CT Inbound Marketing Blog | ImageWorks, LLC

Top SEO Mistakes That Harm Your Website

Written by Kelsey Ringuette | Wed, Mar 09, 2016 @ 05:01 PM

SEO is important to boost your website's traffic and help search engines understand how your content can benefit consumers. The online world is constantly advancing and it can be challenging to stand out. This is where strategic Search Engine Optimization can help your website grow and advance. This article discusses the top SEO mistakes that harm your website so you can avoid these common blunders to continue developing your business and possess a better understanding of how to boost your traffic with the most efficient SEO marketing methods. 

Over Use Of Keywords

Optimizing your site is important to rank high on search engines for people to find you. The keywords you add to your content are important to boost your SEO efforts. You may feel that since optimizing content with keywords helps increase your presence on search engines, that the more you add should increase your rankings. However, if you flood your content by repeating the same keywords too many times, your website will be seen as spam on search engines. This will penalize your website and push you lower on search engine rankings, tarnishing your credibility. Make sure you sprinkle in appropriate keywords that people typically input into search engines. By adding suitable keywords that are relevant to the content, your website will be more effective at generating leads and increasing sales. 

Not Analyzing Keywords 

It's important to analyze the keywords you add to your website and your content. To boost your site's ranking the keywords that are used should be ones that people will be typing into search engines. Utilize tools like Google Analytics or KISSmetrics to see what are the most effective keywords related to your industry. See what people are searching, what keywords your competitors use, and what unique keywords you can use that make you stand out from your competitors but that are still popular amongst your targeted audience. According to KISSmetricsIt’s easy to get caught up watching which phrases are sending you the most traffic, and then getting bummed when you can’t rank for those super-competitive, high-traffic keywords. But traffic isn’t all that matters. Many times, lower-traffic phrases will convert better because they’re more specific, and getting first page rankings for several of them can drive quite a few sales. 

Not Optimizing Title Tags/Meta Descriptions 

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.

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. Display the page's relevance and uniqueness so people know what the content is about and will be compelled to read it. 

Optimizing Inadequate Content 

Keywords are important to boost your website's traffic but the content you provide is just as important to generate more leads and increase customer sales. Your content should aim to inform the reader so they'll view you as a valuable source and know you are a trustworthy brand to purchase from. If you create content just for keywords but don't utilize your blogs to benefit the targeted audience, you'll tarnish your brand and SEO efforts. People want a brand they can trust and go to for the most accurate information. Sure, you may boost your SEO but people will not take further action if the source they go to doesn't even give them a reason to stick around. 

Abusing The Use Of Link Building

What is better for my website, more links or quality links? Not too long ago, one of the strategic methods for SEO was to utilize link building by loading your site with several links with no other purpose than rankings. 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. According to Forbes, "one factor to consider when going after high quality links is relevance. If you’re a dentist in Phoenix, Arizona, but your SEO firm is building links to your website from a bearing manufacturer in India, that’s a bad link because it’s coming from a source that is completely irrelevant. 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.  

Not Utilizing Local Search

Optimization for local searches was a major trend in 2015 and will remain a trend for 2016 SEO as well. According To Google, “72% of consumers who searched for local information on a mobile device visited a store within 5 miles” (Source). If you haven’t already, it’s important to claim your business on Google Local. It is also important to make sure that your businesses’ name, address, and phone number are included in relevant website content. 

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