Biggest SEO Mistakes to Avoid

While enhancing your search engine visibility, some blunders can affect your SEO success.     

SEO demand and opportunities are increasing with time. It holds special significance in the current digital landscape.

According to digital marketing experts, by 2024,

the size of the SEO market will reach around $1.9 billion. 

So, you cannot afford to keep repeating the common SEO mistakes because it is now the mainstream channel for content marketing and overall digital marketing practices.

It would be best if you stayed on your toes to adapt to the latest changes and trends per Google’s algorithm update. Also, you have to prioritise the user search intent to create your content accordingly.

Although it is challenging to stay on top of the most successful optimisation strategies, and if you have not done it the right way, you have to bear the headache of fixing issues from scratch.

Here is a complete guide of SEO mistakes to avoid in 2021 that will help you to understand and identify the issues and to fix them.

SEO Mistake 1 to Avoid

Not Considering Search Intent

Search intent is the intent behind the user search. You should be able to satisfy this intent by providing a solution through your website and may write top-quality and helpful content. However, if you are not targeting it in the right way, it is useless. It will add zero value to your SEO efforts if people do not find your website helpful.   

You may know your target audience, but you are missing out on the trick if you are not considering the search intent.      

Put yourself in the searchers' shoes to understand what they are thinking. It will help you to answer their queries. Let’s say if a user is looking for the term “Digital Marketing” on Google; it shows the intent of the user who wants to know what digital marketing is. This means that if your content is not relevant to google user search intent, you will not be selected by the bots for their SERPs

But if a user is searching for “Digital Marketing Services,” it means they want to hire a digital marketing expert or company, as you can see that both keywords “Digital Marketing” and “Digital Marketing Services” have different intents.

So, if you are targeting the keyword “Digital Marketing Services” and providing the information related to “What is Digital Marketing,” you can not succeed with this type of content. You have to satisfy the intent behind the particular search phrase, or else there is no point in creating content that is not fulfilling the user intent.

SEO Mistake 2 to Avoid

Targeting Irrelevant Keywords

Keyword relevancy is one of the significant parts of SEO. It is essential to optimise relevant keywords on each website page. This also has more to do with the search intent, as discussed above, but If you are targeting irrelevant keywords for your website, you are just making it difficult for search engines to trace what the page is about.

It can cost you ranking opportunities, so you have to be vigilant in your approach as it is one of the vital SEO mistakes to avoid.

If you target the keyword “Digital Marketing Services” for your SEO services page, will it add any value to your page?

NOT AT ALL

SEO is a sub-element of digital marketing, but you need to target the relevant keywords that fit your SEO service. Irrelevant keywords will do nothing good for the SEO of your website. When optimising keywords for relevancy, you have to ensure that you are integrating them in the right place.

You need to utilise certain places to increase your relevancy score and rank better in search results; please use heading tags properly, meta description, title tag, URL, main content body, and alt tags.

SEO Mistake 3 to Avoid

Ignoring Google Suggestions

Experts try their best daily to win the SEO battle, but they miss the critical trick, ignoring the user's suggestions of Google. These are the suggestions of key phrases that people are mainly searching for. 

So, if you ignore these suggestions, you are not doing justice to improving your search engine visibility. , Think about it, when you are searching for something, how often do you plan to click on the suggestion google is providing you instead of writing the whole phrase. This means you might be on the top for most keywords, but there are no clicks and leads. So guess what? These suggestions are most likely to be sales converting keywords. 

Let’s say if you are looking for “SEO Techniques,” then it will give you a suggestion like this:

As you can see, the suggested keywords above are “SEO techniques and tools,” “SEO techniques 2020,” and so on. These suggestions should be your preferred keywords if you want to write a blog post on SEO techniques. It will help you drive traffic to your website faster. 

Once you optimise these keywords according to the Google suggestion, you will have a better chance to put any effort into the more rewarded keywords. 

So, if you ignore these Google suggestions, you are losing the people you want to drive on your website. 

SEO Mistake 4 to Avoid

Going Without a Proper SEO Roadmap

You may know everything about your audience, but it is of no use unless you are not utilising it to build actionable strategies. Creating a proper SEO plan is the key to success.

Although not every plan does not have to work, you must stay focused on creating top-quality content according to your target market needs by building proper On-page and Off-page SEO strategies to determine you from the clutter. Frankly, invest in custom website design.

You don't need to dig deep down to analyse your competitors' ranking, content, keywords, and overall performance. Use your strategies and content. The main thing is to be unique. If you start copying your competitors, you will never be beating them. Try breaking down tasks and set goals for yourself. You should have a clear vision of what you want to achieve with your content and keep a closer look at search engine updates.

Find the technological tools or platforms to streamline your workflow and positively impact goes. In short, a solid SEO plan is a blueprint for your success in the current digital landscape.

SEO Mistake 5 to Avoid

Not Leveraging the Power of Social Media

You need to level up your social media game to enhance your content worth or attain better website traffic. You are missing out on the trick if you are not active on social media platforms. We use social media to drive traffic to our website. This helps Google identify your website to be crawled. 

According to top SEO experts, social media signals significantly impact the website’s ranking. You need to use it the right way.

There is no need to stay active on all social media platforms. You have to target those platforms where your audience has the most reach. Build credibility in your target audience’s eyes by posting helpful content to resolve their issues.

SEO Mistake 6 to Avoid

Poorly Crafted Content

One of the biggest SEO mistakes is creating irrelevant content that is not well-targeted toward your target market. Google provides the most relevant content to its users for a particular search item.

Content needs to be different not in terms of plagiarism but in giving users new knowledge on the subject. So, if you want to rank on a particular keyword, you have to focus on the user’s needs, or else there is no chance to rank well. If content quality is not up to the mark, and you are just doing it to add keywords, then it will not pay you off. Trust our SEO strategies in 2022 are primarily about great content. So our suggestion is to invest in great writers that have a piece of relevant domain knowledge. 

It would help if you aimed to produce content that answers the queries of your potential customers that includes the relevant search terms. It helps search engines track your content by matching the optimised keyword. But you must ensure that your SEO and content strategies are aligned with the roadmap you created earlier.

Duplicate content is another major issue that occurs in SEO. Google penalises this approach that hurts your website badly. Posting plagiarised content on your website will take you nowhere as it is considered a spammy practice. Misleading readers will harm your website's credibility, so you have to build meaningful and original content.  Whether it is SEO spelling mistakes or grammatical, you cannot compromise on the quality of content. Doing proper research will help you follow Google's best practices, eventually allowing you to craft top-notch and well-optimized content.

Start with writing captivating headlines that complement your selected topic effectively. Create engaging stories with the help of images and videos that fulfil the readers' purpose of visiting your website.

SEO Mistake 7 to Avoid

Slow Loading Website

You are committing a crime if you are not utilising page speed as a beneficial factor.

You cannot ignore the issue of slow loading websites as it affects your user frustration, brand recognition, and much more. Remember, slow websites are based on two factors in our experience. Number 1 - your website load is heavy 2. Hosting is always the culprit. Try investing in excellent hosting services. 

The ideal load time of a website page is 3 to 5 seconds. Just think about it will you wait for the website that is taking too long to load?

Obviously, no, correct?

If the issue persists, your website will stop getting clicks, views, and leads, eventually creating a disastrous situation for your website's search engine visibility.  A fast-loading website will significantly impact traffic and ideas, ultimately strengthening your website position.

Let’s say you are running ads on the website. Then you require a fast and smooth running website to generate more ad revenue and ad clicks. The best way to fix slow-loading website issues is to do a complete audit and identify what is slowing it down. It could be an unoptimised image or the cluttered code that is putting an extra burden on your website. You can also consider Google PageSpeed Insights to understand better your website speed and the causes of its slowness.

SEO Mistake 8 to Avoid

Not Knowing your Target Audience

Understanding your audience is an integral part of SEO. Most experts think they already know their audience, but that is not the case.

You need to understand consumer behaviour to make decisions accordingly and clearly. Having complete historical data on your target market provides valuable insights and allows you to build results-driven strategies. Prioritise Prioritiseyou decide what particular terms your customers use to find your products and services. It would help if you prioritised the customer's perspective.

Analyse the current market trends to know the consumer's preferences. By doing this, you will be able to understand consumer intent and form a better keyword selection strategy. 

SEO Mistake 9 to Avoid

Not Paying Attention to Mobile-Friendly Experience

You are sadly mistaken if you think that SEO is solely a game of content and keywords. It also involves factors like how your website performs on other devices, and you cannot afford any negligence in this case. The majority of online users access websites through mobile phones. The statistical study shows that by 2025 around 73% of internet users will view websites through mobile phones.

It means you can miss a large number of traffic, views, and leads if your website is not mobile responsive.

So, you must consider this SEO mistake to avoid a poor user experience on mobile phones.

Google can easily recognise if your website is not mobile-friendly.

To attain a smooth mobile experience, you must remember the following key points.

• Fast loading images and videos.
• No block files.
• Responsive web design.
• Good website load time to improve bounce rate.
• Create mobile-centric search strategies to reach consumers efficiently.

Summing It Up

SEO is a fundamental part of today’s content marketing strategy. Best people in business also make mistakes, but it’s better to understand and harness yourself with the right tools to counter SEO issues. Hopefully, the errors mentioned above will make your SEO journey more convenient and help you attain your desired online results.

You can learn from your worst SEO mistakes to overcome the challenges in today’s highly competitive environment. But committing these mistakes, again and again, will be like suicide for your online presence.