SEO is an essential tool in any digital marketing agency’s arsenal, and one that every small business should understand and implement at least some part of their marketing strategy. However, as with many things in life, there are more complex aspects to it than meets the eye.

It’s not just about writing great content; it’s about understanding how it’s being read, and then tailoring your marketing efforts accordingly. It’s not just about getting the right people looking at your site: it’s about making sure that people are coming to your site, and staying there.

There are numerous ways in which your SEO efforts can negatively impact your site. While it might seem like a scary thought, it’s actually not that uncommon for sites to suffer from SEO as a result of their own inefficiencies.

Let’s look at some of the more common SEO pitfalls, and how you can avoid them to keep your site ranking optimally.

Keyword Research is Dead

One of the most common mistakes small businesses make when it comes to SEO is not doing keyword research. This is a mistake that can have a significant impact on your site’s ranking and visibility.

When you don’t know what your keywords are, you can’t craft effective content for them. In addition, without knowing your target audience, you can’t create or optimize content that will be of value to them.

You might think that using keywords in your content will automatically result in better rankings, but this isn’t always the case.

Sometimes simply targeting high-quality words and phrases won’t do the trick. Sometimes you need to do some tough keyword research and find other ways to improve your SEO efforts as well.

Targeting The Wrong Audience

One of the most common SEO mistakes is targeting the wrong audience. By trying to reach people who are already interested in your product or service, you’re likely going to miss out on a lot of potential customers.

Instead, focus on targeting people who are likely to be interested in your content. This means understanding your audience and tailoring your marketing efforts accordingly.

You can use this information to target specific demographics or interests, which will help you reduce the amount of time it takes for someone to discover and engage with your content.

You’re penalizing your own traffic

One of the most common SEO mistakes is penalizing your own traffic. This is where you’re reducing the amount of people who are coming to your site because they believe your content isn’t worth reading.

This can have a significant impact on your ranking, and it can also lead to lost opportunities for leads and customers. To make sure that your site is ranking optimally, it’s important to optimize both the content and the layout of your site.

You should also make sure that all of your links are pointing to high-quality sites, and that all of your pages are well-optimized for search engine crawlers.

Poorly Targeted Keywords

One of the most common mistakes small businesses make when it comes to SEO is targeting keywords incorrectly. They are often looking for keywords that have a high volume, but not enough hits to generate relevance or genuinely improve their site’s visibility.

This isn’t going to help your site rank as highly in search engine results pages (SERPs), and it’s going to cause you a lot of problems down the road. To ensure that your keywords are targeted with precision, you need to do some keyword research.

Not only will this help you determine which words are most relevant to your business, but it will also help you determine what words are being used by other businesses in relation to your keywords.

By understanding the competition, you can better tailor your marketing efforts to better align with their expectations.

Poorly Structured Content

One of the most common mistakes small businesses make when it comes to SEO is poorly structured content. This is the type of content that’s dense and complex, making it difficult for readers to understand. Worse, this type of content often doesn’t include any keywords or phrases that could help it rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs).

In fact, many small businesses are simply not aware of how important good SEO is, and as a result, they produce content that falls behind in terms of relevance and search engine visibility. Worse still,Poorly structured content can also lead to broken links.links are the critical connectors between your site and other online resources.

Whenlinks become broken, it becomes difficult for people to find your site in Google, Yahoo! or other search engines. Broken links can also hurt your ranking in SERPs, which can be costly and resulting in lost customers and lost business.

PPC Is Dead

and Over The old-school way to promote your site was to place ads on Google. Unfortunately, this method is no longer as effective as it used to be. According to a study by Inbound Marketing, the average PPC campaign spends 6 times more than it did 10 years ago. And this isn’t just in the United States: studies have shown that PPC campaigns are struggling in most countries.

In fact, according to a study by Ad Age, only 38 percent of all website traffic comes from clicks on ads. The vast majority of traffic comes from organic search results (those generated by your site itself). This means that almost all of your visitors are coming from people who have already found your site through other channels, such as Google or social media.

What’s more, PPC campaigns are often time-consuming and resource-intensive, which can ultimately hinder your business’s growth.

Poor Quality Content

Before anything else, it’s important to have high-quality content on your site. No one wants to read a page that doesn’t look good or has low quality graphics. In order to create high-quality content, you need to research your topic.

You also need to be sure that your data is accurate and up-to-date. You should also make sure that you are writing original content, not copying other people’s work. Even if you have high-quality content, it won’t help if your site isn’t search engine friendly. Your site will rank lower and get less traffic if it can’t be found in the first place.

To make sure that all of your content is search engine friendly, you should use keywords in all of your articles, include proper link building, and make sure that all of your pages are well optimized for search engines. If you don’t do these things, your site will struggle to rank as high as it should and likely get lost in the shuffle.

Redundant Content

Redundant content is when your site contains too much information, and not enough of it is relevant to the topic at hand. This can be a recipe for disaster in terms of search engine rankings.

A site that’s full of irrelevant information will likely suffer in the SERPS (search engine results pages) of the web, where the first thing people see are the results for the specific search term that you entered.

In order to prevent your site from being penalized for its lack of content, make sure that all your content is relevant and interesting.

Off-site Links

One of the most common SEO sins is off-site links. Off-site links are links that are not included in your site’s search engine results page (SERP). They can be found on the bottom of the search results page, or even the first few pages of an internet search.

By leaving these links out of your site, you’re doing two things: You’re reducing your chances of being found by Google, and you’re increasing the chances that someone will stumble across your site without knowing it.

While it might not seem like a big deal, leaving off-site links can have a significant impact on your ranking in search engine results pages (SERPs).

If you’re in a position to rank high for your topic in SERPS, leaving these links out will likely do the trick.

Inappropriate Keywords

When you use keywords in your SEO strategy, it’s important to choose the right ones. However, many small businesses don’t have the time or resources necessary to do keyword research. This can lead to a lot of wasted effort and potential leads.

For example, if you’re trying to rank for the phrase “SEO friendly website,” you might not be targeting the right keywords. You might be targeting keywords like “site design,” “site optimization,” or even just “SEO.” This will result in your site ranking lower than it should and likely leading to lost customers and closed deals.

Phrases and Metrics

That Don’t Work

1. “We have the best traffic in the industry.” This phrase is often used to try and justify low-quality content or poor site design. It’s not true, and it won’t help your site rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs).

2. “We have a team of experts who can help you improve your site.” This phrase often suggests that the company has someone who can take care of everything for you – from keyword research to content evaluation to internal linking.

However, as we said earlier, this isn’t always the case. In fact, many small businesses don’t have the time, skills, or expertise necessary to handle everything that comes with a solid SEO strategy.

3. “We offer a free trial so you can try our service first!” This phrase is often used as a way to offer a free trial before making a purchase. Many times, this is just a ploy to get people to sign up for an expensive subscription service without actually trying it out.

4. “Our services are guaranteed to rank high in search engine results pages (SERPs).” This claim is often made without any evidence to back up its assertions. While there might be some truth to this statement in some cases, it’s generally not accurate.

A study by Forbes found that only one percent of sites ranked highly in SERPs after

Duplicate Content

One common mistake small businesses make is duplicate content. This is content that’s been written by someone else and then republished on your site without properly attributing the source. It can happen in a number of ways: you might see a post from someone on your social media page, or you might see an article from a website that you trust.

If you spot this kind of content, it’s important to take action. You can remove the content from your site, or you can credit the original author and link back to them.

Ineffective Keyword Research Another common mistake small businesses make is not conducting keyword research correctly. This is the process of understanding what words are being used by your target audience and targeting those keywords accordingly.

Without keyword research, it’s difficult to know which keywords will be most effective for your business. This can lead to website rankings lower than they would be if you had conducted proper keyword research.

Additionally, it can also lead to missed opportunities for revenue because customers who are interested in your product or service may not have found your site yet because they are looking for information about other similar products or services.

Poor Page Speed The next thing that many small businesses forget is page speed. Page speed is important because it affects how quickly people can access information on your site. If pages load too slowly or don’t display correctly, it becomes difficult for users to navigate around your site and learn about your.

Google Haters

One of the most common mistakes small businesses make is Quantifying their competition. They think that because Google loves them, everyone else should too. Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case. You don’t have to be as big and popular as Google to be penalized.

In fact, many smaller sites find themselves ranking lower in search results due to their own website issues (i.e., bad design, lack of keyword research, etc.)

It can be difficult to tell whether a site is being penalized by Google or not, but it’s definitely worth keeping an eye on your rankings in the SERPS section of your website.

Google Panda: Another common mistake small businesses make is failing to take advantage of Penguin (the new Penguin update).

Penguin is a Panda update that penalizes sites for having low-quality content and for links from spammy websites. This update has had a major impact on the search engine rankings of small businesses, and it’s important to be proactive about updating your content and paying attention to the changes that Panda makes. Read Other Algorithm: Hummingbird Algorithm

Internal Links: Another common mistake small businesses make is not linking well from their website to other websites.

This can lead to lower pageviews and lost conversions for your site. It’s important to link back to your own website as often as possible, and make sure that all of your site’s links are indexed by Google.

Boring Site Analysis

One of the most common problems small businesses make is not doing enough site analysis. This is where you take a cursory look at your website and determine whether or not it meets the minimum requirements for search engine optimization.

If it doesn’t, then you must make changes to your content, structure, and design in order to improve your ranking. But even if you only have a limited understanding of how your website is performing, you can still optimize it using some of the following methods:

Google AdWords: With AdWords, you can target specific keywords and see how effective your ads are at driving traffic to your site.

The results are often interesting and revealing, so be sure to use AdWords to find out what works best for your business.

Google Analytics: You can also use Google Analytics to track usage data on your site and see which pages are being visited most frequently.

This information can be extremely helpful in understanding how people are engaging with your website, as well as helping you optimize future content and ads.

WebPage Audit: Finally, if you feel like you don’t have enough time or resources to do a full site audit (which I highly recommend), then using a WebPage Audit tool can help you identify any potential issues with your site quickly.

Google Webmaster Tools

: One of the most important tools an SEO agency can have. One of the most important tools an SEO agency can have is Google Webmaster Tools. With Webmaster Tools, you can see all of the different pages on your site that are being visited, as well as the analytics for each one.

This information is invaluable for understanding how your site is performing and making changes where necessary. Additionally, with Google Webmaster Tools, you can quickly identify any issues with your site that may be causing problems for visitors.

Yellow journalism

One common SEO technique is the so-called yellow journalism. This is the act of publishing content that is deliberately misleading or inaccurate in order to get a site higher in search engine results pages (SERPs). It’s often used by small business owners as a way to improve their visibility and rank for better terms in SERPs.

By publishing articles that are low quality, they can hope to fool Google into thinking that the content on their site is high quality, when in reality it isn’t. Yellow journalism can also hurt your site’s ranking in SERPs.

Keywords Are Dead

One of the most common mistakes small businesses make when it comes to SEO is overlooking the importance of keywords. Too often, small businesses think that they can simply FILL OUT THEIR CONTENT WITH KEYWORDS, and then worry about their site ranking.

The reality is, if you have a keyword-rich site, your rankings will skyrocket. However, if you don’t have any good keywords to work with, you’ll need to do some serious keyword research in order to find the right ones.

Onsite Optimization Is vital

SEO Onsite optimization (or “ optimizing your site for search engine visibility”) is the process of making sure that your site is as optimized as possible for search engine results pages (SERPs). This can be done in a number of ways, but the most important is to ensure that all of your pages are of high quality and that all of your content is relevant.

You should also make sure that all of your images are high quality, and that all of your text is well-written.

Defective Links

One of the most common SEO mistakes is creating links that don’t point to your site properly. This can lead to lower rankings and lost traffic, as well as decreased conversions. It’s important to make sure that all of your links point to your site, and not just the external sources you use.

Make sure that any redirects are HTTPS, that your linking methods are effective, and that you have high-quality backlinks from reliable sources.

Hiring An SEO Company Is expensive

First and foremost, hiring an SEO company is expensive. Not only do they need to be paid per click, but they also need to pay for the use of their own search engine optimization (SEO) services. This can be a very costly investment, especially if your site isn’t already ranking well in search engines.

Another common mistake small businesses make is not doing their own keyword research. This is a critical step in any SEO strategy, as it allows you to target the right keywords and target them specifically. If you don’t do your own research, you will likely end up targeting keywords that don’t have a lot of impact or keywords that are too generic.

You should also make sure that your site doesn’t contain any clichés or tired phrases that are being used by other websites. These phrases tend to hurt your ranking in search engine results pages (SERPs). You can avoid this by ensuring that your site contains only fresh and innovative content.

Finally, it’s important to make sure that your site remains operational and up-to-date. All of your website’s changes should be made directly through the website’s dashboard, rather than through a third-party tool like WordPress or Drupal.

This way, you can be sure that all of your changes are taking into account what Google is trying to rank your site for.

Blaming Performance Drops On Algorithm Updates

One common SEO tactic is to blame performance drops on algorithm updates. This is a fallacy that can have serious consequences for your business.

If you’re blaming performance issues on algorithm updates, you’re likely to lose faith in your own site and its potential to rank high in search engines. This could lead to lower traffic, lower conversion rates, and even lost customers.

Paying For Links

One of the most common mistakes small businesses make when it comes to SEO is paying for links. This is a common technique used by spammy websites that hope to get you pulled in by google, and then sell your data or ideas to other businesses.

Paying for links can have a significant impact on your site’s rank, as well as the number of visitors your site receives. It can also lead to a decrease in organic traffic, as people who see your link but don’t click through may instead visit another website.

Being Too Scared To Ask Questions

One of the most common mistakes small businesses make when it comes to SEO is not asking enough questions. They might be afraid of the answer, or they might think that the answer won’t be good. In both cases, they’re wrong.

The answer to any question can and will be helpful in optimizing your site for search engine spiders. Furthermore, even if you don’t have all the answers, you can still do some basic research by checking out different search engines and seeing what results are being produced.

Ignoring Other Pillars Of SEO

One common mistake small businesses make is neglecting their site’s SEO. This can lead to a number of problems, chief among them being lower rankings in search engine results pages (SERPs).

Vice versa, poor SEO can also lead to decreased traffic and organic search engine traffic, as well as lower conversion rates. So, how do you go about addressing both issues?

One approach is to focus on improving your content. Poorly written content can easily lead to low rankings in SERPs, and the wrong kind of content can also be a major problem for organic search engine traffic.

So, it’s essential to make sure that your content is high-quality, and that you are properly tailoring it to your audience’s specific needs. Another important step is to improve the way that your site looks.

Poorly designed websites often suffer from lower rankings in SERPs and organic search engine traffic because people are more likely to click through if they see something visually appealing than if they see text only. You can use images in your content too, as people are more likely to click through when they see something visually appealing than if they see text only.

However, using images in an ad campaign can be expensive and may not lead to the same results as using a quality picture in your website’s content. Another common mistake small businesses make is neglecting their site’s SEO.

Boring Site Analysis

One of the first things you’ll need to do when you start out in SEO is to do a site analysis. This will help you understand your site’s strengths and weaknesses, and which areas of your content are the most important to focus on.

However, many small businesses don’t have the time or resources to do this themselves. This can be a huge problem, as it can allow your competitors to score higher on search engine rankings than you will.

Summary

It’s not just about writing great content; it’s about understanding how it’s being read, and then tailoring your marketing efforts accordingly. In addition, SEO can be incredibly beneficial for your business if done correctly.

There are numerous ways in which your SEO efforts can negatively impact your site. While it might seem like a scary thought, it’s actually not that uncommon for sites to suffer from SEO as a result of their own inefficiencies.

Let’s look at some of the more common SEO pitfalls, and how you can avoid them to keep your site ranking optimally.