SEO, or search engine optimisation, is an integral part of any business’s marketing strategy. It allows you to appear higher in search engine rankings, and therefore be seen by more potential clients or customers.
That said, it can sometimes feel pretty daunting, so here are five common SEO mistakes that you might be making right now, and how to fix them.
You’ve been keyword-stuffing your content
Keywords are incredibly important for appearing in search results, but it’s crucial that your content still flows and isn’t just awkwardly stuffed with chunks of text full of keywords that you hope to rank for. It’s a blackhat technique that is hugely frowned upon, and search engines want to know that you’re actually providing your audience with useful information, not just walls of keywords. Seo.im can help you create content that is engaging and results in conversion.
Your website isn’t mobile-friendly
So many of us browse online on our phones or tablets, and search engines now prioritise sites that have a mobile version. Not only is it bad for SEO if your site isn’t mobile-optimised, but it’s also often a terrible user experience to try and use a desktop site on a mobile device, which means that you will be missing out on potential customers. A lot of themes that you can download for your site offer mobile-friendly versions, so be sure to check this out.
It takes forever for your site to load
We’re an impatient lot, so if your site doesn’t load fast enough, we’re probably just going to click off and try somewhere else, which isn’t great for your bounce rate. If the search engines see that people are clicking off your site so soon after opening it, it will think you have a low-quality website and therefore move it further down the rankings.
Your website is full of broken links
Broken links make it harder for search engines to crawl your site and index it. Luckily, it’s a relatively straightforward (albeit quite a time consuming) thing to fix. There are sites that check your broken links for free, and then it’s just a case of going through and making the appropriate repairs. It can be a lot to do all in one go, but by setting aside an hour or so a week to plow through as many as possible, they’ll be done in no time.
You’ve forgotten to add metadata
It’s easy to forget about metadata when you’re just focusing on what the user can see, but it’s important to remember that search engines are essentially robots, and they need to understand what’s going on too. You want to make sure you’ve added alt-text to all your images – not just for search engines but also for anyone who uses a screen reader too.
These are such common SEO mistakes, but the good news is that they are easy to fix, and by doing so, you’re going to be giving your SEO a big boost, as well as improving the user experience for potential clients and customers.
