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10 common SEO mistakes to avoid

28 April 2016 George Svash 1 Comment ALL-HANDS SEO

Today let me advocate modern SEO techniques of website promotion and try to explain basic reasons for different problems for those who attempt to please search engines with the view of receiving a flow of targeted website visitors.


10 seo mistakes
It was found that the set of such mistakes is quite standard, but in the majority of cases just the most obvious moments escape our attention. Moreover, one or another mistake can consist in the selected approach to website promotion, because the last one should be composed of successive execution of some basic actions that can’t be missed or swapped. So, top 10 common SEO mistakes to avoid.

 

1 Poor keyword research

It’s very important to outline the target audience of your website for its effective promotion. For that you should do the best keyword research (by the way, it is required not only for SEO at all, but also for different online advertising services (for example, Google AdWords) as a platform to get targeted traffic to your site). The careful demand analysis of the services or goods offered by you is the only true way to pursue the best keyword research.
This is the main and most frequent mistake of website owners or marketing specialists who are involved in website traffic increasing – they neglect the full-fledged demand analysis that will lead to quite poor keyword research without fail (within 100 search queries). In other words, some beginners at SEO create the list of queries with high search volume, and long tail search queries are lost sight because of complexity or misunderstanding of methods of its finding. Such strategy makes you lose up to 90% of potential visitors and probably clients of your website.
Remember! The more care you take doing the best keyword research for the website, the better SEO results will be. And don’t forget that mistakes made on target keyword research can’t be fixed by any design or programming part.

 

2 Absence of full website information and its good structuring

When ranking websites search engines use such metrics as full website information and quality of its structuring. In order to get high ranking on subject queries it’s not enough just to have the page answering this subject. Also your site should have a full range of web pages that can answer the majority of questions in a certain niche, because you know that fullness and structure of each website are estimated not only by search engine algorithms, but also by well-trained experts of different search engine systems – assessors.
Therefore, the second common SEO mistake is closely related to the first one: you won’t achieve the necessary fullness of information if you do poor keyword research. One of the most important tasks of SEO specialists is an expansion of the target keyword list and creation of clear and readable structure on its basis. Here you should remember that the poor structure won’t allow your users to orient and find necessary information quickly. As a result, your website can lose its potential visitors and, thus, reduce its high ranking.

 

3 Lack of good SEO competitive research

Today’s advanced website promotion is characterized by one common mistake that is often made by SEO specialists: they simply neglect SEO competitive research, that is, they don’t estimate strengths and weaknesses of websites of their competitors from the SERPs, don’t study their price policy, SEO strategies, content, target keywords, etc.
Your competitors are the real source of useful information and different ideas for your own site (for example, website design and set up ideas, methods of website structuring, methods of website promotion or successful marketing mixes).
Remember! All these research activities are very important to have a chance to press your competitors from the top.

 

4 Bad on-page SEO of your website

Today there is no way to get top 10 rankings in the SERPs just by means of links even if they are subject and high-trust website links. As practice of the last years shows, the off-page link building can help to achieve the intended effect provided that it will be in combination with ideal internal factors (by the way, absence of these factors leads to the considerable loss of your website potential audience). Then tell me why many SEO specialists who know this axiom continue to shut their eyes to on-page optimization of the website and buy links incessantly.
It is one more common mistake SEO experts should avoid. The heart of this problem is that any work on on-page website factors is very difficult, time-consuming, and cost-based. In other words, SEO specialists choose the path of least effort that actually is extremely ineffective and leads to discrediting of SEO in the eyes of website owners.

 

5 Too many keywords and other moments of bad content

One more factor that influences success of website optimization positively is writing texts for people, but not for search engines. You should not lay special stress on quantity of target keywords in your text as well as to do multiple-queries optimization at the same time (especially if this text is short). Such texts are difficult for people to understand or get some useful information from them, and assessors will mark such action not in favor of your website. Let’s mention the main signs of bad content once again.
Firstly, bold letter keywords in the text became the everyday occurrence, as well as their outright “over spam” both in the text and its titles. Remember that such method can influence audience of your website negatively, after all 3 or 4 target keywords on every 2-3 thousand of characters can be considered as an admissible norm.
Secondly, you should pay special attention to grammar of the texts and their formatting (it needs to use lists, titles and subtitles, paragraphs, bold letters for sense parts, etc). Otherwise, low behavioral factors threaten your website, and as a result it won’t be able to take high ranking in the SERPs.
Thirdly, laconism of the text hasn’t still lose its significance: you should always write useful, informative, and readable content for your website.

 

6 Unattractive website design

Not only texts need to be written for people, but also the website itself should meet these requirements. If we assess all web resources that are available nowadays in the Global Network, only their small part (no more than 5%) can be fallen into the category “websites for people” (they are qualitative-made web resources that meet the minimum requirements of convenience and good usability). All others don’t meet these high requirements, for example, because of unattractive website design or bad usability.
Any offhand website won’t be highly appreciated by assessors of search engine systems (they pay attention to design as well), and thus quality of design is one of the main site ranking factors on recently. Any optimization and website promotion efforts that are directed at the project with bad or strongly outdated design will be done for nothing.
Remember! only websites with high qualitative design can be found in the top of highly competitive search queries (of course, there are some exceptions to this rule, but they just confirm it).

 

7 Building the wrong links

Now let’s talk about off-page link building. Pay attention that we speak about it just now, having delivered content and website structuring on the first place. It’s not without a reason because links have still participated in ranking, though they aren’t all-powerful. Firstly, links work only in combination with ideal internal factors of the website as stated above. Secondly, according to statistics just a few percent from all bought referential weight work really and are considered by search engines. Most SEO specialists just spend the referential budget (that is not a small one as a rule) in vain.
You should understand that search engines with a high share of probability know that one or another link is prepaid, and can consider it only if this link is really important. Therefore the principal criterion of off-page link building is rigid filtering of link donors (there are different methods, but most of them are troublesome and time-consuming).
Remember! In any event it is necessary to completely eliminate all potentially ineffective links.

 

8 Ignoring website effectiveness

It is not enough just to attract visitors (even from your website target audience), it needs to work on increasing of the site effectiveness constantly. You can’t ignore this factor of SEO. In most cases conversion isn’t measured by site owners, and in the same time effectiveness of website promotion is estimated by the principle of users or clients existence.
You won’t be able to increase conversion of your website without its measuring, that turns into potential clients and enhancement of sales. Perhaps, it sounds strange, but conversion is a ranking factor for websites as it creates behavioral factors of any web resource.
Remember! The better conversion is, the higher ranking your website gets.

 

9 Bad analysis of your website statistics

For successful existence and promotion of your website it is necessary to analyze statistics constantly and draw from this the appropriate conclusions. Studying failure indicators (by the way, high values speak about lack of correspondence of this page content to user hopes) and behavioral factors of your website, you can find the only way to improve them and understand what is necessary to keep attention of users.
For example, if your website has the active references and texts of these links contain target keywords, your site (or those pages which direct these links on) can get top ranking in the SERPs on these queries even without purchase of external references. As a rule, it concerns keywords with low search volume, but that is quite enough for it.
Remember! Absence or bad analysis of your website statistics deprives you one of the most important advantages in the struggle for better top ranking and in most cases your site lose this fight.

 

10 Absence of a marketing component

Today SEO specialists have to evolve in marketing experts as it is the only way of effective website optimization and its successful promotion. Now they should read website marketing and usability books, carry out site design changing tasks, know the ins and outs of website analytics, increase conversion, work with copywriters closely and format the texts written by them carefully.
As the end of today’s research of 10 common SEO mistakes to avoid let’s do some conclusion: these days only comprehensive efforts are able to yield appreciable results in website optimization and promotion. Even if just one element falls out of this system or it is deprived of due attention, the whole result will be put in jeopardy. Search engines are improved their algorithms every day, and any attempt to shut your eyes to this fact and continue on the same lines will surely collapse.
Remember! Even realization the SEO mistakes described above can be the first step in the right direction.

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