Common SEO Mistakes You Should Avoid

You think you’ve set all of your SEO up to lead you to proper conversions. You’ve secured some editorial backlinks and assume your content speaks to your target audience’s consumer psychology. However, the search rankings aren’t reflecting your hard work.

When it comes to the search rankings, there are some key mistakes that too many businesses make. Since almost all businesses these days could be considered “online businesses,” it’s important to make sure that your SEO is absolutely top-notch if you hope to take control of a search engine.

1. Your content doesn’t match your keywords.

One of the biggest issues these days is not crafting unique, relevant, and robust content. Too many businesses assume that, just because they’re posting a few times a month, they’re going to overtake their competition on Google.

While that would be ideal, it’s unfortunately not how the SEO puzzle fits together. One particular misstep that occurs far too often is no focusing on your target keywords. Your content needs to be clear, concise, and on-topic.

2. You’ve selected the wrong keywords.

Some businesses, especially those in more competitive markets, tend to go for keywords that may be far too difficult to secure. While you shouldn’t disregard more high-level keywords altogether, you need to have a strategy that gives you a bit more balance.

To this end, you should look into long-tail keywords. These are refined keywords that, as opposed to being one or two words long, are more like phrases. Long-tail keywords are more frequently searched by consumers that are getting ready to make purchases or convert.

3. Your robots.txt can’t be crawled.

Your robots.txt file essentially tells search engines on how to view your site. If your robots.txt file is set to “disallow” for any reason, you’re essentially saying “Hey, don’t look at my webpages.” Of course, you can see why this is a problem.

You need to allow crawling for the file and also ensure that it’s formatted correctly. Even seemingly small issues can derail a search engine from effectively parsing your website. This effectively damages your standings in the search rankings.

4. You’re not using title tags or meta descriptions.

While your content and keywords are major factors in telling search engines the purpose of your pages, there are other components of SEO that help too. Specifically, title tags and meta descriptions that include keyword variety give Google and its counterparts stronger indicators of page intent.

If you’re neglecting these each time you post a new landing page or blog post, it’s going to be harder for search engine crawlers to determine the value of your pages.

5. You’re misusing internal links.

Though editorial backlinks are considered incredibly important when it comes to SEO, internal links play a major role too. Oftentimes, it’s tempting to pepper as many internal links into your content as possible. However, just like unfocused content can be a detriment, so can unfocused linking.

A good rule of thumb is to make sure that your links are relevant to the topic at hand and direct readers to pages that can provide further information. Again, your goal is always to provide quality information and search value to your audience.

6. You’re trying to do it all yourself.

Even the most SEO-savvy individuals have a hard time running their own businesses and handling their own SEO at the same time. This can lead to corner-cutting, missteps, and mistakes. This is why reaching out to an SEO agency can be an excellent choice.

Take Link Laboratory, for instance. Their website, linklaboratory.com, lists a variety of services that can be integral to your ongoing SEO strategy. From smarter content creation to backlink analysis, marketing services can save you a lot of time and effort.

Everybody makes mistakes. Some SEO mistakes, however, are more costly than others. By knowing some common pitfalls, you should be better equipped to polish up your website and dominate the results pages.