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<\/a><\/p>\nDon\u2019t worry! Many of these mistakes are super common and it\u2019s never a good idea to undervalue the importance of diligent and thorough SEO work. To get optimum results from your efforts and fix any of the problems that might be holding your site back, let\u2019s take a look at some of the most common SEO mistakes that even some of the best of us still make.<\/p>\n
Your backlinks are from irrelevant resources and paid links<\/h2>\n
Backlinks are still considered to be one of the most effective ranking factors for Google. Getting backlinks from relevant and authentic websites is always good, but getting them from poor quality and irrelevant websites is equally bad.<\/p>\n
A couple years ago, Google launched Penguin to penalize websites that were unethically involved in providing irrelevant paid links. To stop yourself from getting lumped into this unsavoury category, go through your backlinks and make sure they\u2019re coming from good sources.<\/p>\n
You\u2019re not focusing on the right keyword<\/h2>\n
Another common beginner SEO mistake is focusing on high search volume keywords. It\u2019s easy to get excited by the long tail of search results and forget to account for the difficulty of actually getting good rankings and ROI on these popular keywords.<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t get carried away \u2013 figure out how difficult it will be to get your site to rank for your target keywords ahead of time and set achievable goals for yourself. Wikipedia wasn\u2019t made in a day.<\/p>\n
You\u2019re ignoring trending keywords<\/h2>\n
Sometimes, webmasters and SEO pros alike forget to pick up on relevant keywords that hold a high potential for trending. For example, \u2018Christmas deal or Christmas gift\u2019 may be a good trending keyword in the upcoming holiday months for ecommerce businesses. Without proper foresight, you can miss a huge SEO opportunity to max out your ROI.<\/p>\n
Your website lacks quality content<\/h2>\n
Let\u2019s face it: no matter who you are, you probably expect everyone to love your content. I mean, how could they not? It\u2019s genius!<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, the hard truth is that not all content is created equal. You need to make your content meaningful and filled with relevant information geared to your target audience \u2013 and this doesn\u2019t mean desperately trying to answer every possible search query on your website. Additionally, you\u2019ll also want to take the appropriate measures to ensure that your site avoids thin or duplicate content.<\/p>\n
Many people don\u2019t make their website mobile friendly and miss out on a big opportunity to grab potential customers who are reaching their site via smartphones. Google recently made a big change in its algorithm to prioritize the ranking of websites which are responsive and optimized for mobile devices such as tablets, phablets and smartphones.<\/p>\n Many people don\u2019t care about the title and meta-description of their inner pages. However, this is a very important strategic step – this is one of your best shots at introducing yourself to your target audience and bringing them on your website. Therefore, title tag and meta description of every single one of your internal pages must include a unique page title and description. This will both boost your ranking and improve your CTR.<\/p>\n Interlinking is one of the most effective SEO tactics out there. It helps reduce your bounce rate, keep users on your website, and educate potential customers about all of your products and services. Whenever a product or service is mentioned, be sure to link to the relevant page to give your visitors a helping hand.<\/p>\n The \u2018alt text\u2019 on your site\u2019s images stands for \u2018alternative information\u2019. If you aren\u2019t including the alt tags in your image files then you\u2019re making a huge mistake! Search engine robots can\u2019t infer any information about images that are posted without text on your website, unless you\u2019ve included an alt tag to help them out. Won\u2019t somebody PLEASE think of the search engine robots?<\/p>\n More importantly, using alt tags and optimizing the names of your image files is a great opportunity for you to better position yourself to hit a target keyword. Your image descriptions should briefly describe what the image is actually of \u2013 in approximately 10 words or less.<\/p>\n Google\u2019s search engine robots may crawl your website at any time, however the search<\/p>\n engine giant does update its reports on a weekly basis. You might be discovering a ton of different types of errors when checking the crawler report. Some of the errors may include things like: ‘page not found, robot denied, content behind a login and crawler error for a site I don\u2019t manage’. These errors may adversely affect your website page ranking.<\/p>\n Therefore, it\u2019s imperative that you ensure that all these issues are fixed and let the search engines crawl the content that matters the most.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\nYou haven\u2019t optimized your site for mobile<\/h2>\n
You aren\u2019t creating unique title tags and meta-descriptions<\/h2>\n
You aren\u2019t interlinking within your website<\/h2>\n
You aren\u2019t using relevant alt tags and your file names are bad<\/h2>\n
You aren\u2019t fixing crawler errors<\/h2>\n