SEO Marketing – Ten SEO Mistakes and How to Fix Them
With well over 90 million searches performed on the net every day – can you afford not to focus on your SEO marketing?
SEO marketing is an important part of promoting your website – SEO can make quite a lot of money for your business – there are well over 90 million searches performed on the net every day. SEO is a cost effective way of marketing your product or service and should be seen as an investment and an important part of your internet marketing strategy. Before hiring an SEO company to optimise your website or starting the SEO process yourself, read this article about the most common SEO mistakes made.
Neeeiigh! Putting the cart before the horse
In this case, putting the cart before the horse means getting your website developed before you start thinking about the marketing. SEO and keyword selection is intimately linked to aspects of your website like your domain name and your navigation structure. This is one of the major SEO mistakes, and is incredibly frustrating because you’ll find that you’ve just completed a long, hard slog on a site and invested a lot of money only to be told that it all needs to change if you want good search results.
SEO marketing tips: When developing your website, it’s better to get an SEO expert or SEO company to help you create a Search Engine-friendly website infrastructure and do the necessary keyword research to develop your navigation structure for your website.
Shooting blind
Your keywords need to be chosen with your eyes wide open, and looking at the prize. The key thing to remember is not that you just want the top Google spot … but that you want lots of quality traffic. So, your keywords need to reflect the language that your customers use when searching for your services, various basic facts about your business, and also take into account the keywords that your competitors are using. Keyword research is the gold standard … simply putting down whatever comes into your head is like shooting blind.
SEO marketing tips: Keyword research tools may involve brainstorming initially but using keyword research tools like keyword tools, holding focus groups, looking at your own analytics, competitor analysis and so forth will help develop a strong keyword strategy.
Can the keyword spam!
One of the most common SEO mistakes, keyword spamming can melt your dollars away despite a top spot on Google. If you use your keywords unnaturally, excessively, or out of context your visitors will leave after viewing a couple of pages, because your site copy sounds like a demented, skipping CD! Some site owners grossly overestimate the keyword density needed for Google to rank the site highly. In reality, keyword density is but one of many factors that go into your ranking. It’s important to use keywords but don’t overdo it!
SEO marketing tips: Correct keyword placement is essential so Search Engine spiders crawling over the page can rank the page for relevant keywords. However, keywords need to be inserted seamlessly and naturally into your SEO copywriting and never out of context.
If you build it, they will come. Won’t they??
So many site owners believe that great content will be enough to create a successful website but people need to find your website first. You don’t only need great content – you need to grab a megaphone and drive down the street telling people about it! However, as we just mentioned … keywords, and the content containing them, is only one factor in several that go into creating your Search Engine ranking. You need to optimise the entire site, not just create great content.
SEO marketing tips: Great content and a high Search Engine ranking work hand-in-hand. You can’t have a high Search Engine ranking without great content because visitors will just bounce* off your page but similarly there is no point in having great content if Web searchers can’t find you.
The Perfect Match
SEO is not a ‘one size fits all’ strategy. Somewhere in the SEO landscape there exists a strategy that is the perfect match for your business. However, without extensive experience in SEO this can be difficult to identify by yourself. An SEO expert can help you identify whether your business model and goals will suit using organic Search Engine Optimisation, social media, Pay Per Click advertising (PPC), email marketing … or a combination of all of these strategies.
SEO marketing tips: SEO and PPC are two different strategies to drive traffic to a website. PPC is sometimes used to launch a website to boost traffic in a short amount of time but can be very costly. SEO is seen as a longer term strategy to drive organic traffic to your website and may be more cost effective.
Look to the Link
Link building is an integral part of your SEO campaign, and its importance can’t be underestimated. You need to actively seek out links, though. Remember that you need to get out your megaphone – don’t just expect that if you build it, they will come. That’s a huge SEO mistake to make! There are plenty of easy, simple ways to build links: participating in forums, doing guest blogging, listing in directories, putting out press releases and engaging with social networks are some of the more popular strategies.
SEO marketing tips: Link building is a simple yet effective strategy to boost your Search Engine ranking. In simple terms, a link to your web page is seen as a vote of confidence in your website by Search Engines. Focusing half an hour on link building strategies three times a week should result in an improvement in your rankings.
Myopic SEO
Don’t be short-sighted in your SEO strategy – remember what your ultimate goal for the site is. Your goal isn’t simply to get to the #1 spot on Google – that has no tangible value. You need to focus on the end goal to get customers buying from your website and sustaining your business. The way to do this is with a myriad of techniques known as conversion optimisation, all of which encourage the customer to buy from your site, or complete whatever other goals you have for your website. Looking only to Google is one of the definite myopic SEO mistakes!
SEO marketing tips: Traffic is important but driving quality traffic to your website that will enquire, purchase your product or book a hotel room is more important. Focus on conversion strategies, not merely traffic generation.
Change – The Only Constant
Change is the one thing the universe will always have. It is also the one thing your SEO strategy should always have! Search Engine’s algorithms are updated regularly to improve the integrity of Web search and people’s collective understanding and preferences will also constantly shift. Your SEO strategy needs constant revision to keep up with the times and make sure you also keep a close eye on your competitors and what keywords they are ranking for!
SEO marketing tips: Sign up to regularly blog updates such as the SEO Works blog, SEO Global Network blog, Google Webmaster Blog, Matt Cutts’ Blog, SEOmoz blog and other industry blogs to keep abreast of changes in the Search Engine Optimisation industry.
Forgetting the oil change
SEO is not a ‘set it and forget it’ activity – you need to constantly be testing, improving your content and updating your content, focusing on your link building strategies, posting on your social media pages and monitoring your Web analytics. This is one of the most costly SEO mistakes. Your analytics statistics should be checked regularly. As long as you want your website to be making money for you, that’s how long you need to be working on your SEO!
SEO marketing tips: Sign up to Google Analytics Alerts which will send you emails daily, weekly or monthly. You can customise your alerts to advise you of any anomalies on your website such as a drastic drop in traffic.
Huh? What Just Happened?
Seasoned marketers are used to the uncertainty factor that exists in advertising. John Wanamaker famously said that “Half the money I spend on advertising is completely wasted. I just don’t know which half.” That dilemma is less of an issue in the online space, now that we have web analytics. With access to current and more meaningful date, SEO allows you to more clearly focus your marketing budget on your target audience, making SEO a very cost-effective marketing method, when properly executed.
SEO marketing tips: The cost of SEO should ideally be factored in your budget when launching a new website, relaunching an old website or redesigning a new website. It should be seen as an important part of internet marketing to promote your business and draw traffic to your website.
There are plenty of guides to SEO on the internet … but you wouldn’t just read a book about white-water rafting and then jump in a boat above Niagara Falls! DIY Search Engine Optimisation is possible if you had the time, money, expertise and resources but the secret to a successful business is doing what you’re good at and outsourcing what you’re not. Contact us today to find out exactly how we can help you get real results from your SEO investment … follow these SEO marketing tips and avoid these costly SEO mistakes!
* Visitors leaving a site after visiting the original page of entry
