By Andrew Oziemblo, Founder & CEO of Chicago SEO Geeks, the digital marketing & SEO agency helping businesses achieve long-term growth goals.
It does not matter what sort of business you run – whether it is an accounting firm, a cake store, or anything else – you need to invest in search engine optimization If you do not use SEO to your advantage, you are going to struggle to make an impression online. However, the problem today is that a lot of people are not implementing SEO correctly. So, with that being said, read on to discover some of the top SEO mistakes to avoid in 2019.
Not researching customer questions – You should not forget to address key questions. What sorts of questions will trigger a search for your keywords? When visitors are looking for the sort of product or service you have to offer, what sort of questions are they going to ask before they feel comfortable making a purchase from you? By establishing this, you can answer these questions so that you can make sure that your target consumer base can easily find you when they conduct a search online.
Falling behind on SEO trends – Search engine optimization is not going to end up obsolete in the near future. When you consider the fact that the SEO landscape is changing all the time, the biggest mistake small business owners make is sticking to the same SEO marketing strategy all of the time. They view SEO as a one-time, rather than viewing it as something that needs to be addressed on a continual basis. You need to make certain that your company is being found through all of the different channels that are prevalent online, for example, trends at the moment include voice search.
Creating content specifically for algorithms – Finding mistakes requires focused attention on what is working and what is not. You need to stop building for algorithms. Your strategy should see the big picture. You need to make sure that you are producing quality content, which is designed with your target user in mind. Gone are the days where you would simply create poor quality content that was filled with keywords. This simply does not work anymore.
Buying backlinks – There are still, sadly, a lot of small company owners that buy backlinks. What a lot of people do not recognize is that you are usually going to be purchasing huge amounts of backlinks from sites that have been flagged. This will not help to enhance your search engine ranking because Google does not like that. You need to earn your backlinks today; it is not as easy as simply purchasing them and expecting to get to the top of Google. It requires more work than this. Your links must be features on sites with high authority that have quality traffic.
Placing key text in images instead of on the page – It is easy to make something look good in an image instead of actually having to code the effects around the text. The issue here is that search algorithms cannot read the text inside of the images when they are looking for text. Text is such a critical part of your website and you are going to need it on your page to get indexed. This is why it is important to make sure the key text is actually placed on the images and not placed on the page alone.
Not running frequent website audits – An audit will review the performance of your website from the point of view of your client and from the point of view of the search engine. How quickly does the mobile version of your website launch? Is relevant information easy to find? Is your website user-friendly? Careful examination will reveal different ways to enhance your site. You will figure out what is working and what is not. An audit looks at content quality, the checkout process, loading speed, search engine optimisation, and a lot more.
Overlooking Meta descriptions and page titles – There are far too many times that people simply put “home” for their page title. Adding meta descriptions and fixing your page titles are such an easy thing to fix and it is critical for SEO. The vast majority of CMS systems have the ability to change this by default. However, small business owners tend to overlook this when they are building a website.
Only concentrating on on-site SEO – A lot of companies still think that SEO is just done on their site. While optimising your site is a key component to ranking, you cannot forget about the off-site strategies either. This is imperative for all businesses; you need to create engaging content for other sites. You need to make sure that you set aside some time every month to getting content placed on other sites that have links pointing to your site and are keyword rich.
Ignoring your ‘Google My Business’ listing – Last but not least, one major mistake that a lot of business owners are guilty of is ignoring their Google My Business listing. Google is placing greater importance on ‘near me’ searches nowadays. Because of this, your Google My Business listing is the perfect opportunity for any small business to claim their location, providing all of the information and answers to queries that come in.
Hopefully, you now have a better understanding of the common search engine optimisation mistakes that a lot of business owners tend to make. If you are currently guilty of making any of the errors that have been mentioned, there is no need to panic. However, you do need to make an effort to ensure you rectify these issues and don’t make these errors anymore. Use the advice that has been provided so that you can get your search engine optimisation efforts back on the right track again.