Google’s organic traffic is one of the important aspects of content and every blogger strives for organic traffic. Getting organic traffic is difficult and it takes a lot of time to rank your blog and get organic traffic.
There is no hidden strategy behind this and no unique ingredients are put to rank on google and get organic traffic right from the day publish your blog.
While this process there are a lot of common mistakes made by the bloggers and you don’t need to sacrifice anything. You just need to follow some of the steps which are correct and serve google’s algorithm.
If you’re the one who makes the SEO mistakes and struggling to rank your blog. There are no guaranteed results in SEO and there are many factors that will determine whether your blog will rank on the 1st page of google.
By following the steps in this guide. You will get the possible results that will push your blog into the SERP and you will get organic traffic. Let’s get into the guide on common SEO mistakes to avoid.
Why Does SEO Matter?
There are a lot of sources to get traffic like Social media and paid sources and as well all the other sources. But the vast majority of traffic comes from search engines which are say organic traffic.
The benefits of SEO are a lot and it’s a long-term game the results will show up after a long time and it requires constant effort and in the process, there are a lot of factors that will determine the results.
If your content is high quality and most importantly if it follows the SEO principles then there are quite high chances of ranking the blog and you will likely receive more traffic over time.
For most people, it becomes difficult to put in paid ads and they would like to continue with the SEO and make some of the common SEO mistakes which will lead to no traffic.
SEO is one of the difficult processes but if you do it in the correct format and apply the strategy and steps then it will give you excellent results. In this guide, I will be sharing some of the most common SEO mistakes beginners make.
If you’re the one who’s making these mistakes then course correct and get the organic traffic and rank your blog on the 1st page of google. Let’s get into the most common mistakes.
8 Most Common SEO Mistakes
The most common SEO mistakes are made by almost everyone in the initial journey but as you grow in this you will understand what google ranks and what not. Here are some of the common SEO mistakes bloggers make.
1. Targeting The Wrong Keywords
If you want to rank on google then you need to make sure that you’re using the right keyword to rank. One of the most common SEO mistakes is targeting the generic keyword that will be difficult to rank. For example “pet food” could be your keyword.
Then you compete with all the sites that are ranking for pet food and this could be very difficult to get the position on the ladder of google’s first page.
Therefore you can use a more specific keyword or a long tail keyword like “best pet food in 2022” or “cheapest fresh dog food” which is more specific and targets your keyword and people might search for this specific query and your website might pop up in the search results.
The longer your keyword is the more chances of ranking will be there, of course, the search volume may be lower but you can get the traffic by optimizing a lot of blogs for long tail keywords and rank on that specific keywords.
“It’s better to get something than nothing”.
In the initial few days your blog might not get the boost after certain days google will rank if it’s providing value to the user and if it’s targeting the correct keyword.
- The search intent of the user is important.
- Always remember to keep a check on competitors’ keywords.
- Make sure to focus on long-tail keywords.
- Don’t focus much on the generic keywords instead go with the specific keywords.
The long tail keyword is easy to rank when compared to the generic keywords there is a lot of competing factor in the generic keywords. If you’re the one who works on trending topics then make sure you check the trends on google trends and target the long tail keyword in that as well for ranking.
2. Not Writing Awesome Content
This is one of the common SEO mistakes people make when they are starting off because they find it difficult to tackle what points should be included and what people are searching and most importantly the search intent.
In the initial days, we struggled with finding the best content to write and ended up compromising the content quality and not delivering awesome content to the user but after searching and writing much content we understood the importance of awesome content.
The most common SEO mistake we make as a beginner is we think that by writing much content our blogs will rank and the website will be on the first page of people that’s the main reason we compromise on the quality of the blog.
One of the key factors of writing awesome content is being transparent and honest and sharing all the things that obstacles you faced when you started off.
When you’re starting a blog make sure you pay close attention to the quality and providing value. Google will look for the answer that matches the querying user is searching and if there is not enough content that it will not display the content on the 1st page.
Always keep in mind that Google is not your audience. You need to write content for your visitors not for google. Google is the search engine that sorts the information and provides the best information to the user.
Therefore writing quality content for your audience is one of the best ways to rank and it helps a lot in SEO. Writing quality content means writing original content will stand out unique among others and google will consider it in ranking.
3. Not Keeping People On Your Website
When the visitor lands on the site your goal should be to keep them on your site. The visitor shouldn’t be bouncing back from your site. First, you need to encourage the visitor to click on your site.
The best way to keep your visitor engaged on your site is to create a strong call to action. This can be anything for example buy button or sign up for a newsletter. Don’t add the CTA deviating from your topic always make it relevant to your niche.
The other way to keep people on your site is by adding internal and external links to your site that will make your content more appealing and provides more value to visitors.
Adding internal and external links will help the user to navigate to relevant content or read the other blogs which you have written and they could get value from this content google highly recommends internal and external linking for ranking.
So make sure to spend time on internal and external linking to create a good site structure which helps in ranking and also keeps people on your site.
4. Not Making Mobile Friendly Website
This is one of the most common SEO mistakes that beginners make and don’t get traffic for a long time. In 2018 google switched to mobile-first indexing. This means that google first looks at the mobile version of your site that will decide how high your site will rank.
So if your desktop site is set up and your mobile site is not responsive at all then this will impact your ranking in a negative way hence you need to make your site responsive for a higher ranking.
The best way to test if your page is mobile-friendly or not is by google’s mobile-friendly test. This will give you clarity on how a user can use your page on mobile. What doesn’t stop after checking your website in google’s mobile-friendly test?
The best way to check whether your site is mobile-friendly or not is to browse your site for a while and check every button, image, and the text size and check if everything works as you want it to be. If everything is working fine then it would be very easy to purchase on your mobile and the user can read easily without facing the navigation issue.
So, mobile is the future, and having a mobile responsive page will help you in ranking don’t miss out on this it will continue in the future.
5. Not Having Faster Website
The most common SEO mistake that we have included in this guide is not having a faster site. The faster your website is the more google will favor it. With the page experience ranking rolling out. It’s important to work on your site speed to keep your pages in search results.
There is a very useful tool from google itself to check your site speed google page speed insight. This tool will help you get the structure of the site and what aspects of the site can be improved to boost the website.
Most websites are slower because of the images which are uploaded on them one of the quick recommendations is to look into the images because images are comparatively larger which takes lots of space. Resizing the images on your site can speed up the loading time. If you have a website on wordpress then it can be done easily by installing plugins.
If you have a wordpress install then take up a look at the installed plugins which are not used anymore on the site then make sure to uninstall them and delete them. Because it will take a lot of space on your site which will impact the loading time.
Therefore uninstalling the plugins which you are not using and compressing and resizing the images will make your website speed boost and if you’re the one making this mistake then you can perform some of the steps mentioned here for better ranking.
6. Not inviting People To Your Site
One of the most common SEO mistaken beginners make is not adding the correct title and description of the blog. Metadata appears on a search engine when a particular query is being searched.
The title is one of the important ranking factors for google. So, you need to make sure that it’s optimized correctly for every page. I suggest adding your keyword in the title but make sure that the title is not too long. If the page title is too long then it will get cut off.
When the end user search for a particular query then they will click based on the title and description they read if it’s not answering the query they are searching they will not click.
The meta description plays an important role in CTR it’s not a ranking factor but plays a vital role as it gives insight into how likely the potential visitors are to click on the blog.
If it will get easier for them to get the information they are looking for in the title and description. The more likely people think that your website will provide the search query the more likely they will click on your website and eventually your website will get more traffic.
7. Focusing On Quantity Link than Quality
There are a lot of ways to get the links but the most common SEO mistake beginner make is focusing on the number of links rather than the quality. One link to a popular website will make a whole lot of difference on your SEO ranking than the hundreds and thousands of links directed to your website.
Of course, these quality links are harder to get but they are worth thousands of links on your site. That’s the reason google also trusts these quality links because they are from the trusted website. They will increase the traffic to your website.
The links should be relevant to your website
- It should not have a lot of outbound links
- Do not get the links to the pharmacy, or gambling websites.
- The website should have a high authority and traffic.
Here are some of the specific points to keep in mind whenever your approach the links. Make sure to check all the links of your website if they are broken then it will impact your website as well.
Final Thought On Common SEO Mistakes
SEO is not one day process it takes a lot of time and it’s not easy to remember all the different fractions you will working on for improving the SEO. Also, this is not a one-time process you need to do it on a regular basis.
If you don’t want to do one of the SEO mistakes we have listed and cost you no ranking so make sure you focus on the website speed, write awesome content and optimize the right keywords and most importantly target the right keyword.
If you want people to retain on your site then have a great call to action. Have internal links and make your website mobile responsive. Implement all of these steps to well optimize your site. Always keep in mind that SEO is not an overnight process and it will give you results over time.
Keep in mind that quality links are worth thousands of links on your site always go with quality links as mentioned above because they will increase your ranking and authority and most importantly google also trust quality links.
If you liked this let us know we would love to hear from you. And if you have any questions drop them in the comment box below. Also, check out our blog on the 7 best profitable blogging niches.