If you run or manage a website of any shape or form, you’ve probably heard of SEO. If you haven’t, you need to do some research and get familiar with at least basic SEO techniques, otherwise your search engine rankings will suffer.
With this in mind, I’ve put together a list of some of the most common SEO mistakes that inexperienced web developers and website owners tend to make. These can range from small mistakes that are easy to fix to large problems that could be severely impacting your site’s performance, and include:
- Failing To Use A Professional SEO Agency
Unless you have significant SEO training and experience, I’d always recommend at least consulting with a professional agency to make sure that you have a viable SEO strategy. Doing this should help you make sure that you’re getting the most out of your website.
Ultimately, SEO professionals can be expensive. However, the fact that they know exactly what they’re doing and how to do things will certainly work in your favour. If you try and take control of your own SEO, you will probably make mistakes, will be inefficient, and will take a lot more time to do things than you should.
A professional SEO agency who know all the SEO quirks won’t do this, and using one will free up your time, allowing you to take care of the things that you’re good at.
- Focusing On The Wrong Keywords
One of the most common SEO mistakes that I see is people focusing on the wrong keywords when they’re creating new content. Most people don’t do enough keyword research, but just choose focus words and phrases at random.
But, you really need to make sure that you’re doing a decent amount of keyword research in order to identify low-competition words and phrases that you might actually be able to rank for. Base your content on these and watch the results come in.
- Not Adding Meta Tags & Descriptions
Unfortunately, a lot of SEO beginners make the mistake of ignoring the meta title and description fields when they’re adding new content. This is a bad idea. Meta titles and tags, along with other basic on-page SEO information, tell Google and the other search engines what your content is about.
I’d recommend really taking some time to write engaging, informative meta titles and descriptions, because your website will really benefit from them. Honestly, it’s worth it!
Final Word
Unless you’re an SEO professional with years of industry experience, you will make mistakes. I even make small mistakes from time to time, despite that fact that I have years of experience and a lot of training behind me.
However, if you can identify and address these problems, your website will benefit. I’d definitely recommend speaking with a professional SEO agency if you haven’t already. It can be expensive to pay someone to take care of your SEO, but it will be worth it in the long run – trust me.
Good luck, and may you reach the coveted number one position!