Regardless of how experienced a marketer may be, there are mistakes that are easy to make when dealing with e-commerce. Fernando Angulo, head of communications, SEMrush discusses how marketers can identify and fix the most common SEO mistakes.
SEO! This three-letter word has the potential to spin the world, but only if you have the right knowledge. That’s why the number of people who claim to be SEO experts, does not match the number of websites ranking well in their respective niches. Besides, the reason for this mismatch is that SERP is evolving faster than most of us can keep track of. So? What’s the best road to take?
Understand SERP!
And that’s undoubtedly the best bet to make before taking your SEO decisions. So here we are with a cool analysis of the changes in SERP and mistakes to be avoided. Dive in!
SERP has changed. But how?
Here are a few instances of how SERPs have evolved over the years and what’s new to it.
- SERP has a new persona: If you have been using Google for ages, you know how SERP has changed the way it presents the data. What used to seem cluttered is now well organized. Besides improvements in search algorithms, many new facts have been added to SERP, including the Local Results, Featured Snippets, and a lot more.
- Meet BERT, because BERT is s-m-a-r-t!The introduction of Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers or BERT Opens a new window by Google has been one of the most phenomenal improvements in the history of Search. And this neural network-based technique is used by Google to crack user queries and deliver the results they’re looking for. It is especially relevant for longer queries where users are not sure what they are looking for; BERT comes to the rescue.
However, Google SERP is continually changing and never fails to surprise us with their accuracy. So here are a few mistakes that might be preventing you from finding a permanent spot on the SERP.
Common SEO Mistakes and How to Avoid Them!
Keywords? Check. Adwords? Check. Content? Check… But results are still below expectations. You could be making some mistakes without knowing, and one of the following could be it.
1. Ignoring low page load speed
Time and tide wait for none, and neither does your website visitors wait for your slow page to load. Irrespective of how many SEO features you incorporate, long page load time means long wait to gain leads. Besides, it also makes a poor first impression that will be hard to get out of. If you ask what loading speed is the most optimal, it’s not about how fast or fast enough. It is about how faster than before.
As per SEMrush, 53% visitors exit if a website takes longer than 3 seconds to load. Therefore, reduce the size of graphics, redirects, improve server response time, and help reduce the loading time of your webpages.
2. Not giving content its due importance
The content is another people magnet on your website. And if you think good content is required on only a few pages, that’s a mistake. Webpages with low word count, duplicate content, or low text to HTML ratio could be eating into your SEO budget.
Besides, your keywords must be optimally placed, and the content flow must allow Google crawlers to get through your content quickly. Even using content spinners for reengineering copied content will push your pages out of SERP. So just make those investments that get you access to original and meaningful content. And see the change it makes to your SEO game.
3. Not opting for Geo optimization
When a restaurant gets its customers from a single city, will it be worthy of following global keyword trends? Perhaps not! He needs localized research and SEO optimization. Use region-specific keywords and target the audience in particular age groups. This is especially helpful for businesses with an audience concentrated in particular geospatial locations.
4. Squeezing in Keywords with or without making sense
Some SEO guys assume that their sole task with keywords is to throw them into the content, with or without making any sense. But do mind that Google is smart and will catch and punish content with excess keyword stuffing with a lower rank. And ultimately, it hurts your SEO performance.
Google will only serve its audience with meaningful content that serves its purpose, and not the goal. Besides, keyword stuffing is now considered a black hat SEO technique, so it may invite requital from Google SERP.
5. Taking SEO as a one-time stint
SEO is an ever-evolving and never-ending process. Many website owners assume that once ticked; there’s no need to recheck. Engines change, Google algorithms change, and even the competition changes. The same must be the course for your SEO.
Keep the content, site structure, and other SEO formalities updated on the go. Leverage user feedback and site audits and make it better than the last time.
6. Overdosing on external links
As an SEO person, one must know the importance of how much is too much when it comes to adding quality links. Google always rewards quality over quantity. Therefore, it becomes essential that the links are relevant and in elegant numbers.
Find suitable links to high ranking websites that will add value for the readers and not just any website. And if you are using quality links, the growth stabber could be inefficient anchor texts. The anchor text must suggest what the link will talk about. Indeed, it’s better to ditch anchor texts like ‘click here’ and find something more relevant.
7. Disregarding Meta Tags & Descriptions
Those tiny title tags and meta descriptions are not worth skipping. They need to be empowered with the keywords you wish to rank for. Even adding duplicate tags may make Google Crawlers catch you lazy, and will not reward you with a good rank. The same goes for tags of images.
Alt tags are essential as crawlers that cannot read the images will use tags to identify it. The important meta tags are for the page title and description, apart from images. Besides, the meta must not be too long or short, or the same for more than one page of the website.
8. Choosing Keywords without proper research
Not all people think alike. That’s a reason that before choosing the keywords, thorough research must be performed to discover the taste of the audience. So selecting keywords that are either too high to rank for misjudged to be popular without adequate research is like digging a pit for the website.
Go for keywords that will generate maximum traffic with the least amount of competition. Look into your competitor’s websites, find keyword synonyms, and then come up with your keyword plan.
9. Giving less importance to user experience
Site performance is an essential aspect of SEO. And just like the loading speed we discussed above, user-friendliness is another crucial factor that makes a user stay on your website. But a website that looks tacky on the mobile, or is too hard to work with or understand will put the user off.
Choose website layouts as per the kind of audience, make the website mobile-friendly, and deliver a safe and smooth experience to your users. Use SEMrush audits and check how your website fares on these performance parameters.
10. Skipping Website Audits
An audit is the report card that you must get regularly for keeping a tab on your performance. Besides, it makes you aware of how the user and search engines perceive your webpages. It will also make room for improvements you might not be aware of at the moment but could be a hindrance to your performance.
Many auditors like SEMrush scan your website for hundreds of parameters that you must work on improving. And subsequently, it will ensure that GoogleBots can crawl and index your site with precision.
The Way Forward!
Practice DIRT SEO! The acronym stands for Delivery, Infrastructure, Relevance, Trust.
- Delivery: Your site speed and performance must be up to mark with clean coding, server speeds, and optimal page size. Besides, it must have adequate security mechanisms in place, along with being fully responsive.
- Infrastructure: The site structure must support robot texts, sitemaps, server redirects, indexation analysis, and a lot more. The markups and platform migrations must also be smooth.
- Relevance: Relevance deals with concepts like paginations, graphic optimization, content quality, and placement, in addition to proper internal and external linking.
- Trust: Trust factors include trust-building factors like user reviews, privacy, etc.
Phew! That was some knowledge about what not to do in SEO. Building high-conversing SEO strategies with a streamlined process will be more natural if you avoid making these mistakes. Good luck!