Search Engine Optimisation: 5 Mistakes to Avoid
Search engine optimisation is the practice of improving a website’s organic or unpaid traffic by elevating its visibility via its search rankings. Since most consumers today rely on search engines like Google to find information on the products or services they require, it can help a brand gain a lot of exposure, resulting in increased engagement, conversions, and sales.
And thanks to the advantages it offers, businesses of all sizes across many industries are investing in SEO packages and solutions from reliable companies like www.ocere.com.
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With so many resources available online on how to enhance your search engine optimisation efforts, it’s possible to implement some strategies too successfully. But as advantageous as SEO can be, missteps in its execution can also lead to costly setbacks and lower your position on the results pages for the target keywords. Here are some mistakes you should avoid to ensure that it doesn’t happen.
1. Slow website speed
The speed at which users are able to access content on a website plays a more significant role in search engine optimisation than people think. Internet properties that take too long to load can cost a brand or company hard-earned traffic and valuable search rankings. Therefore, it’s crucial that you don’t overlook site speed. To better understand how well or poorly your website loads, you can run it through Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool to determine its performance.
Also, some factors like image size and format, redirects, plugins, and CSS and Javascript can impact website speed. Addressing these areas makes it possible to prevent any slowdowns and keep delays at a minimum.
2. Ignoring negative reviews
Regardless of the quality of a brand’s offerings, it’s impossible to please everyone. Therefore, it isn’t uncommon for companies to have positive and negative online reviews. But because these reviews impact social proof and contribute to localised factors for search rankings, it’s a mistake to ignore the negative feedback your business gets, as it can deter consumers from considering your organisation when it comes to the goods or solutions they require.
For this reason, you must always try to address the experience of those unsatisfied with your brand. Doing so won’t just keep the negative reviews from driving away traffic and potential customers, but it can also turn them into a positive experience for unhappy consumers.
3. No location-specific web pages
Online searches that consist of location-specific phrases have risen in recent years, especially from mobile users. These days, most people tend to search for businesses in close proximity to their locations, and they often result in purchases. This has made visibility on a local level important now more than ever. Without quality, locally optimised, and location-specific content, a brand can miss out on opportunities to create exposure, generate sales, and get ahead of its competitors.
Therefore, it’s vital to have location-specific web pages. In this way, you’ll be able to improve your local search rankings and draw in more inbound traffic and prospective customers to your fold.
5. Duplicate content
As its name suggests, duplicate content is material published on a web page that’s identical or similar to any other content within or beyond the online domain. Although search engines like Google don’t necessarily impose penalties for it, it may affect the way search engines determine which content should appear on the search results. Luckily, fixing this mistake is a relatively simple affair. All you need to do is run any material you plan to publish online through Copyscape and similar tools. This will ensure that uploaded content remains unique to your site.
6. Broken links and images
While broken links are relatively common, they can have a detrimental impact on conversion rates. In addition, they can indirectly harm your SEO efforts by increasing bounce rate, lowering activity and time on the website, and affecting how links are passed. It may also affect search rankings since it signals that the site is outdated and old. Therefore, it’s crucial to regularly audit your site and ensure all links are working as intended.
Conclusion
Mistakes don’t just happen. They’re also caused. Unfortunately, search engine optimisation errors can have significant consequences on a website’s ranking and credibility. Thus, it’s critical to avoid mistakes, regardless of how small they might appear to be. It will go a long way in helping you succeed in SEO.
