The 14 Most Common Mistakes in SEO

It goes without saying that SEO is the fundamental element in making a website more visible on the net. Despite this universally accepted aphorism in the world of the wide web, people still make some very basic errors that can negatively affect their organic ranking. Here are 14 common mistakes that you should do your best to avoid (at all costs):

1. Not using the free tools at your disposal

Tools such as Google Trends, or Google AdWords Keyword Tool allow you to find accurate and pertinent keywords, as well as identifying “negative keywords”. The latter are those that aren’t relevant to your business and therefore won’t influence your organic ranking. In addition, such tools allow you to create organised and actionable data that will help you optimise your website in the best possible way.

2. Not using enough anchor texts

Anchor text can most easily be described as the “clickable” text in a hyperlink. It gives search engines an indication of the theme the linked page covers. In this area in particular, you’ll need to carefully choose the most appropriate keywords to underline.
For example, rather than publishing a link as: http://www.mediateo.com/4-reasons-to-use-facebook-live-for-your-business/
Your anchor text will be: Facebook Live Business

3. Focusing on few keywords

You need to find the right balance between too many keywords and not enough. It is important that you think about your primary keywords, the ones that people usually look for on search engines, but you’ll also need to target and use the secondary keywords, which will be closely related.

4. Thinking quantity and not quality

You must always remember that in the world of SEO publishing a small article every day will be less likely to be picked up than publishing a longer and more in-depth article every 2 days.

5. Forgetting about your older content… content is for life, not just for Christmas

Throughout the years you’ve most likely produced a great deal of content, which you published and publicised, and which now sits deep within the cobweb-filled archives of your website. Nothing prevents you from keeping your articles up-to-date by editing and republishing them every once in a while. It an easy way to keep your social media platforms active and alive, and what is more, it’s your own content that you’re raising from the dead. Spooky.

6. Not including appropriate external links

If you present your users with quality external links, they will be grateful and will feel that you really care about how good your content is. Your credibility will be recognised by search engines and internet users from here to Kathmandu.

7. Not optimising your visuals/images

In terms of design, user experience and organic ranking, images and visuals hold a good deal of importance. You can use relevant keywords to label them or using them to link back to your website.

8. Not publishing “unique content”

If you want to write a new article, don’t reuse a text that already exists in another part of your site. Even if it only comes to 5 lines within a 1000-word text, search engines will pick up on it and this can be surprisingly debilitating in terms of your organic ranking. Rather than simply duplicating content, try to rephrase it and take the opportunity to create an internal hyperlink that redirects visitors to the original page that spoke of this same topic. The links you create will mean that search engines will crawl through your website more quickly and efficiently, meaning that the relevant audience will find you with greater ease.

9. Forgetting your social media platforms

Google is the internet’s most widely used search engine. No surprises there. But you shouldn’t forget that other search engines exist too. Even on your social media platforms you have search bars that constitute search engines in and of themselves. For example, on Facebook, it is important to create a description of your business and to use appropriate keywords for it.

10. Forgetting about the URL

If your URL is too long, this could be a hindrance to your organic ranking. You must adapt it and select the most appropriate keywords ensuring it is easily readable for both the human eye and search engine algorithms.

11. Not thinking about quality backlinks

Obtaining quality backlinks that redirect to your website will increase its visibility and its ranking on search engines. Why not, for example, create partnerships with other companies so that they publish links towards some of your sites, while in exchange offering to do the same for them?

12. Creating too many tags or sections

It is a good idea to divide your article or your content by category. The consumer experience will be more enjoyable as a result. However, if you have a lot of tags and some of them only contain 1 or 2 articles, search engines will identify your content as insufficient and it may bear negative consequences on your organic ranking.

13. Not being mobile-friendly

Today a lot of people use the internet via their phone. You must adapt your content to be increasingly mobile-friendly because if it’s not mobile-adapted and the user experience is disappointing you will be penalised by search engines.

14. Not caring about your content’s organisation

Google analyses the structure of your content. It is important to think about how your articles are structured. It is bad to write a text that is difficult for your visitors to read. It can put your audience off, as internet users want to find and understand information as easily and enjoyably as possible. Moreover, as we said before, if the user experience is unpleasant on mobile, it can negatively influence your organic ranking.

The SEO process requires some patience and a certain amount of skill and attention to detail, but once you are used to it, improving your organic ranking will become progressively easier and these tips will end up just being a reflex.

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