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Three SEO mistakes that can impact your search rankings

Mistake #1 – Not doing keyword research

Every business wants to rank high in the search results. Using the right keywords can be the key to success. That’s what makes keyword research a vital part of your SEO strategy. It can help you discover the best keywords to rank for and increase your traffic. It can also bring new leads to your website and help your business increase sales. Although Google’s updates have downplayed the importance of keywords, they are still important in your SEO strategy. It’s not enough to simply create content and stuff it with keywords to engage your target audience. The keyword research strategy is extremely important and can help you discover great opportunities for your business to stand out amongst competitors. Ignite Digital is reminding us of the importance of understanding how keywords work. It’s not enough to pick the most popular keyword and add it throughout your text. Different types of keywords can serve different purposes. For example, you can use generic keywords to describe your business, your product, and your services. These are important for brand awareness. You can also use niche keywords to be more specific. Long-tail keywords may not necessarily attract the same traffic as the general keywords, but they can lead to better business prospects since the search intent is more specific.

Mistake #2 – Not adding title tag or meta description

The goal of search engine optimization is to increase the organic traffic to your website to improve your business success. You want to rank as high as possible in the SERPs to appeal to new or returning customers. While you’re working on producing content of great quality, there is a crucial step that you might be ignoring. Adding title tags and meta descriptions to your pages can help your SEO tactics become extremely successful.. As you’re aiming to increase your search rankings, all your pages should be optimized based on what search crawlers want to find. In this case, meta tags are providing all the necessary information for each page and what it should rank for. A meta description can provide an overview of what the page is about while the title can also include the keyword that you are ranking for. An effective meta description can increase your click-through rates and thus, bring more visitors to your site. It’s important to be clear and distinct as you only have 160 characters to describe your content and your business. Your meta description should appeal to your potential customers to convince them to click on your link. By not adding meta tags, you are reducing your chances of getting your content ranked and discovered through specific keywords. Start by experimenting with the different ways you can present your content in just 160 characters. Think like a user and what would grab your attention to visit a website.

Mistake #3 – Having too many 404 errors

Imagine you’re a user looking for “affordable bikes” as a search term. You’re looking at a meta description that resonates with what you’re looking for so you decide to visit the site. That’s when you see “Error 404” and no content at all. Many users face similar problems and they end up disappointed or frustrated by the user experience. The common message of ‘page not found’ can happen to all websites. However, there are many cases that it shows up way too often. As a business owner, you might not even know that a page is not working. 404 errors can impact your website’s ranking. The more errors you are having, the worse it becomes for your SEO strategy. It’s useful to know that Google is actually normalizing 404 errors. They are aware that things can change and that all websites can end up having such pages. However, it’s important to be aware of them and work towards removing them. A website owner that is having too many 404 errors is signalling Google that they are not frequently reviewing their website or that they have abandoned it. This could negatively impact a good ranking in SERPs. On the contrary, you can run 404 checks to locate pages that are not working anymore to ensure that they are redirected in the correct page. If you’re still having a 404 error on your site, make sure that you are customizing it while including a call-to-action to improve the user experience. There are many SEO mistakes that we can make at some point when working on our search strategy. To find out more about the most popular SEO mistakes and how to avoid them, make sure you read Ignite Digital’s report here.