SEO is the bee’s knees of organic traffic or unpaid traffic. Once you rank well you’re going to get a constant flow of traffic that won’t cost you a cent. So, to make an SEO mistake will hurt you. The problem is, as SEO is a slow process whereby tweaks today might take weeks to manifest, it can be easy to make some pretty big mistakes without being aware that you do – or, for that matter, doing much about it even when you do realize you’re doing something wrong.
Don’t let that happen. Not having your site set up correctly can hurt your growth and your bottom line. For that reason, don’t just read this article but actually take action afterward! Make a note. Write an email. Do whatever it takes to get the ball rolling. Because a lot of these changes aren’t that time consuming and their impact can be tremendous.
Having the wrong meta tags and titles
Every website needs an H1 heading and meta tags set. These have to explain in a nutshell what the page is about, using the keywords that define the page’s purpose. This matters not just because they tell our audience what our pages are about but they also do so for the bots that scrape the internet for the search giants.
The important thing to remember is that your headlines and meta tags need to include keywords that will actually get you noticed. This means doing your keyword research. You’ll want to find keywords where the competition isn’t too intense, while they are also the words used by the people who might buy your product.
The best way to figure this out is to use the keyword analyzers that are out there. Many of them will let you use them for free for a set time so go ahead and experiment.
Not setting up correctly for localized searches
If you’ve got an actual physical store location, then it is important that this is obvious from your website. And with that, I don’t just mean obvious to customers but also to the search engines out there.
One good way to do this is to make sure that your phone number and your address are located on every page in the header or the footer. That way, your website will be favored in terms of localized searches.
It’s also a useful idea to include when your store will be open. This will help with a lot of voice searches, which ask for information about – say – a bicycle repair shop which is open right now.
Having duplicate content
The search engines out there punish you for duplicate content – whether this is one of your own pages repeated or somebody else’s content redone. So make sure you get rid of that.
Do note, sometimes you’ll create a whole host of pages in a flurry and end up with a few pages which say the same thing. You think that doesn’t matter, as you no longer link to the old pages. The thing is, if the search engines can find the page, then it does matter.
For that reason, make sure that you go to your website and eliminate any pages that you aren’t linking to from the page currently in use. If you’re worried about broken links, go ahead and turn them into re-directs which point you back to the actual page you want people to go to.
This has the additional advantage of making sure people don’t end up on pages you’re not any longer managing which now contain outdated information.
Having nondescript text for your internal links
The search engines look at how you link from one page to another. Why? Because they assume that you’re going to be using keywords in that link which describe what you’re linking to. And so, you’ve got a great opportunity to tell the search engines what a page is about.
Don’t blow it by saying ‘this page’ or ‘go here’. Instead, make sure that your text actually specifies what the page you’re linking to is about to make the search engine’s job easier and make sure that you rank for the keywords that you want to.
Not optimizing images
People don’t just get to your page through word-based searches. There is also a significant percentage who get there through image-based searches. To enable this traffic stream, all you need to do is make sure that you correctly name your images before you upload them. Use some variation of the keywords that you are trying to rank for with that page and slot them both into the name of the image and their meta description.
In this way, if people are searching for a specific image about the topic you’re describing, then your stuff will come up. This works especially well if you’ve got unique images which are of high quality, of course.
Blocking search engines
It’s a surprisingly common mistake. Perhaps you originally set your site not to be crawlable by search engines while you tweaked and set things up as you like. And that makes perfect sense. But then, when you went live you forget to change that setting and now search engines aren’t actually aware your page is out there. And if they don’t know it’s there, then obviously they won’t be displaying the results of searches.
Fortunately, it’s an easy problem to fix. Go to the readings section in WordPress setting and make sure the box that says ‘discourage search engines from indexing this site’
is not checked. Do note, once your page is out there it can still take time for the search engines to notice it. For the internet is a big place and they’ve got to monitor all of it.
Having a slow website
People care a great deal about loading speed. And when people care, so do the search engines. For that reason, you have to make sure that your page loads as fast as possible. This will enhance the user experience as well as how well your page is ranked.
There are a lot of ways to speed up your website. Some of the best tricks are:
- Make sure your page caches.
- Configure images so that they’re not too big.
- Remove plugins you’re not using
- Having too many social sharing buttons
Organic traffic, here we come!
If you’ve executed these changes, then your page will rank better. Then you’ll be able to compete on a more level playing field with the rest of the competition.
Of course, there are still hurdles to overcome. If the content you’re presenting isn’t as good as that on offer on other websites, then it doesn’t matter how much time you spend fixing SEO mistakes. You’ll still be ranked lower.
But that, of course, is another entirely different kettle of fish. And at least once you’ve fixed the SEO problems then you’ll know that this is where the problems are at. And that can already be helpful.
