Most of the SEO tactics that were relevant few years back are no longer applicable in this era. In fact, adopting some of them can hurt a site chances of reaching the coveted top position in the search engine result pages (SERPs). The rules are constantly changing and it’s a must to keep up with the trends. It’s better to avoid the mistakes below, but there are still solutions if you’re already engaging in any of them.
1. Failing to monitor your progress
It is one of the commonest SEO mistakes that most websites owners make. A realistic search engine optimization strategy is useless if the results are not monitored. This is because it will be difficult to know whether your plans are working or not. Apart from that, it’s impossible to spot problem areas and fix them promptly. Ensure that you track the progress of organic search and other parameters regularly with the right tools.
2. Not making any effort to update your website
Some online shops often assume that they don’t need a blog because they are just offering products or services. Such sites may remain in obscurity and have less traffic. Creating a blog is the best way to add more content to your site so that it becomes more visible. Deliver quality content on a regular basis for your target customers. Writing great blog posts isn’t sufficient, they must be promoted via channels like social media.
3. Inadequate keyword research
It’s quite common for certain site owners to use generic keywords or make wild guesses. They believe that engaging in keyword research is just a waste of time and effort. This is far from the truth as it can even help you to save time and infuse keywords naturally. The information gathered is useful for developing valuable content for your target audience. Another similar mistake is keyword stuffing which involves using a particular keyword several times in a content. Taking this approach often leads to poor ranking in SERPs.
4. Undertaking link building the wrong way
It’s likely that you would have received an email from individuals claiming to sell tons of links at cheaper prices. Allowing links from low quality sites is very risky. Messages like that must be disregarded because the approach is no longer working. Having good backlinks doesn’t happen overnight. It’s as a result of building and maintaining solid relationships with others in your niche. Internal link building also increases the time that visitors will spend on websites. Chances are most of your competitors are building links the right way and you won’t want to sabotage your efforts with any mistake.
5. Making your website uncrawlable
Search engine bots are always on the lookout for fresh content to index. A website that isn’t crawlable may make the owner’s effort to go down the drain. Some of the things that can make it difficult for bots to crawl sites include using flash, inaccurate robots.txt files and presence of broken links. Check your site frequently and fix any issues that you discover during the process.