5 Common SEO Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

Hey there, site owner! Why aren’t you ranking #1 for your focus keyword in Google? It could be because of one of these common SEO mistakes. Let’s look at this list of issues to see if one rings true with you. If it does, follow our tips on avoiding or solving it.

1. Trying to Rank for the Wrong Keywords

You may be using a keyword research tool like SEMrush or Ahrefs and following its recommendations to the letter, trying to rank for many keywords with very low search volume. Keyword research tools can be handy, but they are a guide, not the final say.

For example, if you are a law firm and are trying to rank for the keyword personal injury law, your best bet may be to rank for personal injury lawyer, which is more specific and has a good search volume.

Suppose your website is an established authority on a particular topic or segment of your industry. In that case, you should ignore search volume and target the most relevant keywords that you can.

2. Not Making Your Site Mobile Friendly

This is a big one. If someone is searching for your product or service, but the only hard-to-read, slow-loading pages they can find belong to you, why would they continue to search?

The recent update to Google’s mobile-friendly algorithm is an excellent example of how important this is. Many sites went from ranking well to not ranking at all.

Make sure your website looks good on mobile by using responsive design and testing it on actual smartphones.

3. Forgetting That Faster Is Better

Google is constantly testing new algorithms that give preference to sites loading faster. Google’s own page speed tool can help you identify how you’re doing. Here’s what Google says:

Poor page speed can impact user satisfaction, conversions, and ad impressions. Therefore, we want to encourage you to improve the performance of your pages.

You can even get a free consultation and recommendations from Google on improving the speed of your site.

4. Neglecting Quality Content

In Google’s mind, quality content means that it answers the searcher’s question, is easy to navigate and use, and is up-to-date.

Good, unique content is hard to create and time-consuming to write, so if you are on a budget, you may be tempted to rewrite an older article with new data simply.

If so, you’re doing it wrong. That’s because Google is cracking down on this kind of lazy SEO that only does the bare minimum to pass a search audit. They want sites willing to invest the time and effort to create valuable, unique content that gives searchers what they’re looking for.

5. Not Optimizing Your Site for Google

Many site owners don’t realise that Googlebot (Google’s automated crawler) doesn’t see or understand the same thing that a human does. For example, when a person sees a page, they can click the related content link at the bottom to see more articles on the same topic. Googlebot, however, doesn’t see that link and can’t read the articles in that section.

To rank well in Google, you will need to optimise your site for Googlebot by adding great meta descriptions, titles, and other elements.

These are the five most common SEO mistakes that cause sites to not rank well in Google. To avoid the problem, test your web pages using the above tools, make sure your website is mobile-friendly, get your site optimised for fast loading, fortify it with quality content, and make sure it’s optimised well for Google.

Need to rank better in search?

If you need a trusted SEO agency to provide you with professional SEO services in London, book a growth audit.

Market Jar is a dedicated full-service SEO specialist, prepared to provide professional SEO services to businesses in need. 

Whether your desired reach is local or global, hiring us to help you rank number one in search engine results is the best investment you can make. Contact us today, and let’s get started!