It's funny but happens all too often. Business men and women, professionals in their field, making the most common SEO mistakes that not only stall their online business efforts but actually push them down the rankings.

It's okay, it happens to the best of them and you don't have to be a professional in your field as well as the ever-changing SEO world. I mean, who has the time to constantly follow and update their website to ensure it's not just functional but also appealing and informative.

Your'e busy and this lack of time for other components and inbound marketing tools is actually one of the major factors that influences these commonly hilarious SEO fails. So what are these blunders and how can you avoid them? This post may not necessarily tickle your funny bone but it may be the slap on the head that makes you giggle as you realize that these funny SEO fails throughout this post are sprinkled throughout your website as well. 

Your Eyes Are Bigger Than Your Stomach: Keyword Stuffing 

This actually one of my favorites. Not too long ago, in a galaxy far far away, content that had numerous keywords was ranked very highly, but a lot has changed since then. Businesses were literally stuffing keywords into their content to the point that the sentence didn't even make sense anymore. I thought this was a thing of the past but as I was browsing websites the other day, I noticed that this not so sneaky shortcut was still happening.

It's like they don't realize that now if you add too many keywords in your content or even your website pages, search engines will penalize you by ignoring your pages and term them as irrelevant. Anyways, as I was going through each page it was clear as day what their targeted keywords were and was literally used twice in every sentence.

Here's an example of what it was like to read their content: We are here to help with all your home repair services. Your home is important and home repair services can help maintain and help you with your home repair services. Home repair services can help you repair any part or room in your home and home repair services is available whenever you need us. (Okay we get it already.)

Go through your website. If you are stuffing your content with keywords, stop it and fix it immediately. Unless you want to rank lower and lower on search engines, a good rule of thumb is that a single to a few keywords per page is enough for the search engine to identify the most relevant content and material.

Out With The Old In With The New: Irrelevant Keywords

Alright so you know the importance of keywords but did you know that not all keywords are created equal. It's not fair, I know, but it's true and it's important to ensure you are using valuable keywords with high volume searches to generate more traffic. You know a lot about your business and certain phrases stand out to you but that can't be said for everyone else. Selecting the right keywords and key phrases requires time and strategy – you first need to know what terms users are searching for and you have to then prioritize them for your business based on a balance between traffic and potential revenue. Make sure to do your research. The following are some tips to help you pinpoint the most valuable keywords for your content: 

• Research your competitors' keywords 
• Listen to your customers' common questions (sometimes their questions may contain usable keywords)
• Utilize keyword analysis tools 
• Understand SEO techniques and trends

Quality Trumps Quantity: Purchasing Unreliable Links 

Nothing is more ridiculous than going to a website, clicking on a link that is supposed to take you to credible information and when you actually click on it, it doesn't work or it's not even relevant  to what you were looking for. To obtain more links faster, a lot of companies purchased links and built strategies exclusively to earn links, but now that type of tactic will hurt not help you. All the links on your page should lead somewhere or to information that is related to your brand. When it doesn't, the only thing it tells Google is that you’re trying to spam them, which indirectly tells them they should ban your website from Google until you shape up.

Building quality links is to not build them, but instead, earn them naturally. These links are earned by creating great content that people want to link to. SEO boils down to effective keywords, quality content and always trying to offer the best service and information as possible. As Google advances, they are constantly ranking brands higher that focus on the user and provide value to their audience. Become a trustworthy source and don't try and take SEO short cuts.

Speed It Up Slowpoke: Slow Loading Times

Slow and steady wins the race, well not always I guess. Actually, slow loading times are a killer and make your website seem outdated. Outdated websites are boring and you never truly know if their products and services are even reliable anymore. This may be surprising but statistically speaking, if a website doesn't appeal and intrigue almost instantly, most people will move on to the next site. In fact, 40% of people will leave a website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. The simple detail here is that if your web page takes too long to load, no one will stick around to find out what is in it, hurting your rankings. Google compares your site to your competitors on a specific segment and attributes a bonus point whether you are the fastest. So, in short, speed is key. 

Hiding In Plain Sight: Overlooking SEO Components

It's funny to hear people complaining that their website isn't gaining traffic and they don't know why but when you look at their site, they are not utilizing their title tags or meta descriptions. What are those, you ask? Well they are important SEO aspects that are commonly overlooked but actually are very important. These components offer the opportunity to once again input your targeted keywords to better highlight your content’s relevancy. Create unique and descriptive page titles and use your meta description as a final opportunity to provide a preview of the value of your page.

Meta descriptions are used on search engine result pages that displays a preview summary for a given page. People see the description to decide if the content will benefit them, so it's important the description creatively summarizes the content. Furthermore, you need to make the description creative but typically only have 150 characters to do so. The meta description should engage the keywords appropriately, but also create a compelling description that consumers will want to click. 

Title tags define the title of a document and is displayed in the top bar of internet browsers. This is important for SEO marketing but is commonly not used efficiently. This is an opportunity to add keywords pertaining to the page's content but it's common to see a lot of companies put their name in the title tag which can be such a damaging mistake. Title tags are also part of what helps people decide whether they should visit your site when it shows up in the search results. The title tag should contain important keywords to help the search engine determine what the page is about.

Learn how to write SEO copy that sells from a professional SEO company CT, by downloading the guide below, so you don't make some of the head slapping blunders as discussed throughout this article.