Seven SEO Mistakes You Can’t Afford To Make

Read about the most common SEO mistakes and how you can avoid them.

On face value, do it yourself (DIY) Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) may save you money but online marketing should be seen as investment not a cost. With a lot of businesses a website may be your main sales funnel – if it is penalised by Google and drops in its rankings, you may find that your online revenue drops significantly as well. Here are seven of the common SEO mistakes a small business can make.

Targeting the wrong keywords

This is one of the more common SEO mistakes that a company can make – choosing the right keywords can make or break a campaign. Often new business start ups like to chase after ‘trophy’ and short-tail keywords that have a lot of competition such as ‘Sydney gyms’ but may neglect longer tail keywords such as ‘Women only gyms: Inner West’. This is just one of the common keyword mistakes that companies can fall prey to.

Your website is image-heavy and text-light

A common problem is that websites can have a lot of images and little text. Alternatively, you may have text on the page but your website is developed on a technical platform that isn’t Search Engine-friendly such as Flash. This makes it harder for robots to crawl over the pages and index your site. It also makes it very difficult for an SEO consultant to optimise your website – there needs to be a workable balance between images and text.

Your site has no back links

If you are optimising your own website, you may be conversant with on-page optimisation but you may be unfamiliar with off-page optimisation. One of the most important elements of SEO is your link building profile. Search Engines see links back to your website as a validation or ‘vote’ for your website. But don’t fall for another of the common link building mistakes – the websites need to be relevant, trustworthy and credible.

Hard to use content management system (CMS)

The wrong choice of CMS can thwart your SEO efforts and that’s why it’s ideal that an SEO expert is consulted at the start of the website design process if possible to help you choose a SEO-friendly CMS and technical platform. With the right CMS you can create keyword-rich URLs, customise the title tags and meta data, edit the anchor text for links, easily add, edit and delete content and so much more.

Forgetting about conversion

SEO has evolved from being just all about rankings – one of the most common SEO mistakes is to just look at your rankings and lose focus on conversion. Developing your keyword portfolio is only one part of the optimisation puzzle – SEO is a holistic online marketing strategy. You need to look at the optimisation of your landing pages, the quality of copywriting and your website design to convert visits into sales.

No SEO maintenance

There is no end date with Search Engine Optimisation. You may have contracted an SEO company to work with you on the optimisation of your website but whether you choose to go on a maintenance plan or take your SEO in-house, it will require ongoing attention. Your rankings will not fall overnight but if you want to keep ahead of your competitors, you will need to be diligent about the continual optimisation of your site.

Ignoring your SEO consultant

You have taken the time to research SEO companies and employ an SEO consultant so it stands to reason that you should try and take onboard their recommendations and make the suggested changes to your site. If you go against their advice or try and optimise your site without telling your SEO expert, you are only potentially sabotaging your own SEO efforts and throwing your hard-earned cash away in the process.

If your business and website has grown and developed well beyond DIY SEO then it may be time to hire a professional SEO consultant. Contact us to find out more about SEO Works which is a branch of Internet Intelligence Works and dedicated to Search Engine Optimisation. SEO Works has a team of experts available to analyse your existing website, identify any potential problems and avoid any potential costly SEO mistakes.

Here at iiWorks our internet marketing consultants bring together leading edge, best practice web design, the best SEO company services, innovative social media marketing strategies, practical web conversion tactics and more, for segments ranging from banking and finance to professional services to the highly competitive hotel and travel online marketing space.

Our internet marketing plans, strategies and tactics deliver a cohesive solution that works, on time and on budget, increasing your web traffic, lead generation and conversion to create significant online revenue growth – Contact Us today in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane or San Francisco – we’re here to help you grow…

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