Costly SEO Mistakes to avoid in 2019

Search engine optimisation is quite often the backbone of many brand’s digital marketing strategies because of its power to attract your ideal audience to your website, at a far better price point than pay per click advertising.

The plethora of SEO information available on the web can make it difficult to decide which advice is best, especially as there are a few conflicting opinions and outdated information out there. As a Melbourne SEO agency we see it quite often and this, in part, leads to many costly SEO mistakes that should be avoided, including those mentioned here.

Disregarding long-tail keyword clusters

A lot of business owners and marketing professionals like to focus on the broader keyword groups with the highest search volume but we need to remember not to ignore long-tail keyword clusters. While they do not have as high a search volume as broader clusters they are more specific searches made by potential customers who are further down the buyer funnel and getting closer to making their purchase. So typically you are going to see that whilst these search terms aren't as great in volume they normally do convert really well. It's important as part of your overall SEO plan that you are including both short and long term goals. With long-tail keyword clusters the competition is not as fierce so they can be a great addition to the short term organic search plan for your brand.

Ignoring your internal link profile

When talking about a brand’s link profile you often hear the discussion of external backlinks and whilst they are key in an SEO campaign we must not neglect the internal linking profile and structure. But just like with anything in SEO you can have too much of a good thing! Making sure that you are not over doing it and including unnatural amounts or linking to content that’s not actually useful for the reader is key here. You don't want to be adding links just for the sake of it, so construct a clear cut strategy that adds value to your site and users rather than going overboard.

Content that is boring, difficult to read or duplicated

The phrase content is King has been thrown around billions of times and i'm sure you have heard it before but unfortunately some people have taken this to mean the more content the better. That would be true if the quality is incredibly high and you have a diverse range of topics to cover. However a common mistake we see business owners make is that they are duplicating content from other websites or they are only creating very niche and industry specific topics that don’t take into account the style of content their target audience likes to read or there may be a heavy inclusion of industry jargon that does not resonate with the audience. So what you want to do is create unique high quality content that is focused on what your target audience is searching at different stages of their buying journey. Remember you need to focus on quality over quantity you cannot just create a bunch of mediocre and unengaging content then hope something sticks. It’s an absolute waste of your time and a very common SEO mistake.

Placing written content in images

To follow on from our content point above it's essential that both your users and search engines are able to read and digest your content. Quite often people put text in images it's because they can style at the way they want to without having to phone their developer, this is a huge no no. If styling is the issue for your brand’s website then I would urge you to consider discussing these issues with your developer and having them make changes to your site that allow you to get that look and feel without having to use images to display your content. Unfortunately search engines cannot read content in images which means that your website is not going to rank for the searches that you want to be found for if you place your content in images.

Being short sighted and cutting corners

In a world full of instant gratification everyone is looking to achieve something or get something really quickly unfortunately SEO cannot fall into that realm as it is a long term game. If you are looking for instant gratification you need to be looking at pay-per-click advertising options instead. A common mistake is business owners wanting to speed up the process and engaging in black hat SEO services so this could mean things like keyword stuffing or buying dodgy backlinks. This is a big no no, sure on occasion you may see rankings increase temporarily but these are short term gains. This is also why it’s important that your number one SEO campaign focus isn’t just number one rankings but rather a long term increase in leads and sales.

DIYing your SEO

Search engine optimisation is a full time job requiring consistent ongoing learning and keeping up to date with the current algorithm changes. There is a misconception out there that if you know the basics of SEO that you can get by and achieve your goals which is just not true. For many business owners, in the early days of business, have little choice but to do everything themselves and that's fine but it's really important to know when to step away and have the professionals come in and take your online visibility to the next level to help you effectively grow your business online. You don't want to be experimenting and learning how to do SEO on your own website it will cost you more time and money and customers in the long run to fix it.

Ormi Media is a digital marketing and SEO agency in Australia partnering with companies across the world.