SEO is a tough market; the competition is high and everyone is vying for a spot on page one. With all of the regular updates and changes Google makes to their algorithms, it can be such a frustrating and confusing job to try and keep your keywords ranking high.
1. Misuse of Keywords
One of the biggest misconceptions is that if you feature your keywords all throughout your website you will be well on your way to ranking well. What people don’t realise though is that the keywords you’re targeting on each page should be unique to the page, you don’t want to be trying to rank the same keyword on different pages.
Each page on your website has a different theme, therefore should have a different set of keywords that are not being targeted on any other page. Pages which are using the same keyword or keywords in the meta title or h1 are going to be competing against themselves and will confuse search engines. Try and avoid duplicated content and keywords at all costs as it will almost always create a negative impact on your results.
2. Misusing Backlinks
Backlinks are so important to SEO, but you need to know what you are doing. Misusing backlinks can get your site penalised and all your hard work from your SEO campaigning can go out the door in minutes. The key to quality backlinks is to make sure they are relevant to the content on your site. They should clearly support the purpose of your posts. If they follow these guidelines and come from authoritative sites, it can vastly improve your sites SEO.
3. Poor Content Creation
Optimising your content for SEO is not really needed but you do need to ensure the content you are writing targets your audience, is educational and can benefit your audience in some way. Creating quality content takes a lot of work and you’ll probably be better off hiring someone who specialises in content writing to make sure your content is capturing your audience’s attention. Make sure your titles are eye-catching and that your blog has an easy to read layout and is well designed. Try to offer regular visual content such as videos and infographics as these will ensure your site gets more engagement. Remember the more quality your content is, the better your traffic will be.
4. Expecting Results too Soon
SEO is not instant, it requires a lot of time spent maintaining and managing keywords. Certain aspects are out of your control and sometimes your results will be completely unpredictable. The industry relevant to the keywords you are working on will always impact your results as they are based a lot on the competition you are up against. In some industries, the competition is very fierce and ranking will go up and down on the daily, these types of industries will require a lot more attention and maintaining to stay ranking highly. Other Industries are much more niche and so rankings will stay high over a generous period of time.
5. Not Using Title Tags
Title Tags on your website and SEO optimisation go hand in hand. It’s a step that a lot of companies struggle with. You need to have proper title tags on all your pages relevant to the keywords you are trying to target. Keywords need to be strategically placed throughout your copy as well as in the H1 and H2 tags. But you need to place these objectively so that it looks natural to the reader. Here are a few basic guidelines to follow.
• Ensure that the keyword is towards the front of the title tag and H1 tag
• Use only one H1 Tag per page
• Use the keywords as a way to add value to your pages content, do not just fit one in for the sake of it as it can work negatively against you.
• Ensure that you do not have more than 1% exact keyword match on the page.
Want To Know How Yodle Can Help?
Hopefully, we shed some light on some of the main problems you may be facing with your SEO efforts. If you would like to know more about how we help our clients with their SEO Campaigns, call us today on 0800 001 285 to chat to one of our friendly team and find out how we can help.