In the SEO world, the difference between failure and success is usually very small. It happens to the best SEO specialists. Everything is going well, traffic is booming and rankings are constantly rising, then, suddenly, it seems like your website hasn't been optimized in years.
The search for the cause begins, but the problem is that there are so many things that can go wrong that it is practically impossible to notice everything.
Today we're going to take a look at possible reasons why your SEO optimization isn't as successful as it should be and see what we can do about it.
Tricking the system:
Over time, there have been many attempts to trick the search engine ranking system to get to the top. Topics such as cloaking or keyword clustering have been tried, and some even with success.
But these days, search engines recognize them from afar. Make sure you stay away from these practices if you want to achieve a good search engine ranking.
Avoid using the following methods at all costs:
- Keyword accumulation: One of the most common mistakes. People who are new to SEO often believe that the more keywords they use, the better. But that's not the case. If you stuff content with keywords to the point where it becomes unnatural, it will have a negative impact on the reader and your ranking. Make sure your text is easy to read, useful and delivers quality content to the user. Keywords should definitely be present, but not in an unnaturally forced way.
- Duplicate content and content spinning In the past, they could have gotten away with it. But now, this is a sure-fire way to really hurt your ranking quickly and significantly. Search engines value unique content as a major factor.
Content spinning works by copying the text from a source and changing the words just enough to make it look different. It provides a poor user experience and should be avoided at all costs.
- Cloaking One of the most annoying things on the internet is cloaking. It works by showing users one type of content and robots another via redirects. If you click on a link and then find yourself in a place you never intended to visit, it's certainly a bad user experience. Sites with this content will be severely penalized.
- Spamming This can be through comments, mail or via social media. If your website is associated with any kind of spam, Google will certainly notice and take countermeasures. Advertising your website is important, just make sure you don't overdo it.
- Link Exchange Although this may seem like a harmless good idea, exchanging links en masse is not useful for customers and not relevant for Google. Avoid such offers. Link building is important, but only organic, not traded or bought.
These are the main old tricks to avoid if you don't want your ranking to drop immediately. Depending on the severity of the "crime", there are different penalties, so make sure to stay away from them.
Honest mistakes:
In the second part of the article, we'll look at the things you could be doing wrong by mistake. This often happens due to misunderstanding SEO techniques and not paying attention to certain details and changes.
These aren't as negative as the previous examples, but they will kill the success of your SEO campaign if you don't finish them first:
- Non-compliance with algorithm changes One of the most common mistakes in SEO is thinking that because something has worked in the past, it will work in the future. Google changes and updates its algorithms regularly. Make sure you are aware of the latest trends in SEO by researching and making necessary adjustments.
- Not focused on the user experience I know I'm repeating myself, but I'll keep saying it because it's one of the most ignored facts in SEO. Your website should be read by users, not search engines. That's what SEO is all about, creating a good user experience for the customer. If you don't do that, it doesn't matter if your keywords are on point, or if you have the perfect web design. If users don't find the content useful, your SEO will definitely fail.
- Too little advertising This is especially true for small and medium-sized companies. Make sure you promote your content on the most important social media platforms. Always share your new content with others and if you get more customers to visit your website via social media, your bounce rate will decrease. This helps you maintain good search engine rankings by proving to Google that your content is still relevant.
- They do not plan and analyze If you don't even bother to analyze, track and record your progress, then you should have no expectations of reaching your goals. Always have a strategy, a clear goal in mind and make sure you track and analyze your website metrics to know where you stand and what your next step will be.
- The keywords you use are too competitive. It's hard to compete with big names in your niche. We're not saying you shouldn't try, but maybe start a little smaller? Make sure you use long-tail keywords that have a moderate competition rate.
- The keywords you use are not searched sufficiently. On the other hand, if the keywords you use are of no interest to anyone, you will never get the traffic you want.
- Your website is not mobile-friendly. This will reliably prevent you from achieving a good ranking. Remember: Many of your potential customers access your website via mobile devices. Make sure that you have designed your website so that it can be used properly on smartphones or tablets.
- SEO takes time. SEO is a process that takes a lot of time. Trials and errors are part of a good SEO campaign.
Make sure you have defined goals that you can achieve. Take every opportunity you have to improve your SEO and user experience. If you pay attention to all these factors, your traffic will grow quickly.
Summary:
Now that we've outlined what you should avoid and given you some tips on how to do SEO right, let's do a quick summary of what you should be doing:
- Stay up to date
- Put the user experience first.
- Create high-quality links.
- Talk to your customers.
- Make sure you are optimized for local search results.
- Create unique content.
- Invest in attractive design.
- Analyze and monitor your measures.
If you follow these tips and make sure you don't make any of the mistakes we talked about earlier, your ratings will go up and your website will generate leads and sales.
If you have any questions, please contact us and we will be happy to answer them.
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