Every website owner knows that traffic is essential to the success of your business. If your site does not generate targeted visitors then you cannot make sales from it. Although the visual appearance of your site is an important element, it is not as important as your focus on SEO.
The key ingredient to driving traffic to your site is through search engines. Though there are other methods such as offline or online advertising, search engines are the ideal way to generate targeted traffic to your website, and as such are critical to the success of your business. This is also one of the most cost-efficient online marketing techniques available.
Listed below are 5 costly SEO mistakes that you need to avoid in order to generate more traffic to your website:
Using Keywords Inefficiently
Choosing the right keywords is critical to the success of your website, so do your research very carefully. By using the wrong keywords you will be attracting the wrong traffic to your site (if any), so do in-depth keyword research to ensure that all pages on your site are properly optimised. Google’s AdWords tool is a very useful, free resource.
Using Irrelevant Keywords
Many dishonest website owners resort to using completely irrelevant keywords inside the metadata of their sites to boost the visibility of that site and increase traffic. For example, they may use the name of a well-known celebrity or current hot topic. When visitors enter the site the content has nothing to do with the keyword. Search engines regard this behaviour as spam and will either remove the individual page or the entire website from search engine listings when detected.
Taking Pages from Other Sites
Taking text from other websites for use on your own site is plagiarism and a very bad SEO move. Search engines are very clever and can easily detect on-page duplication, so use authentic, fresh content that you have written from scratch. Yes, it’s okay to take inspiration from other sources, but copying it outright is unethical and poor business behaviour.
Stuffing Pages with Keywords
Keyword stuffing involves assigning numerous keywords to the description of a layer or graphic that appears on your site through the ‘alt’ HTML parameter. If search engines discover that the text used is not accurately describing the layer or graphic then they will automatically consider it as spam.
Assuming Search Engine Rules are Static
Many business owners believe they can implement SEO rules without those rules being subject to change. Search engines can change their rules at any time so be sure to stay afloat of major search engine rules.
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