What’s your worst fear? For us digital marketing experts, it’s scary SEO scenarios: missing logins, broken links, low rankings, and—gasp—bad content! This Halloween, check out some of the worst SEO mistakes you can make and how to avoid them.
Avoid These Scary SEO Scenarios This Halloween
There’s nothing more frightening than a digital marketing campaign that’s missing certain strategies or goals. Some things like missing login information for a WordPress site may be out of a digital marketer’s control, but most other problems have a solution. Check out some of the most easily-avoidable SEO mishaps keeping us up at night.
Bad user experience
SEO is all about impressing the Google Bots, but it’s mostly about providing Internet users with the answers and solutions they’re looking for. That starts with user experience. If your site has a bad user experience, people are less likely to stay. If you ask us SEO nerds what we’re scared of, we’ll probably answer, “high bounce rate.”
Avoid these scary SEO scenarios by improving your slow site speed. The faster the site, the more likely Google will give your site authority. Use Google PageSpeed Insights to check your website’s speed. It’ll suggest areas to improve, like optimizing images and getting rid of plugins you don’t need.
The next part of good user experience is making your site mobile-friendly. Google is starting to prioritize websites that are mobile-optimized, since most users scroll the Web with their phones now, anyway. Meaning, if your site isn’t optimized for mobile, it’s likely you won’t be able to rank on Google. Use Google’s Mobile Friendly Test to check your site.
Last, fix the broken links and other HTTP errors on your site. It’s almost a no-brainer, really. If your site looks broken, users will leave.
No keyword optimization
The next of our scary SEO scenarios is lacking a good keyword strategy. Too many businesses attempt to rank for the wrong keywords. Do your research, and choose the right keywords for each page on your site. Avoid those that are too generic, and instead, shoot for specific, long tail phrases that are more relevant to your industry. Try to find keywords that don’t have too much competition.
Also, remember search intent, or the reason users are searching:
- Is your target audience looking for an answer to a question or problem?
- Are they looking to buy a specific product?
- Are they trying to find your location?
Unsuccessful content strategy
One of the worst SEO mistakes you can make is forgoing content strategy and writing bad content. Marketing is all about strategy, having a goal, and creating the steps to reach that goal. What are you looking to achieve with your marketing campaign? What does your audience want from your company?
High-quality content means you should write at least 300 words on each page, and those words should have a purpose. Google wants to give users valuable content—meaning content that answers user queries. The Google Gods will give ranking authority to those pages with original, valuable, easily-consumable content.
Also, content distribution is key. If you create good content, but there’s no distribution and no one to read it, did you really create good content? Share your content on many platforms like social media, syndication sources, guest blogging, and more to reach your target audience. You can also encourage your readers to share your content by adding social share buttons on your site.
Missing call to action
Many companies make many on-page SEO mistakes, like forgetting to direct their audience to convert. Without a clear call to action, there’s no guarantee your audience will do what you want them to. Keep users on your site by creating calls to action to encourage people to click through your site. Invitations to buy a product, sign up for a newsletter or service, or just read more information about your company are great places to start. You should have a clear call to action on every page.
Misunderstanding your target audience
Another one of our scary SEO scenarios is wasting a marketing budget by trying to market to everyone. Instead, you should focus on just the people in your target audience. Create buyer personas, and study the demographics on Facebook Insights and Google Analytics. Find out who is already engaging with your brand, and continue to market to that demographic. The idea is to target the people who are most likely to engage with you and convert into a customer.
No SEO Mishaps Over Here!
There are no spooky SEO mistakes going on here at Post Launch. Our web presence marketing services only use the best practices for each of our clients’ campaigns. Contact us today to learn how we’ve enhanced many business’s web presence.
