Webmasters are continually doing everything in their might to avoid technical site issues and simultaneously keep pace with the new and upcoming updates. As a digital marketing professional, there is a good chance that you may be aware of the myriad of problems that may occur within your website. To add to it, keeping up with SEO’s evolving world can be quite a daunting task. Awareness and understanding of the common and dangerous SEO mistakes can provide you with an excellent chance to minimize the technical glitches and maximize your website’s performance. So, regardless of how big or small your website is, there are a few things that you need to do. Here is a list of a few such things. Let us address them one by one. 

Mistake 1 – Being unaware of your target audience

A primary and fundamental SEO principle is having a thorough understanding of your target audience. An SEO professional must know their audience at the most granular and minute level, comments Jason, an SEO expert with MyPlumbersChoice. Do you know why that is? It is because SEO is like the voice of your customer. The problem with many marketers is that they assume that they know their audience, wherein, in reality, they do not. As an outcome, they often end up in a trap because of their inability to comprehend the customer’s market behavior at the granular level. More so, customers usually demand quick answers and results to their questions. They require it in real-time. 

With your site’s historical data, you can get an in-depth insight into the seasonal trends, and to back that, the methods employed by an expert for marketing must be holistic. A common mistake that marketers make during keyword selection overlooks the user and the search engine preference for long-tail keywords. Of course, it is essential to describe the services and the products in a specific manner; you must understand and be aware of the keywords that your target customers would use to reach out to your content.  

For this, you need to: 

  1. Gauge the market wherein the customers’ shop, and try to comprehend the macro trends. 
  2. Employ both real-time and historical data to get an understanding of the evolving behavior of the customers. 
  3. Map what you understand about your customer’s intent and employ the same in your keyword selection strategy. 
  4. Make the most of Google’s keyword planner and vendor tools. 

Mistake 2 – Unsatiated search intent

Some marketers successfully create content that is beneficial for the audience, but despite that, they fail to target it well. Consequently, your content might not reach the right people, and the people who avail of your content might not find it useful. Thus, even when you have figured out the target audience, all your efforts will be futile if you do not understand the search intent. The search intent is mainly the user’s intent when they go searching for something on the internet. Your content and the website should satiate the user’s intent by offering them the solution to their search, comments Jasmine, a Digital Marketing expert with TrueBlueFisherMen. Hence, you must know what the searcher may be thinking when they go on Google looking for something. Your website should always offer the right answer to their queries. 

Let us understand this with the help of an example. 

A user goes on a search engine and types a query PPC, it implies that they want to understand what PPC is. On the other hand, if the user types PPC services on the search engine, they intend to seek an expert or a company that offers PPC services. Both of these keywords have different user intent. If you provide PPC services but ask What PPC is, your content will not succeed as you won’t be able to satiate the search phase’s intent.  

Mistake 3 – Handling the SEO by yourself instead of hiring an expert

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is not easy. It is a full-time job and demands advanced knowledge of the latest strategies, trends, and algorithm updates, comments Brian, an expert SEO professional with RazorHood. As a marketing professional, you might be aware of the basics and believe that you may handle SEO. In all honesty, you cannot, and if you try to do it all by yourself, you will learn this the hard way. An SEO professional will always be aware of the latest and upcoming trends. From their extensive experience in the industry, they know what works and what does not. For someone who is just starting, you do not want to experiment with your site as that will result in wastage of your time and money.  

Mistake 4 – Not working on your site’s speed

A lot of marketers take care of everything but the site’s speed. Always remember, the faster your site loads, the better it is. Google still favors a fast site. You can check the speed of your website with the Google Pagespeed Insights tool. With this tool, you can get an insight into the different aspects of your site, which need improvement, and the ways to boost your site’s speed. One of the best ways to make your site load faster is by optimizing the images, points out James, an SEO executive with EmbraceGardening. The problem is many websites have huge images.

Consequently, they take a lot of time to load. So, to reduce your loading time, you will have to resize your images. It can be easily done for people with a WordPress website by installing a plugin, which can handle this for you. 

Alternatively, you can also enable gzip compression and browser caching. These are both going to make the website load faster. The latter ensures that the site loads faster for the returning users. On the other hand, the former will reduce the static file size, making it easy for them to load faster on the browser.

Further, for users who have a WordPress website, you can gauge all your plugins, which are activated. Get rid of all the plugins that are useless to you. If all of them are useful to you, look for plugins, combining two or three functions into one. Always remember, when it comes to plugins, less is more. The fewer the number of plugins you have activated on the site, the faster your site will load. 

Mistake 5- Creating poor quality content

Lastly, if you are doing everything right, and still your content is not outperforming, it may be because of the fact that your content is of low quality. Producing good quality content is not easy. It requires immense hard work. You can work with a good copywriter and a content creator who can create top-quality content for you. Never go with some random freelancer who is offering content at low prices. Always opt for an authentic professional who delivers quality. 

These are the top five mistakes that SEO professionals must strictly avoid.