Table of Contents
So far there is no better traffic source than the search engines especially Google.
Even if you’re using paid traffic sources, one way or another they’re relying on search engines for their traffic network.
Search engines are getting better every day. We can see that with all the new updates that are constantly showing up.
Search engines are the best traffic sources because they offer targeted traffic, they show results for what people are searching for and it’s free traffic for everyone.
It’s going to cost you time and effort to optimize your web pages so that they’re indexed in the first page. Because it’s a free traffic source there is a fierce competition in almost every niche you can think of.
Most people don’t get any traffic from the search engines because they make a lot of SEO mistakes when optimizing their pages.
In this article, I’ll look at seven common SEO mistakes that can hurt your search engine rankings.
Targeting The Wrong Keywords
Most people target short keywords with high search volume with the hope that they’ll get massive traffic to their website.
You can use these keywords in your posts but they shouldn’t be your main target keywords. You need long-term keywords because they’re easier to rank and they’re more targeted. You can rank your posts easier with little to no optimization at all.
Targeting the wrong keywords is the first mistake most webmasters make when it comes to SEO optimization. Choose your keywords wisely and search for what your competitors are using and what they’re not using.
For keyword research, I recommend using Long Tail Pro which is a great keyword research tool.
Not Optimizing For Local Searches
Most people try to reach out to the whole world while knowing that it’s not going to be possible to reach the whole world.
The first way to start your optimization is by promoting and optimizing your website to local searches.
Include your business or website in “Google my business”. Local searches play an important role in your business or services.
To have your website or blog included in local searches you should include all your contact information. You should also include your website in local search directories, they’ll help generate more traffic for you.
Stuffing Your Pages With Too Much Keywords
Since the search engine robots use keywords to filter websites, a lot of people try to stuff their pages with excess keywords and that turns out to be a huge SEO mistake.
This trick worked in the past but now the search engines are way smarter than you think. Having content with filler keywords or content generated by article spinners will hurt your SEO efforts.
If you won’t have good content or have articles filled with too many keywords, your content will hardly get indexed in the search results, not even talking of ranking on the first page.
Stuffing pages with keywords is considered as spam by Google. Due to advances in technology it’s now easier for Google to spot any spam content.
Don’t fill your content or pages with excess keywords with the hope of getting traffic. Use keywords in a natural way and you’ll get much better results the white-hat way.
Weak Tags
You can use the right keywords in the article body and still get no results and that’s because you’re not using the right keyword tags.
You should use title tags, image tag, and meta description in every post you make.
You should also use the header tags. The search engine robots crawl your pages using these tags. If they’re not well optimized you’ll end up with low rankings.
Tags are not visible to your site visitors but are visible to search engine robots. You shouldn’t have the same title for different pages.
Include your main keywords in the Meta description tags for each page because that’s the small text which the search engines display when showing your website in their search results.
Image tags also should be used because they’ll help you get more traffic from image searches. Using image tags is the only way you can tell the search engines what the image is all about.
Slow Loading Time
Websites that load faster in the search engines rank higher than the slow ones. It’s a classic SEO mistake that many people overlook.
You should test your website loading speed to see how it’s doing. There are a lot of online tools that will allow you to do that. These are the one’s I suggest using (they’re all free):
Avoid using too much scripts and plug-ins on your website as they tend to decrease loading speed.
If your website doesn’t load fast, most visitors will abandon the site soon after visiting it for the first time.
Website loading speed is among the important factors used by Google to rank websites. Make sure your website loads within a few seconds. The average website shouldn’t take more than 3 seconds to load.
Sometimes it’s better to leave speed optimization for professionals. That’s why I suggest using Jeepy’s speed-optimization services. He does an excellent job at this.
Website Isn’t Mobile Friendly
Google has already released a statement that they’ll start giving more attention to mobile-optimized websites. If your website isn’t mobile-friendly, you’re losing a lot of mobile traffic and you’re losing the chance to get better rankings in search engines.
Your website designer has to design your website in such a way that it can display properly on desktop and on any mobile device.
You can also design a separate mobile website. A script will be placed on your desktop site and when a mobile device is detected the visitor is then redirected to the mobile version of the site.
Designing a mobile-friendly site is a must because mobile searches are nearly exceeding desktop, and mobile users exceed desktop users worldwide. By ignoring the mobile world it can affect your website traffic.
Ignoring Google Analytics
You need to get a full data report on your website performance and Google Analytics is the first free option everyone can use. Whether it’s a business website or personal blog you have to register with Google Analytics.
With Google Analytics you can understand how to optimize your pages better and see where your traffic is coming from. You can solve almost any problem your site has with the help of Google Analytics.
If you’re hiring an SEO expert to handle your website optimization you can monitor his activities properly.
I suggest checking out this video by Matthew Woodward on How To Use Google Analytics To Get More Traffic Today.
Conclusion
SEO is hard. It’s true. There are countless factors on how to optimize websites for search engine visibility. That’s why it’s important to avoid the typical SEO mistakes.
If you liked this article then read my guide on How to Increase Website Traffic.
And now I’d like to hear from you:
Do you have any questions? Or maybe you have a cool tip that I didn’t include here?
Either way, let me know by leaving a comment below right now!
