Are you not getting enough traffic on your business website? Are you waiting to get some qualified leads, but your efforts are going in vain? Being a business owner in 2020 would limit your periphery to yourself if you do not focus on a few vital digital marketing areas. One such important area is SEO, which is the backbone of any online marketing planning & strategies. SEO can’t be ignored if you are running a website or online business.
For a business owner who operates business activities over the Internet, SEO plays a vital role in boosting online properties (website, mobile app) in Google’s organic search results. If you ignore well-defined SEO strategies, it can ruin the entire marketing flow of the business, and you end up asking agencies to take over the mess. This article will guide you with some deadly SEO mistakes to avoid in 2020.
Why Is It Important to Focus on SEO?
SEO is a crucial part of your marketing campaign as it improves a website’s overall searchability and visibility. SEO alone cannot help you to achieve your highest marketing potential, but it is so powerful that it can generate leads, and convert them to get final sales. SEO is relatively cheap compare to other marketing modules. It can increase your sales without too much increment into your marketing budget, thereby growing profits exponentially and over time.
Mistakes to Avoid While Doing SEO for A Website
Search Engine Optimization strategies follow the guidelines recommended by search engines, though it’s webmaster’s responsibility to deal with the same and boost the business reach organically within target audiences. There is no rocket science behind SEO, but a clear understanding of business and target audience makes it easy to get viewers. People used to search their queries on search engines by typing the same, but in 2020 you will see various other input methods, thanks to AI. A lot of mistakes may remain in any SEO planning; hence, as a marketer, you should always avoid doing the below explained SEO mistakes in 2020 to let your business grow like anything.
Improper Keyword Research
Keywords are the crucial factors that any website has to take care of. In keywords, search intent is the core element that must consider understanding the thinking of searchers. Your website and content need to satisfy the user’s search intent by providing a solution. Also, try targeting some local keywords and focus more on LSI keywords to get your required traffic. To organically grow the website traffic, you must target keywords that may not have huge search volume but are capable of getting you visitors and fulfilling business intent successfully.
Improper Meta Details
Meta details are meant to be understood by visitors, and they usually have a set limit for characters. According to Moz – The Meta details (Meta description & page title) serves the function of advertising copy. It draws readers to a website from the SERP, which is a visible and essential part of search marketing. Crafting a clear, compelling page title & description using relevant keywords can improve the click-through rate for a given webpage.
After carrying out thorough keyword research, you must add your target keywords to your Meta details. Also, it should be present within the starting point of your Meta title and description. Treat Meta description as the summary of your entire content in 155 characters. It will be useful for Google’s understanding, but your organic visitor will also find it suitable to click on your link.
Focus Only on Traditional SEO Techniques
Since the inception of the SEO industry, it has been developed & changed a lot as search engine guidelines updates. To stay at the top of the search results, you need to keep updated yourself with the ever-changing search engine guidelines and apply modern SEO techniques.
If you keep applying the old SEO techniques, then you may end up getting penalized. Those days are gone when you can rank by using blog commenting, forums, directory submission, keyword stuffing, PBNs, and other traditional methods.
Today, Google’s algorithms have become more advanced than before; so that it can effectively understand the content, search intent, context, and user queries. If you want to boost your website in organic search results with SEO, you should follow the latest results-driven SEO techniques.
Ignore Website UI without Proper Mobile Optimization
Though people have understood that the major audience is primarily on mobile devices, there are a few new brands that think the desktop version is still the talking point. Mobile optimized websites allow more customers to be reached at a quicker rate, proving to be very beneficial. Proper UI/UX is also an essential part of your business website to stand apart from the crowd. In today’s world, where most of the audiences spend time on mobile devices, it is essential to focus on the look & feel of your online property on all digital devices. A well-designed site or app with excellent UI/UX is always going to attract more visitors. A better response from the website leaves a long-lasting positive impact on the user’s mind. So, UI/UX design positively affects search engine optimization.
Writing for Google and Not for User
While creating content, it’s imperative to keep users’ search intent in mind. If you are writing content only to impress Google, then your efforts are worthless. Instead of investing time to get keywords ranking, you should focus on the business intent and user’s mindset to write content. So, visitors can interact with it for their queries.
Making your content rich with keywords stuffing and may give you a temporary position in search results, but if your content isn’t as per your viewers, they will exit the page as soon as they get bored. With this, you’ll end up increasing your bounce rate, and automatically, your ranking will drop. Always produce content that is well researched and well structured. Content should be natural and fulfill the audience’s quest. Hence, it would be best if you always focused on the user’s intent with the required SEO parameters.
Forgetting Old Content Pieces behind New Ones
What would you prefer, creating a new page with a duplicate topic or revamping your original content with the fresh update? If your website isn’t a new one, you would probably be having a lot of old web pages with good or moderate rank in SERP. Suppose you have a gadget website, and there is a review page for any specific mobile phone that was launched in 2015. Now in 2020, the brand has introduced a fresh product with the same name. At this moment, you should always update the content of that page with a new update. Your old content has some authority attached to it, and updating it with the latest information can be a goldmine for you.
Unclear SEO Goals
It’s essential to have clear SEO objectives before you strategize SEO planning for your website. If you are unclear about the SEO goals that match your business objectives, you’ll probably never achieve it. The key is to identify what you want from your business website and SEO and then plan out your SEO roadmap.
Focusing on Text Content Only
In 2020, written content will be accompanied by a lot of other content breeds out of which, video and podcasts are the most dominating ones. Video has already taken the world by storm, and platforms like YouTube, Facebook, and TikTok already have billions of followers. Our lifestyles are getting busier, and people find less time to consume content. Written content has always been the priority of users.
In 2020, to project your brand among a wide variety of audiences, you should focus on different types of content. Not all types’ content is helpful for any business. Research on the industry where your business exists and find out which content type is suitable to get the best response from visitors.
Ignoring Conversion Optimization
The objective of all businesses is to get relevant customers, and for that, you need first to generate leads and then convert them. Optimizing for conversions allows you to boost your number of highly-qualified leads.
However, many businesses end up ignoring conversion optimization and only concentrate on the top of the funnel. Instead, they should focus on complete sales funnel to convert leads into paying customers. Make your pages relevant with high-quality content, reviews, case studies, CTAs, and show them why they should consider you. By ignoring conversion optimization, you may end up losing customers and hence, business sales & revenue. So, always keep it on priority to choose a scientific approach for optimizing a business website to convert more visitors into subscribers or customers.
Conclusion: Now that you know all the most considerable SEO mistakes, you should always avoid getting optimum results. If you don’t follow the search engine’s latest updated guidelines, you may end up suffering. Include the latest SEO techniques in your organic SEO marketing plan to stay ahead of the competition.
