Not getting traffic to website you were hoping for? Beginners to SEO (Search Engine Optimization) make many mistakes either they are not aware of some facts or they don’t understand them correctly. Google is on the mission to give quality and relevance to the search queries. So, it’s very important to ensure that your website’s basic structure is in compliance with the updated Google webmaster guidelines.
Here, we talk about the most common 8 SEO mistakes webmasters make, and we suggest ways to boost traffic to your website.
1. Targeting wrong keywords and stuffing your content with keywords
The most common mistake webmasters make is the wrong selection of keywords. With wrong keywords, you can miss valuable opportunities and gain traffic that won’t convert into successful leads. Also, do not overuse the keywords. Generally, it’s a good practice to maintain about a 5% usage for your keywords. You can also use Google keyword tool to get an indication of what queries searches use to find you. By including such keywords in your article or page, you can make it easy for visitors and search engines to trace you. Focus on optimal keyword density and make content informative and educative.
2. Building The Wrong Links
Creating cleverly phrased anchor text links is a coveted skill in SEO. Don’t pay for links for Google updated its algorithm to Penguin. You need to make sure that you create quality links naturally that search engines will respect and use in their ranking system. Also, building links to your website on the same keywords can harm your online reputation. For example, don’t overuse links for your home page. Google’s Distinguished Engineer Matt Cutts said, “I wouldn’t put too much of a tunnel vision focus on just links.” “I would try to think instead about what I can do to market my website to make it more well-known within my community, or more broadly, without only thinking about search engines,” he added.
3. Unreasonable SEO expectations
Gone are the days of easy tactics that exploited loopholes in the algorithms. Today, you need to define metrics for success, implement improvement and measure the impact of those improvements in your business activities. An important step is to prioritize improvements depending on market and personnel. Now, you have to spend time, money and resources to be great, and then you can be successful at SEO.
4. Poor image optimization
Adding images and other multimedia assets is a good way to attract visitors to your website. But, if you are not using alt and title tags with image-related keywords, search engines will not boost up the ranking. Thus, an easy way to make search engines understand your images is via the alt-attribute along with a good file name.
5. Not Using Google Webmaster Tools
One of the top SEO mistakes is not using webmaster tools. It is a no-charge web service that allows you to check indexing status of your websites. It includes tools that let you check your site’s health for potential issues, understand your search traffic and make optimization to help Google better understand your website.
6. Poor Site Structure
When creating a website, often web developers do not integrate best SEO practices into the website structure. Google tends to penalize websites that have many ads. So, try to keep the website clean and don’t use annoying pop-ups.
7. Ignore target audience
When optimizing a website, you need to make sure that you keep the audience in mind. Make use of language that your audience uses and understands.
8. Lack of maintenance
Not updating a website regularly also comes in the category of common SEO mistakes. If you are not updating it regularly, Google will ignore you. As a rule of thumb, you should add approximately 25% pages to your website on yearly basis. From the point of readers, it will also give them a reason to come back and read new stuff on your website.
Conclusion and Final Words
If your website is not ranking high in Google, make sure that you are not doing the mistakes mentioned above. The success of SEO is all about generating good quality and value added content along with a clear navigation and site structure.