06/12/2023
Not sure why you’re not ranking #1 for your focus keywords in Google?
You might be making one of the mistakes a lot of site owners make.
We see it happen a lot. From small local businesses to big corporate ones, lots of websites forget a few important things.
Here, we’ll give you an overview of the SEO issues we encounter most frequently.
1. Forgetting that faster is better
The first common SEO mistake we’d like to touch on is site speed. The faster your site, the more Google will favour it. Especially now, with page experience being one of Google’s ranking factors.
Your site and its pages need to load fast enough to keep them in the search results.
A quick win and a recommendation we frequently give is to optimise your images.
Another quick win if you have a WordPress site is taking a good look at the plugins that are activated.
2. Trying to rank for the wrong keywords
If you want to rank in Google, you have to make sure that you’re using the right keywords for every page.
One of the biggest mistakes we frequently encounter is that site owners optimise their pages for generic keywords.
If you are a relatively small business that wants to rank for ‘rental car’, you might be aiming too high. Try to come up with something more specific.
Otherwise, you’re mainly competing with the big car rental companies that have offices all over the world, which is impossible to do!
The longer and more specific the keywords are, the higher your chances of ranking for this keyword.
Also, although the search volume might be lower, a longer key phrase often means a more specific search intent. Meaning that you might reach fewer people, but you are reaching the right people.
3. Failing to invite people to your site
Let’s talk about something that often gets ignored: metadata.
Metadata is the information that people see on the result pages (SERPs) when a website comes up for an online search. It includes the title of your page and its meta description.
The page title is still an important ranking factor for Google, so you have to make sure it’s optimised correctly for every page.
The meta description is not a ranking factor, but it does play an important part in your Click-Through Rate (CTR).
If you optimise your meta descriptions with a clear and attractive message on what people can find on your site, it becomes easier for them to see if the information they’re looking for is on that page.
4. Neglecting to write awesome content
We regularly write about writing awesome content, but we still see a lot of sites struggling with content.
This is another common SEO mistake that we want to tackle.
Because every page on your site must have decent content that’s at least 300 words long.
Google needs enough copy to find out what your page is about and whether you’re providing the answer people are looking for.
You can’t expect Google to see you as an expert on a certain topic when you have only written two sentences about it.
That being said, keep in mind that Google is not your primary audience. You need to write for your visitors first.
5. Failing to keep people on your site
Once visitors land on your site, the next goal is to keep them on your site. You don’t want your visitors immediately bouncing back to Google once they have read something on your page.
This is why you need to encourage visitors to stay a bit longer. The best way to do this is to create a call-to-action (CTA), which is usually a button that offers an action to your visitor.
Another way to keep people on your website is by linking to other pages on your website. This is also an important part of SEO and should not be forgotten.
6. Not taking mobile seriously
The sixth and final SEO mistake that’s quite common is not considering mobile.
A few years ago, Google switched to mobile-first indexing. This means that Google now looks at the mobile version of your site to decide how high you should rank.
So if the desktop version of your site is set up brilliantly, but your mobile site isn’t responsive at all, this will be reflected in your rankings. Negatively. So if that’s the case, make sure to work on mobile SEO!
In short
We know that SEO is a lot of work. And that it’s not easy to remember all the different parts that you need to work on. But it is important to do so, regularly. You don’t want one of the mistakes we discussed costing you your rankings.
Want more, visit https://123internet.com.au
