Alt-tag: A red “Wrong Way” sign showing the warning to avoid SEO traps you can easily fall into.
Imagine working on your website for months, creating content, and trying to optimize everything. Only to find out your website is nowhere to be seen in search engine result pages after a while. Consequently, your website traffic is not even near the expectations. And, you visitors are barely spending any time on your pages. Unfortunately, many website owners met with this experience. Only to find out, after the later research, they are doing half of the SEO tasks wrong. There are many SEO traps you can easily fall into, due to the lack of information or wrong instructions. The only way to avoid this situation is to get familiar with common mistakes even the seasonal professionals sometimes make.
Common SEO traps you should avoid
To create a good website you’ll need quality content, proper structure, and decent and relevant information about SEO practices. By following the right rules, the search engines will recognize your website as a relevant source of information and rank it accordingly. This will lead to increased website traffic and more user engagement on your pages. Depending on the purpose of a website, if it’s a business website, it will improve conversion rates, for example. Any misstep in the process of optimization may result in unpredictable and more likely no positive results at all.
Many SEO experts, such as digitaldot.us, combine a variety of skills and knowledge to help their clients improve their SEO efforts. It’s a specific mixture of experience, acquired with testing, which finally leads to positive results. But, even seasoned experts know that there are some SEO traps that are easy to fall into. To help you avoid them, here are some of the most common SEO mistakes everyone in digital marketing should learn about:
- Expecting immediate results
- Stuffing your content with keywords
- Using generic keywords
- Bad link-building practices
- Not crosslinking your pages
- Hiding your content behind the gate
- Not optimizing for local SEO
- No optimization for mobile devices
- Not updating both the content and SEO
Expecting immediate results
One of the most often mistakes those who are just getting in touch with SEO are making is looking for instant results. Which, in the SEO world, is not possible. It takes time to build and optimize everything, and for search engines to crawl and index your pages. Especially for new websites. However, due to the lack of patience, some easily fall into a trap of using bad practices. While they may sometimes get faster results, it’s an inevitable long-term disaster. Sooner or later, Google and other search engines will discover so-called Black Hat SEO techniques and penalize your website. By all means, everyone should avoid these bad practices. It’s better to look for reliable long-term solutions than ruin the website’s potential at the start.
Caption: SEO is like figuring out the Rubik’s cube, it takes time and patience.
Alt-tag: Figuring out the Rubik’s cube.
Stuffing your content with keywords
Overoptimizing your content and stuffing it with keywords will not lead to anything good. While filling the content with keywords actually worked at one point, this practice is anything but good today. It’s better to make sure identified keywords are right, place them properly, and optimize the rest of the content the right way, than spamming like this. It will look bad in the eyes of search engines and will seriously undermine your SEO efforts. Also, falling into this trap will create a bad user experience for your visitors. Which is completely the opposite of what you are trying to accomplish.
Using generic keywords
Another trap with keywords optimization is using generic keywords. Each keyword has to be relevant, original and needs to align with the user’s intent. Also, the more generic term you are using, the less competitive you will be. Basically, every general term is heavily overused, and only the strongest and the oldest are ranking for them. It’s always better to focus on specifics if you want to win a decent ranking for certain terms. If your website is about pet food, for example, use a more specific variation like “bird food delivery Chicago”. So-called long-tail keyword variations. There might not be the same search volume for those terms, but it’s will be much easier to rank for them.
Bad link-building practices
Link building is one of the essential factors for SEO. Yet, there is still not enough understanding about how to build them. For example, focusing on quantity rather than the quality of your backlinks. People often use bad link building practices like:
- submitting to irrelevant directories
- paying for links
- using link farms
- exchanging links with suspicious networks
- and many more
Remember, one quality link may be worth dozens of low-quality links. And if you want to build value for your website, you should focus only on those.
Not crosslinking your pages
When you want to keep your visitors engaged, you have to point them in the right direction. This is one of the purposes of linking pages within your website. It’s will create a better structure, navigation, and overall experience. Not to mention it will help visitors reach more useful information on your website. Just make sure the links are relevant and placed there for your audience, not only for crawlers.
Caption: Use your links between pages to navigate your users better.
Alt-tag: Six fields pointing to each other like website pages among each other.
Hiding your content behind the gate
Avoid trying to condition your visitors to subscribe first, to be able to see the rest of the content. While there are cases where placing the paid-only content behind such a paywall is necessary, it’s not for every website. You may get a few more subscribers but it will most likely annoy the rest. Basically, you can offer a subscription, but without restrictions for the possibility to read the content.
Not optimizing for local SEO
If you are a business that operates in specific are, not optimizing for local SEO is a huge mistake. When someone from your area search for products or services, search engines will serve them with localized results. If you didn’t optimize for this, you are missing an incredible opportunity to win better ranking positions and visibility in your area. Basically, you should start with a Google My Business account, and continue submitting your information with a link to your website on other relevant websites, directories, and even local online newspapers.
No optimization for mobile devices
Consider how many people today are using smartphones and other mobile devices for browsing. If your website is not optimized for them, each such user is a missed opportunity. Furthermore, Google considers the mobile-first index as one of the most relevant ranking factors. That’s why creating a website without this in mind will ruin your SEO potential. In other words, you are passing your potential ranking position to your competitors without any good reason for free.
Caption: Everyone is using mobile devices today to browse the web and find information.
Alt-tag: Girls using their smartphones to browse the internet.
Not updating both the content and SEO
Bear in mind that SEO is not a one-time activity. In essence, it requires a continuous effort if you want to keep your hard-earned positions. Many fall for the trick thinking if they completed optimization once, there is no need to do it again. Also, search engines are constantly evolving. As a result, some rules are changing while others are rising in importance. Website owners have to follow the SEO changes and adapt their websites accordingly. Which, often includes updating your older content and keeping it fresh with up-to-date information.
There are numerous SEO tactics you can use to increase your Google rankings. But, you need to focus on what matters the most at the moment if you want to see good results. To maintain your website up to its full potential it’s necessary to understand different optimization aspects, including SEO traps you can easily fall into. Make sure you understand them completely to be able to avoid them in time.
Meta: Learn about the SEO traps you can easily fall into so you can avoid them and optimize your website to its full potential.
