Today’s consumer is much more search savvy and increasingly self-directed on their mission to find the answers they’re looking for. This, combined with the content being constantly created and promoted, the competition to capture the attention of your targeted audience, has never been fiercer.
As a direct result of this, it has never been more important for you to ensure that you have a strategic SEO plan in place. This can ensure that your website is the best source for the information that your targeted audience is searching for.
SEO has undergone a number of evolution through the years, since those very first days of keyword-driven content. Today’s SEO needs to have a focus on finding that perfect balance between the informative content your targeted audience is looking for and convincing the search engines that your content is the best there is.
There are a number of mistakes that can be made on the path to creating the perfect content, but the good news is that most of them can be readily avoided.
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Mistake 1 – Focusing content optimizations around just one keyword
In the early SEO days, it was quite common to optimize your content with just one specific keyword that you want your website to rank for. In today’s SEO environment, this practice is ineffective as search engines are increasingly better at recognizing content for what it is. It also creates a poor user experience for your targeted audience to have one keyword repeatedly used all over your website.
Don’t optimize your website’s pages for just one specific keyword. Rather, think more about the goal of your content to inform and include keyword topics that include a selection of related and relevant search terms.
Mistake 2 – Assuming all of your content is evergreen
How often do you update the content on your website? One of the mistakes we’ve all been guilty of is creating great content and not touching it for months or even years. This could be a missed opportunity to provide relevant and refreshed content for searchers looking for valuable information.
Take a look at your website analytics so that you can learn which of your pages are top performers, and which ones could use more traffic. Pay attention to those topics that you’ve thought of as evergreen. According to Damir Vuckovic, SEO Team Leader at https://azurigroup.com.au/, doing a bit of keyword research will help you to discover some great new opportunities for updating your current content.
Mistake 3 – Neglecting your mobile users
Regardless of the industry you’re in, you’ll find that a large percentage of your audience is likely to be using his or her mobile device when searching for information. If your content is not mobile device friendly, you’ll find that your user experience is going to be negatively impacted.
Take the time to evaluate your website and your content so ensure that it’s responsive and mobile-friendly.
Mistake 4 – Not considering your speed site
This one should be pretty self-explanatory. Faster loading websites provide a better experience for the user and also offer a better crawl rate for search engines.
There are a number of site speed tools that you can use in order to best analyze your website’s speed score. Use them to evaluate and improve your website speed.
Mistake 5 – Offering difficult-to-read large content blocks
Today’s savvy searcher is looking to absorb content rather quickly. They tend to move on to another source of information if they can’t readily see the value in the content on your website. Large blocks of text can quickly send your reader scrolling away in order to find those content bites of information that’ll allow them to better absorb what it is that they are after.
Use headline tags and images to better break up your content. This is not only ensuring that your site is easy for your users to scan, but it can be a positive factor for search engines crawling your content.