11 Critical SEO Mistakes That Plugne Your Rankings
You want to get more organic traffic to your blog.
You keep on creating content, you maintain consistency, but what happens makes you go off:
NO matter what you do, you’re not getting consistent SEO traffic.
If you think you are doing everything correctly, you are wrong. You’re probably making some mistakes even might without knowing it.
In this article, I’ll highlight some SEO mistakes you might be making without even knowing.
And, how to fix each one.
Not Optimizing Your Content For Keyword
This could be a mistake you are making again and again.
See:
If you are not optimizing your content for a keyword, your content won’t rank for it.
You have to target a keyword and write content around it if you want to get found when people search for it. Try using some of the best keyword research strategies, to begin with.
A good way to check if you are going in the right direction is using the Yoast SEO plugin. Enter your target keyword in it, and it will tell you:
- Your target Keyword’s density
- Keyword’s presence in your content
- and the most important part – what’s wrong or missing.
Having A Slow Website
No one likes a slow web page and Google also hates them.
Having a slow web page is like slow poison. Here’s why:
- It ruins the user experience
- Increases bounce rate
- Encourages pogo-sticking
And does everything bad that gives Google a bad signal.
Using “Generic” Tags for Internal Links
Which one of the links give a better knowledge of linked content:
Most of you will say number 2.
Why?
Because it clearly shows what content is being linked to it an example of anchor text.
However, number 1 is an example of a “generic tag”. You link to content simply by using text like “read more” “click here” etc. to link too a web page.
That’s neither useful for users nor for search engines. It doesn’t add any value.
Creating Invaluable Content
Creating content isn’t enough for Google to rank you.
You need to create content that adds value.
Content marketing institute defines valuable content as:
- Findable
- Readable
- Understandable
- Actionable
- Shareable
Don’t create content that has no use.
If it’s not useful for people searching, Google won’t show it.
Avoiding SEO Audits
A website audit is highly beneficial for you, but only if you do it.
Stop avoiding SEO audits. You need to do at least one audit a month.
An SEO audit will tell you:
- The error on your pages
- Broken links across your site
- Duplicate title tags
- Missing title and meta descriptions
- The speed of your pages
- crawl and index status of your pages
Not Optimizing for Local Search
Over 50% of people do a local search every day.
97% of people performed a search online to find local businesses. That means demand for local results is sky-high.
If you ignore local search, you are missing to appear in 97% of the results that can potentially bring thousands of organic visitors to your website.
Not Optimizing for Voice Search
An estimated 1 billion of voice searches happen every month.
And voice search results are different from text search results. That means if you rank #1 for a text search, that doesn’t mean you would rank #1 for voice too.
It’s the most important time for you to start voice search optimization.
Ignoring SEO Copywriting
Copywriting is one thing, SEO copywriting is another.
Not every post you publish will rank if it is not structured well. SEO copywriting helps you optimize your content for your target audience.
But if you ignore that, your content will get less attention.
You’ve got to know how to structure your content by using smart copywriting techniques. Putting everything you know like an essay won’t make your readers stick to your content for long.
Neglecting Search Console & Analytics
Google search console and analytics are one of the best things that you have – but only if you use them.
Search console monitors your Google ranks, impressions, CTR and it tells you if some go wrong indexing your site.
Using the search console, you can check every detail that you need to get higher rankings in SERPs.
The same way Google analytics helps you monitor traffic on your website. It shows you data on how visitors interact on your site, where they come from and who they are.
If you won’t use them, you would never know what’s working and not.
Multimedia Quantity (And Quality)
Are you using images and videos in your content? Do you make your content interactive?
If your content is missing images completely or you rarely use them in between your text copy, you are actually making a huge mistake.
“Images speak a thousand words”. If you don’t use images in your content, your users would often get tired reading long paragraphs.
Images help your readers to understand a topic, a tutorial, or anything more clearly. Good for both SEO and your visitors.
Skipping Meta Title and Description Optimization
Meta title and description tend to have a huge impact on your rankings and CTR.
If you write a blog post that has a non-appealing headline, no one’s gonna read it. You should understand only 2 people out of 10 who see your post are gonna click through and read it.
Meta description and title are only two things visible everywhere – on social media, SERPs and so on.
If you won’t write a meta description and title that’s compelling, your rankings will drop because people don’t click on your result.
Not Optimizing for User Intent
One of the worst things you could do is ignoring User intent.
User intent is critical to making your content more relevant to your targeted audience.
Because when you optimize your content for intent – you are giving users what they want. That’s what makes your content more helpful.
Keyword cannibalization another mistake many bloggers make. Many times not knowingly so there’s a chance you may have done it too. Keyword cannibalization is when two pages from the same website compete to rank for a similar keyword. And that’s not a good case.
That’s all for now.
Now that you know what are the few mistakes you are making, what should you do?
Correct them. I’ve included a tip in every section and make sure you make use of it. You would also like to read about helpful on-page SEO tips.
What mistakes at SEO you were already making? How do you plan to avoid them in the future, and what are you doing now?
I think the trouble with SEO is that search engines are getting ever smarter and more sophisticated. So we cannot afford even a single mistake.