SEO is one of the most important things for any online business. It helps bring in organic traffic and drastically impacts the visibility of a brand on the internet.
Related: Can You Succeed Without SEO?
Unfortunately, we see most entrepreneurs not understanding SEO, not even at a basic level. They end up losing potential conversions and customers without even realizing that this happens. Fortunately, just some simple changes can improve results and turn everything around.
The most important common SEO mistakes entrepreneurs make and that need to be avoided are the following.
Not Caring About Loading Speed
Although Google officially started to pay attention to page speed in 2017, it was always a very important thing for a website because this is related to customer experience. Google realized the fact that websites with a really slow loading speed do not offer a great customer experience. Due to this, these websites started to go down in rankings.
Every single entrepreneur needs to understand the fact that loading speed drastically affects conversions. Visitors do not like waiting to get the information that they want or need. Whenever landing pages load in over 3 seconds, conversions are lost.
Loading speed can be low due to many different reasons, including:
- Large images
- Slow hosting
- Bulky coding
- Using too many plugins and widgets
Some of the methods that can be used to solve a slow loading speed problem are:
- Utilize caching tools
- Remove all unnecessary modules and extensions
- Optimize all images for web display
- Analyze the code to remove unused scripts
- Use a framework that is lighter
Obviously, many other things can be done to reduce site loading speed since this varies on the type of site, contained elements, databases and more. An audit is usually needed to first identiy problems.
Lack Of Content Optimization
The website includes so many elements that have to be properly optimized. Those that are often overlooked are:
- Image Optimization
SEO-friendly images always contribute to site rankings, user experience and search results appearance. What is particularly important is to write an image description that is as efficient as possible. Whenever relevant, keywords have to be added.
- Meta Tags
Some alt tags are important for SEO and most entrepreneurs know absolutely nothing about it. Two are particularly ignored. The first one is the Meta Description tag. This is what appears in search engines so the tag has to include a good call to action and some related keywords. Then, we also have the alt tags, which are descriptions that appear when images do not load. These are taken into account by search engines to figure out what the image is above.
- Duplicate Content
This is much more common than it should be when looking at ecommerce sites. Duplicate content is practically content that is identical and that appears on many pages. It can be present on different pages from the same site and from different pages from various websites. Lower rankings than possible are practically guaranteed when duplicate content is present. Every single time content is added to a page, it has to be unique.
A specific common duplicate content error that has to be mentioned in regards to duplicate content is that there are many categories on a site and many of these have identical products. Cross-category URLs thus appear. They do seem different but they have the same content. This can be avoided through the use of 301 redirects, noindex tags, nofollow tags or rel canonical tags.
- Fix The Text
On every single website it is mandatory that unique content is present. In so many cases duplicate content issues appears simply because the text added is not checked or properly analyzed.
Related: Why Research Is Important For Bloggers
With so many sites there are identical title tags for various pages, copy-pasted product descriptions coming from a manufacturer and much more. It is vital that you use research and that you draft completely unique content for every single part of your website for proper SEO results.
Not Using Keywords
The reason why everyone talks about keywords in the SEO industry is that they are absolutely mandatory for SEO success. Website visibility is drastically increased when the proper phrases and words are utilized. Unfortunately, most entrepreneurs just randomly create content for their sites, without caring about keywords.
Keywords are mandatory for a business website and they should be present in:
- URLs
- Product Descriptions
- Image descriptions
- Meta tags
- Alt tags
Lack Of Internal Links
Many entrepreneurs hear about the importance of getting backlinks but they completely ignore or regret internal links. These are mandatory because they spread link equity and they make site navigation easier.
Related: SEO Link Building Mistakes That Will Simply Ruin Your SEO Campaign
The ideal website structure is that of a pyramid. The home page is the upper part of the pyramid. As a website crawler from a search engine reaches a page without internal links, many pages are missed. You need to always optimize site structure and have all internal links properly organized.
Some of the most common internal links that have to be mentioned include:
- Embedded links in Java or Flash.
- Embedded links in submission forms.
- Links leading to pages that are blocked.
- JavaScript links.
Final Thoughts
Entrepreneurs are not specialized in SEO. This means that they do not really know that much about what needs to be done to properly optimize a site. Due to this really simple reason, it is very important to work with a professional or an SEO agency. At least an audit is normally needed to be sure that the site is as optimized as it should be.
