!
Focusing on Backlink Quantity Instead of Quality
Backlinks are links on other websites that direct their users back to your website. Backlinks are important because they establish your authority in the eyes of search engines.
When search engines like Google find that other sites are willing to link to yours, it tells them that you are a valuable resource. That helps you get a higher placement on search engine results.
It makes sense that a lot of backlinks will make your site more visible to search engines and will draw more people to your site. However, it’s not just about quantity; the quality of your backlinks is much more important.
If your links are placed on sites that aren’t relevant to your site, you aren’t going to draw in users who are actually interested in what you have to say and what you’re selling. Furthermore, they won’t appear natural and the search engines’ algorithms will give them less weight than links coming from relevant sites.
Even if you have tons of backlinks, the search engines aren’t going to think your site is an authority if backlinks are placed on low quality sites or sites that exist solely for trying to game the search engines. In fact, it could actually hurt your rankings.
A few backlinks placed on reputable sites that are related to yours are much better than thousands of backlinks on poor-quality sites that have nothing to do with what you offer on your website.
Not Making Use of Analytics Software
Whether you own an e-commerce site, you run a large corporation, you operate a small business, or you run a blog, analytics are something that needs to be at the forefront of your mind.
Analytics are the cornerstone of search engine optimization. They help to measure the traffic to your site and determine what strategies are working and what aren’t. They also help you understand the activities of your website users and help you identify what efforts need to be improved in order to achieve your goals.
Analytics software lets you get a detailed look at how many people are visiting your site. You can see if it’s growing, see what pages are the most popular, and determine when and where people are leaving your site. All of this information can help you alter your strategies so you can continuously improve your website. If you aren’t using analytics software, you are missing out on valuable information.
In Summary
In the past, SEO was little more than tossing up some content about your product or service and pounding it with backlinks from anywhere and everywhere you could. But, as the search engines’ algorithms’ have evolved, so must your SEO strategies.
By putting some time and effort into your website’s content strategy and focusing on quality over quantity in both your on-page SEO work as well as your off-page work, you’ll avoid many of the mistakes that others don’t. And, by tracking all of your traffic’s actions, you’ll have valuable data to make educated decisions off of.
If you haven’t updated your SEO strategies recently, there’ no better time than now to do so.
