A pretty asian business woman on cell phone with co-workers in backgroundIt has been said that you can’t learn without making mistakes, and search engine optimization is no exception to this. Given the millions of websites out there, SEO mistakes of every imaginable kind have likely been made. However, there are recurring kinds of mistakes that happen on the road to learning SEO, four of which are examined below. Of course, with affordable SEO available, Tampa businesses need not duplicate these and other common mistakes.
Assuming You Know The Keywords People Use
Although you have a great understanding of your business and know the phrases that best describe what you provide, ordinary people do not. They often use less precise phrases, or different phrasing that has the same or very similar meaning. Sometimes the words are ordered in unusual ways in an attempt to make their intent more clear to the search engine algorithm. There is no substitute for proper keyword research that accesses the real keywords used by your customers.
Thin Content
An old definition of thin content are pages that have little text. This used to be correct years ago when search engines and Google in particular, directly assessed the value of a webpage by measuring its quantity of text. However, since search engine algorithms can not assess the text’s meaning, they can be fooled by any kind of text with correct spelling and grammar.
Today, Google assesses a page’s content by measuring the visitor’s behavior after reaching the page. A visitor that clicks away and resumes their search is a negative indicator. Therefore, setting up lots of pages with thousands of words of keyword laden content that offer no value to the visitor will not work.
Focusing On Too Few Keywords
A classic mistake is focusing on a few keywords that get the most searches. These tend to be short phrases in which the mind-set of the person using them is unclear. An example is the word “fishing boat.” The intent of the person searching with this phrase is unclear. The person could be looking for a rental, writing a school report, or looking for an interesting read while on lunch break.
Using lots of longer keywords that indicate clear intent such as “fishing boat rental Tampa” bring valuable traffic to your website. While these longer phrases individually bring in less traffic, there are many of them for you to use.
Duplicate Content
Duplicate content occurs when multiple pages within a website have the same content. This often happens on blogs that have a home page with full blog posts and also has the posts listed individually on separate pages. E-commerce sites often have multiple pages listing the same products. Whatever its form, duplicate content will reduce your rankings.
Since SEO expertise can be hired, you don’t have to be an SEO specialist yourself. However, you should be able to discern between good and bad practices. To learn about our SEO services and how it can improve your business, contact us today.