With more businesses moving into the digital space, competition for organic traffic has increased, and now those companies are trying to outplay each other in terms of ranking on search engines.
Countless internet users browse for products each day, so it’s safe to say that the higher your business ranks on search engine results pages (SERPs), the higher your chances of closing sales and gaining profits.
Of course, more traffic doesn’t necessarily translate to more sales, but it’s a major factor in getting conversions.
Some businesses have taken advantage of search engine optimization (SEO) to rank ahead of the rest, and they’re benefiting from it.
Meanwhile, others have made several SEO mistakes, and this has negatively affected their operations as it has become difficult for buyers to find them.
Fortunately, SEO errors aren’t permanent and can be remedied at any time. With the help of SEO specialists or any agency that provides white label SEO service, you can get your business website back to where you want it to be.
Here are some of the SEO mistakes you might unknowingly be committing and how to correct them:
1. Messy URL Structures
Some businesses don’t put too much effort into their URL structure, which is often a grave SEO mistake.
A URL tells search engines what your page is about, and a good one would make it easy for your site to rank on the keywords that potential and existing customers are searching for.
A messy URL structure doesn’t include keywords that have to do with the page it leads to.
When visitors come across the web address, they won’t know what the page is all about right away.
Even when the keyword is added to it, it may contain stop words, which add no value to the ranking and only makes the URL longer, which negatively affects ranking.
Such mistakes should be avoided or remedied if you’ve been making them. Here are some ways to correct a messy web address:
- Include keywords in your URL but remove any stop words such as ‘the,’ ‘and,’ and ‘or.’
- Make your URL short so it becomes effortless for search engines to point to the website and for clients to quickly get a gist of what your website is all about.
Applying these remedies to your business website will do the trick. This is especially important for websites that use plugins and need customization in the default URL settings.
2. Lack Of Proper Keywords
Keywords are words or phrases that clients use to search for products, services, and articles online.
One keyword can’t be deemed more ‘correct’ than another since people can use different phrases depending on their location.
However, your business can fail to do keyword research and end up using general phrases that are hard to rank on.
Also, without knowing what their clients are likely looking for, you wouldn’t know how to phrase your content to suit their searches.
Those problems can be fixed in the following ways:
- Conduct thorough keyword research to know which phrases you have a chance to rank on. There are free and premium tools available to help you with this task.
- Avoid general keywords or those used by businesses with higher authority because they’ll surely outrank you.
- Check customer feedback, comments, and questions to identify the phrases they choose when looking for your products, and use them as your keywords.
Using the right keywords in your topics, URL, and content ensures that search engines will lead buyers to your website whenever they search those phrases.
3. Lack Of Consistent And Authentic Content
For your website to achieve a good ranking, it has to be active and contain authentic content, which should also be uploaded regularly.
The problem is that most businesses fail to adhere to this, and they either post content that isn’t useful to their clients or is unoriginal, or they don’t post content in a consistent manner.
When you commit such mistakes, your traffic decreases because there’s no new or fresh content for your visitors to see.
Moreover, they can leave negative feedback about your website if your posts are outdated, and this I’ll negatively impact your ranking.
To remedy those issues, here are some of the things you should consider:
- Upload user-generated content, which is any form of content created by customers who’ve tried your product or requested your service. This particular type of content is usually fresh and authentic, and users provide them regularly. It gives your content team something to upload if you don’t have any new material to post. Also, since it comes from a fellow customer, your audience will more likely trust any good feedback it contains.
- Improve collaboration between your teams that interact with clients at different levels, such as marketing and customer care support, to know what kind of content your target audience is interested in.
4. Downplaying Social SEO
Social SEO is the traffic attributed to social media platforms. Traffic comes when people on those sites click through an advert or a link. Social SEO is important because with higher traffic comes a higher ranking.
What’s more, social media sites give customers a chance to comment on your business, hence providing relevant feedback as well as content for your website.
More people in the world today use social media to interact with businesses, so you should also direct your focus and resources to your social media pages.
Unfortunately, this isn’t as common of a practice as it should be since some businesses downplay the role of social media in ranking.
Here are some ways to fix mistakes in your social SEO:
- Create an engaging social media page that allows people to communicate with your business. Your social media manager should also be engaging in order to retain customers in your business.
- Promote your social media adverts to reach more people. With more visitors to your site through social media, you’ll have better social SEO and eventually a better ranking.
5. Unresponsive Pages
Page responsiveness is the ability of your business web pages to appear and work properly on different devices. A good website should be responsive to mobile gadgets and computers alike because it benefits your SEO.
Building a page that only responds to computers and not phones or tablets will cause you to miss out on attracting numerous visitors because most individuals browse or use the internet on mobile devices.
It could frustrate visitors who don’t have desktop or laptop computers, leading to higher bounce-off rates that directly affect your ranking. To remedy that, try these tips:
- Create a website that can display well on whatever device is used to access it. You can hire a professional website builder so you can be sure that you’ll get an outcome that’s responsive.
- Conduct test cycles when developing the website to ensure that it’s suitable for all devices.
Conclusion
SEO is crucial to any business as it helps generate organic traffic that can eventually be converted into sales.
Though most businesses try to optimize their pages, other common mistakes can be committed that lead to poor ranking.
Fortunately, those can be fixed by identifying them and trying any of the appropriate tips above.
