7 Common SEO Mistakes You Should Avoid to Improve Organic Traffic

Do you know over 200 factors are used in the Google algorithm for ranking websites? Are you aware of all those factors? Well, we know it is hard to cover them all every time.

Search Quality Senior Strategist of Google (Andrey Lipattsev) said that links, content, and RankBrain are the topmost 3 factors of Google search results.

Actually, there are more SEO sectors that lead your site to the first page of any search engine. In fact, a little mistake can cost a lot sometimes. Whether you are a developer, SEO consultant, or simply an online site owner you should aware of these basic SEO factors indeed.

Let’s check out the SEO mistakes we have listed below very carefully. Who knows, maybe you have also done mistakes unintentionally that lowers your ranking on the search engine.

The insight is based on some popular SEO expert’s experience and industry knowledge.

7 Common SEO Mistakes You Should Care About

Good SEO Is Paying Attention to All the Details That Most Bloggers Ignore.

– Ryan Biddulph

So, the research should be deeper. Year after year, lots of algorithms changed by Google and Bing but you must always remember, the basics SEO tactics are still the same. Therefore, check them one by one.

Here, we have gathered 7 common mistakes that most of the SEO Experts have done at least once in their profession. So, now take a deep breath and check them respectively. We hope after fixing them you will get your desire position in Google.

1. Choosing the Wrong Keywords

First: Focus on searcher intent. This should underpin all of your activities- research, creation, and distribution. What is the searcher really trying to achieve and how is your content helping them reach this goal?

— Simon Ensor, SearchEngineWatch.com

To improve your site performance never and ever compromise with keywords. As an SEO expert, researching relevant, demanding, traffic gaining keyword is a fast and foremost duty. 

What should You do for Keyword Research

• Gain much insight about your site niche
• Make a list of important topics of your niche
• Search the topics in Google and find out some keywords
• Don’t forget to add long-tail Keywords
• Use LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) keywords with the main keyword
• Check how your competitors are ranking

If you use long-tail keywords your site may have a great future for voice search. Keyword researching seems easy but spend as much as time you can.

Tools to Avoid Keyword Researching Mistakes

There are some helpful tools to help you out from any Keyword SEO mistakes. Most of them are free but for the long term and simple usage, try to avail the paid version. 

Free Keyword Researching Tools

• Suggestions (free)
• Wordpot (free)
• SEO Book Keyword Tool (free)
• Bing Keyword Research (free)
• Ubersuggest (Free)
• WordStream (free)

Paid Keyword Researching Tools

• Ahrefs (Paid)
• SEMrush (free & paid)
• Keyword Eye (paid)
• Long Tail Pro (paid)
• Moz Keyword Analysis (paid)
• Keyword Spy (paid)
• Wordtracker (paid)

These tools are helpful to figure out your target keyword’s search volume, latest trend, cost-per-click, competitor’s domain, and so forth. So that you can plan for your content to get more conversions.

2. Overlooking Content Marketing

Better content is outweighing more content.

– Rand Fishkin

In 1996, Microsoft founder Bill Gates wrote a phrase, Content is King and now it’s one of the popular phrases.

A content or blog can be an asset to your website as well as to your company. It shows that you are trustable. Before a time ago, people just work for gathering as much content as they can put on a single website. But after a new Google algorithm update, the scenario gets changed in a night. 

What can You do for Better Content Marketing

• Find out the pain point of your customers
• Write more informative & useful content
• Try to write in a story-telling mode
• Post blogs regularly (Example: 2 blogs in a week)
• Use CTA (Call to Action) buttons

Some Effective Content Marketing Tools to Avoid SEO Mistakes

• Buzzsumo- Analyze your topic and competitors
• ClickFunnels– Convert your visitors into leads and then customers
• EVERNOTE- Organize, save, and share your notes 
• Canva- Create outstanding images and infographics for your content
• weMail– For effective email marketing
• Grammarly- Check your content readability, spelling, and grammar mistakes  

Thus, webmasters now search for the quality content creator. Don’t need 100 middle-range content, 25 quality blog can increase your Alexa ranking significantly. 

Top Content Marketing Tools To Simplify SEO

3. Forgetting to Make Website Mobile-friendly

You are designing content posting and all other developing staff on a computer or laptop. Do you think all of your visitors use a desktop to browse or insight your website? If so, then you are wrong. 

55% of online users use mobile nowadays. If your site is not tab or mobile-friendly then the bounce rate will increase like Usain Bolt speed. 

Before making a mobile-friendly site you should consider what you want to show to your audience. Because it’s not essential to display everything to your mobile users. Moreover, it can discourage them to continue on your site.

Tools for Checking Mobile-friendliness of Your Site

• Google Developers Mobile-Friendly Test tool
• Google – Page Speed Insights
• Bing Mobile Friendliness Test Tool
• RankWatch
• W3C Mobile Checker

Therefore, now check out your website on your phone. If it is not mobile-friendly yet, then immediately optimize your site for mobile users. In new updates, Google is encouraging the mobile-friendly webpages. So check it right now!

Tools for Making Your Website Mobile-friendly

• Elementor   
• Squarespace 
• Jimdo  
• Wix 
• Shopify 
• Weebly  
• Duda

With these tools, you can make your site mobile-friendly within a few minutes. You can even check how your site looks after editing.

Related- Ecommerce SEO: The Ultimate Guide for Startups

4. Poor Social Marketing for Your Content

In business, the company owner invests in production as much as they can but don’t take a look for content promotion or social marketing. And, the most amazing factor of content is, it can generate the authentic and lifetime traffic in your site if you promote it in the right way. 

Why Social Marketing is Essential

• Personalized customer relationships
• Build trust by increasing transparency
• Engage in collaborative selling
• Get sell through blogs
• Gather organic traffic 

The communication through your content is very important to promote your site. There are lots of ways to reach your expecting audience. 

Tools for Reaching Your Customer

Viral Content Bee- Social promotion tool where everyone supports to share your content automatically. 

BuzzStream– It’s one of the best local SEO tools to drive local customers to your online business.

Buffer- Connect to multiple social accounts where you can schedule when to post it in which social media. Also, the date and time can be edited. 

Quuu- Submit your content for strict individual review and approval by an excellent editorial team. 

Venngage- Help to use perfect infographic or presentation slides.

Animoto- Provide a huge number of beautiful templates, themes, and also a collection of stock music so that you can create attractive videos.

5. Forgetting Tags & Meta Description

Your quality content may not get the rank in Google because of ignoring Tags and Meta description. These two are essential parts of SEO and an SEO editor should not forget about them. Jumping over them means you will miss a large potential for your content.

Optimizing the tags and meta description of your content lead to improve the performance in search engines. 

Besides that, content marketers don’t prioritize the image tags which is another great mistake. Though it is a small element and takes a few minutes to edit the whole image tags of content, it marks a large sign for your content. Alt tags of content is a sign that how the author or marketer is targeting it in Search Engine. 

The search bots are unable to watch the images but at the same point, it can read the alt tags very nicely. So, it helps the content to index in that way. 

However, there are some free tools creating meta description but it is wise to produce the meta description and tags with your thoughts. 

How to Use Elementor to Build Your Website With Ease

6. Ignoring Anchor Texts for Internal Links

For both users and search engines need anchor text. And, this is not our words, Google has prioritized the anchor text in it’s latest updates. 

Our advice is not to over-optimize the content exact match anchor texts. Google can penalize you and you can lose your rankings anytime. 

When you add internal linking, try to attach links with relevant words. Avoid using Click here, Read the article, or Read more. Actually, it’s waste according to the SEO perspective.

Tools for Checking Your Both External and Internal Links

• Google Webmaster Tools
• Google Keyword Planner
• SEOWorkers Tool
• Woorank
• Mozbar Anchor Text Generator

Moreover, If you see the anchor text is not sounding natural then it’s better to leave. Naturally and relevancy are the key points of an anchor text. 

7. Overlooking the Site Auditing

To run a website a marketer may have to go through-

• Keyword Researching
• Writing Article
• Making it SEO Optimized
• Editing Images
• Posting it from the backend
• And many more.

So, after doing all of them its really common to forget about site auditing weekly or monthly basis. But building this habit can improve your site performance. Also, you can save your content from getting the Google penalty. 

Why it is Important to Audit Your Site

• Track top referrals and build strategies 
• Know your visitors and improve user experience
• Find out previous SEO mistakes
• Focus on your best contents 
• Check the eCommerce metrics to increase your sales
• Check the image quality and size to speed up the website
• Find out the unoptimized meta descriptions

Tools for Auditing a Site

• Google Analytics
• MySiteAuditor
• Google Search Console
• Web CEO
• SEO Site Checkup
• Seomator
• Moz Crawl Test
• And many more.

A site audit is very important after every Google update. Besides that, monthly auditing is good for site performance. 

You can also check this article regarding Semantic SEO to know how Search Engine (Google) processes the search results against our queries.

Fix All SEO Mistakes and Ensure Your Desired Ranking

The digital world is changing every day. If you want to win the game with search engines then you must avoid the common SEO mistakes that we have listed above.

We know its difficult to cover all the sectors at a once but don’t forget to check your Content Marketing, Site Auditing, and Anchor Texts. These are a must-have check for now.

After fixing those mistakes, you will surely see that your site is in trending in the right direction. Moreover, you don’t need to fear any search engine updates.

Do you make any of these SEO mistakes on your site? How do you fix them anyway? Share your experience with us in the comment section below.