Search Engine Optimization (or as we all know it SEO), without a doubt, is the cornerstone of any successful website. And how could it be otherwise? With 68% of all online experiences starting with a search engine and over 63,000 queries every second, this shouldn’t be a surprise. Furthermore, around 93% of all the internet traffic comes exactly from search engines, as Google claims the top with 86% of the search engine market. Naturally, all 1.95 billion websites on the Internet try to appear as a result shown by the different search engines. To stand out, you need to boost your website’s search engine optimization efforts. Why not start with today’s topic on how to avoid the 5 most common SEO mistakes almost every non-professional make? 

Why perfect SEO is a must?

Being on top of the search engines, especially Google, will give you roughly one-third of all clicks on a particular keyword. So naturally, this will significantly reduce the cost per acquisition (CPA) since you receive these leads completely free. In fact, the CPA is reduced by roughly 88% compared to paid ads or other digital marketing strategies. 

Furthermore, being on top of search engine results will inevitably raise your trustworthiness. This not only improves your authority in the industry but creates a fanbase around your product or brand. 

Moreover, the quality of the organic leads is much better than the one you get from paid ads. This is mainly because, during the pandemic, the number of online shoppers has sprung, and now worldwide, there are more than 2.5 billion people who prefer to make their purchases over the internet. Around 2.6% of all searches will end up in a conversion, which is two times better than what you will get with paid ads. 

Without a doubt, search engine optimization is worth allocating resources and time. However, if you want to get the results listed above, you need to avoid the following common mistakes that almost everyone makes. 

Mistake: Make content only for the crawlers

Each search engine has different algorithms through which to determine which webpage to take their top spot. However, they all have one goal – to offer the best user experience to their visitors, so they will choose them again next time. Knowing this, it’s easy to determine that one of the most important aspects of being ranked on Google, Bing, Yahoo, or any other search engine is how valuable, trustworthy, straightforward, and entertaining is the content on the webpage.

Unfortunately, many companies miss that point entirely. They think that SEO results come from proper communication with the crawlers, so they tend to write content for the search engine bots rather than people. This means they use keywords heavily without conveying valuable information and write articles solely to appear for longtail keywords. Naturally, their bounce rate increases significantly, which is penalized by most search engines, and instead of improving their search engine stance, they harm their efforts. 

Typically, this type of content is done fast, has little to no research, claims unprovable points, and is spewed several times a day. Quantity over quality has never been a good business model, and of course, it’s not a great strategy for your content either. 

To avoid going down the wrong road, all you need to do is create a content plan based on research and your target audience’s interests. You don’t need to post several times a week to make an impact. As long as your content is of high quality, you can post it even bimonthly. The best practices show that posting once a week is the gold standard. Of course, this is possible only if you can afford to allocate the needed time and resources to produce quality content. 

Mistake: Use wrong keywords

It’s not a secret that keywords are the cornerstone of your SEO efforts, so using the correct ones is imperative for a good outcome. One of the most common mistakes made by business owners, who have little to no experience dealing with SEO, is trying to rank for the wrong keywords. For example, if you are a smartphone retailer, you will instinctively want to go after “smartphone” as a keyword. However, if you write the keyword in google right now, depending on where you search from, you will get between 3 and 5 billion results. From New York, the results are approximately 4,75 billion. Needless to say, the competition is way too high, so you will need to make your keyword more descriptive. You can try going with the phone brands you are selling, but you will never be able to outcompete their huge marketing budgets. 

So what can you do? – As always, your priority should be to do some research. Use Google Trends to find out niche keywords that have enough visitors but where competition is lower. Furthermore, instead of trying to find a single word, try finding a keyword phrase that consists of 2-4 words. There are two points to consider here. Firstly, the longer the keyword phrase, the lower the search volume is. On the other hand, the longer the keyword phrase is, the higher the consumer intent is. So finding the middle ground (which is between 2-4 words) will get you the perfect balance between getting enough leads and having a higher percentage of them converting. 

Mistake: Build all the wrong backlinks.

Building a significant backlink portfolio is another key aspect of having good SEO results. Unfortunately, most business owners entirely disregard the need for backlinks, and most of those with a backlinks portfolio don’t care about its quality. This is hindering their SEO efforts on a massive scale because most search engines are particularly interested in quality backlinks.

Firstly, backlinks are gateways for crawlers to get to your website. So if many other websites point to yours, this means you are giving some information worth spreading. Secondly, if many websites share your content, you are an authority figure in your industry. Thus search engines would want to place you higher on their search results. 

Unfortunately, not all backlinks are qualitative. Whether a backlink is good or not depends on the website’s authority, spam rate, bounce rate, the location of the link, and other important metrics. For example, if you run an international business, it’s important to focus on international link building. Getting backlinks from country-specific domains like .fr for France, .co.uk for the UK, or .ca for Canada, can help you strengthen your presence in those regions and boost your overall SEO performance. Not checking where your backlinks come from is one of the most common mistakes business owners make.

To avoid it, all you need to do is to check all your backlinks regularly and dispose of those who link you to some shady web pages. Google Search Console is the most useful tool in this regard. Through it, you can easily see where your backlinks come from, what is the anchor text and check if they are broken for some reason. 

Mistake: Disregarding the technical part of the SEO

Even if you execute every other aspect of your SEO perfectly, you can still fail to deliver the promised results if you disregard the technical part of the SEO. You need to address several key points to ensure your website is up to the search engine standards.

First, you will need an SSL certificate, which will protect users from malicious attacks through your website.

Second, your website speed is crucial for getting a higher position. Moreover, website speed will determine the quantity and the quality of the people who visit your website. Every second delay in displaying your website will lose you 16% of your audience.

We have an awesome blog post archive for tips on optimizing the loading speed of your website so be sure to check it out!

Furthermore, 53% of customers will choose another website if yours doesn’t show in less than 3 seconds. In this regard, getting a good hosting company will bring you a long way. With cloud hosting services, the website speed can be higher than ever, which is one outstanding solution to this problem. 

Fortunately, all our Web Hosting plans come with Free SSL, Free Website Loading speed optimization, and tons of server-side loading speed optimizing features out-of-the-box. Furthermore, we will also transfer your website absolutely free of charge and we will support you in your SEO optimization efforts!

63% of all Google searches are done via a mobile device so you will definitely want to optimize your website for Mobile devices as well. Naturally, this entices the biggest search engine to push mobile-friendly websites higher in their ranking. 

So, if you want to ensure the technical part of your website won’t hinder your SEO efforts, you need to guarantee your website is lightning-fast, secure, and mobile-friendly. 

Mistake: Consider your job done

Making your website SEO-friendly and managing to get on top of the search results needs a lot of effort and resources. It’s definitely not an easy task, but the benefits are more than worth it. Sadly, search engine optimization is not a one-time task you can forget. The work on being on top, like anything else, never ends. 

This is another common mistake many people make – to consider that after reaching the number one spot for a particular keyword ends their efforts. This, however, is not the case. Google changes its algorithm 500-600 times annually, meaning you must constantly update your content and ensure it’s up to the standards. 

To avoid losing the first spot, after you’ve put so much time and resources into getting there, all you need to do is to have an SEO audit every once in a while. Typically companies prefer to do it quarterly. However, for better results, it’s best to check if everything is OK once a month. This way, you will always be on top of any problem that may occur, which will keep your user experience better, your sales higher, and your profits- ever-increasing. 

Final thoughts

It’s not enough to simply give your website search engine optimization. SEO efforts should be made with precision and expertise to reach the expected results. Avoiding the five mistakes listed above is only the beginning, just like finding the best web host provider is a cornerstone of creating one fast, secure and user-friendly website. Find out more on the latter here.