These common SEO mistakes are crippling your website’s otential

In our fast-paced digital world where the ever-changing SEO rules and regulations govern the way we create content, it’s easy to get lost in the scram to make it to top rank. Often enough, marketers can be misguided through lack of experience, and the company website can suffer crippling consequences — making SEO mistakes and damaging it unprecedented ways.

Making top-rank tier, of course, is the big VIP treatment any website wants. SEO focus is central to the majority of traffic-bound campaigns, since it’s the most cost-effective solution to get noticed on Google. It’s most marketers’ cardinal strategy for brand awareness, new leads, and search to sales conversions. But noting down a few SEO tips  isn’t enough. Mastering the strategy and implementation process is something that can take months of trial and error. Any effective marketer will know that ideally it should be an active, rolling campaign if you want to acquire true ranking success.

So, now you know just how important SEO implementation is, what should you not be doing?

1. Keyword stuffing

Over-using keywords on a single page, otherwise known as ‘keyword stuffing’, is easily picked up by smart algorithms specifically designed to track it. It’s a common underhand method used by copywriters to try and rank higher, but it’s also known as ‘black hat’ tactic that could cost you hefty penalizations from most search engines. It’s one of the most common SEO mistakes even though a few years ago it used to be considered fair game and you wouldn’t be chastised for it, there have been several recent cases of high-profile businesses losing SERPs (search engine results page) for several days as a result. Instead, your keyword density should be a friendly 2-5% mixed with exceptional content that boosts the user’s overall experience of the product.

2. Using the wrong keywords

If, on the other hand, you’re totally unfamiliar with which keywords you should be using in the first place, you’re again jeopardizing your chances for higher rank by selecting ineffective keywords. It’s worth taking time to investigate what your consumers are looking for to avoid that. Semantic keyword is a relatively new keywording approach, which essentially looks to determine the user’s contextual intent when using a search engine to find something. Google’s Keyword tools and Insight tools are excellent devices to help you examine the popularity of searches relating to your company to help you choose the right keywords for your audience and market.

Remember, the SEO landscape is constantly in flux based on changing algorithms and different search methods that are continually developing. So that means your keywords need to be routinely tested and reviewed, otherwise you’ll still get lost in the race because of keywords you determined over two years ago.

3. Skipping meta descriptions

Creating content without adding meta descriptions for individual links is kind of making a cake without putting it in the oven. It’s simply not enough to just make a page – you need to add descriptions for what you’re about to read based on a search. Meta descriptions are important for Google to use as website analysis or summary for search results in snippets, as long as the search engine believes that it is an accurate synopsis of the page. So, the more accurate and well-written description, the bigger chance of being displayed. Meta descriptions also display with searched keywords highlighted in bold, so incorporating your targeted keywords will help to further spotlight your search result to potential visitors.

4. Not being mobile friendly

Not only could not having a mobile-friendly site hinder the stream of visitors coming to your website via their smartphones, but search engines such as Google will penalize you for it too. As of 2015, Google started to actively highlight mobile sites to mobile users, introducing their mobile-friendly test which allows you to see whether or not your site meets those criteria.

Yes, website redesign takes a lot of work. But right now, an estimated 60% of all searches performed through Google are performed via a mobile device. A mobile site would therefore have the potential to double your organic search traffic, proving another way to land you a top result whenever someone searches for you on their smartphone. As long as you find the right resources to create responsive frameworks, ideally an experienced UX designer, redesigning your site to boost your SEO rank will be worth it in the long run. Check out our case study section for our digital projects that carry responsive design which have proven to boost SERP rank.