3 Stupid SEO Mistakes That You Need to Avoid

With the ever-increasing competition on the web, SEO has become important than ever. It helps you lure in quality traffic, get visibility on the web, and lends your brand the credibility it needs to succeed.

No wonder, everyone is so obsessed with winning the rat race of ranking on SERPs.

But here’s the deal:

Google constantly changes its algorithms and rolls out new updates. Simply put, parameters to rank your website on SERPs keep on changing, every now and then. Naturally, those in a bid to rank higher on SERPs, most people forget SEO best practices. But this costs them a considerable chunk of search engine traffic.

But what if we told you that fixing these simple mistakes just takes a few minutes? You’d be bowled over, right? So brace yourself, here we will present to you 3 SEO mistakes and how to quickly fix them.
Let’s get started! Shall we?

#1: Not Optimizing Website for Mobile Devices

You would be surprised that everyone and their moms know a thing or two about SEO optimizing websites for mobile. But when it comes to putting it into practice, most of them fail. Therefore, they don’t rank well on SERPs, despite putting in a lot of time, money and resources.

[Source: TruConversion.com]

Remember, 57% buyers say they won’t recommend a business with a poorly designed mobile site and 40% have turned to a competitor’s site after a bad website experience. Given this data, it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that an unoptimized mobile site can negatively impact your SEO efforts.

Not long ago, you didn’t require a mobile site to make it to the top of Google…but things have changed now.

Today, to rank higher on Google, you need a high-quality, mobile-optimized site.

How to Fix It:

Design & Layout:

The first step in optimizing your website for mobile is to plan the layout and design. Keep your design simple and layout as streamlined as possible. Ensure branding elements prominently on your mobile site. For example, make sure your custom logo design is prominently placed on your mobile site. For another, ensure that color palette and iconography are same as that of your standard site.

Site Load Time:

Truconversion reveals that about 50% of consumers want mobile sites to load within 2 seconds or less. They abandon the site if the loading time is more than 3 seconds. Restrict the amount of text on your site. Use lighter visuals and graphics and avoid pop-ups.

Keywords & Meta:

Desktop and mobile SEO aren’t the same. Mobile visitors are likely to be looking for different results than desktop visitors, so it makes sense to do the groundwork. Similarly, smaller screens of mobile devices allow only a fewer characters to be displayed in the SERPs. So, it’s important to keep your title tags within 40-60 characters and meta descriptions within 90 characters.

#2: Brushing Aside Long-Tail Keywords

For a very long time, businesses have depended on single keywords to gain prominence on SERPs.

But here’s the kicker:

Long-tail keywords account for 70% of the searches. If you’re new to the scene, here’s a quick, dirty definition – Long-tail keywords are longer, keyword phrases that visitors are more likely to use in their search queries.

[Source: unionstreetmedia.com]

Brian Deane explains that long tail keywords can help you drive more conversions and generate better sales. No, you don’t have to take our word for it: check out this example below to know for yourself:

Let’s assume you’ve discovered a long-tail keyword that generates 6 searches daily and at the top spot on SERPs, you generate about 50% of the clicks.

So, the total visitors per day will be:

.05 CTR x 6 searches daily = 3 visitors daily

Okay! So, now you know that long-tail keyword is helping you generate 3 visitors per day. Now, how much sales can these 3 visitors generate for your business?

Let’s find out:

You already know that the average conversion rate dwindles between 1-3%. So, let’s assume that your average conversion rate is 2%.

So, the total sales per day will be:

3 visitors x 2% conversion = .06 sales per day

Okay! So, you’re able to generate .06 sales per day. If you make a $30 profit per sale, that’s:

.06 x 30 = $1.80 per day

Not much considering your time and efforts??
Let’s, calculate the total sales for a year:

$1.80 x 365 =$657 per year.

Okay! So, this is what you’re getting to earn from just one long-tail keyword. What if you have 50 such long tail keywords?

50 x $657 = $32,850

That’s a lot of money you’re leaving on the table if you aren’t using long-tail keywords!

How to Fix It:

Use Long-Tail Keywords in Content:

Use long-tail keywords in everything from titles to copy and from meta title to description tags. Create compelling content around your long-tail keywords and use these keywords as naturally as possible. Using them once or twice in a long article is often enough to rank better on SERPs.

Constantly test your long-tail keywords:

Keep testing to determine which long-tail keywords yield the most revenue. Check the bounce rate, time on page, social reach, and inbound links in order to analyze the performance of your long-tail keywords. Optimize your existing content with long-tail keywords to get an edge on SERPs.

#3: Not Paying Heed to Trending Keywords

Okay! So you turn to the Google Keyword Planner tool when it comes to researching keywords. But it’s not just you, even your competitors are using the same tool. In fact, most marketers think that the Google Keyword Planner tool is the holy grail of keyword research.

So, how do you plan to get steps ahead of them?

Here’s the deal:

If you’re actually looking forward to winning the rat race of SERP ranking, you’ll need to be steps ahead of your competitors. And you can do this by embracing trending topics and repackaging them to make them fit for your niche.

This is where trending keywords come to your rescue. Trending keywords can help you get more traffic and drive more visits from search engines.

How to Fix It:

Explore Google Suggest:

If you’re looking for trending keywords to stay ahead of the curve, do well to smartly use Google Suggest suggestions to your advantage. Run a search for a few keywords in your niche and you’ll be surprised to see what Google suggests to you. It will suggest you the keywords that are the trending at the moment. Now, when you have these keywords, you can build a compelling piece of content around low competition keywords.

Use Google Trends:

Spend a little time searching for trending topics and keywords on Google Trends. You can easily identify a trending keyword with a massive spike in searches. Using these trending keywords in your content will definitely help you bring in a lot of targeted traffic.

Don’t Forget Topsy:

Topsy is another useful tool that can help you identify and use trending keywords. With Topsy, you can search for topics in a more targeted manner. For example, if you’re planning to build a compelling copy around New Year. So, you can simply look for the trends from last New Year to find out keywords that will best resonate with your visitors.

Over to You

You’ve just seen 3 of the most stupid SEO mistakes that can cost you a fortune, substantial traffic loss and nightmares too (if you’re weak-hearted)…

Now it’s time to avoid these mistakes and make the most out of SEO strategies.

Images: ”Author’s Own“

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