New Jersey SEO Company Shares Common SEO Mistakes People Make
Knowledge of SEO is crucial in today’s digital world. If you’re looking to drive traffic to your business in New Jersey, SEO should be a priority. According to Forbes Agency Council, SEO is a small business necessity. Every business should keep up with the ever-changing search engine algorithms. However, in the process of trying to meet SEO demands, companies make some critical blunders that harm rather than help their search rankings.
In this blog, New Jersey SEO experts Reclaim Digital will go over some common SEO mistakes. If you’re making any of these, fix them immediately!
How Does Google Actually Work?
Google uses automated programs known as ‘spiders’ to crawl pages on the internet. A page is added to Google’s index once it’s been crawled by search engines. When you search for any term, say ‘rental company,’ you see all the pages in Google’s Index.
Google ranks pages based on over 200 factors. So, if you’re creating great content but not ranking in search engines, you’re making a few SEO mistakes. The solution? Identifying those mistakessothat you can fix them and start ranking.
Here are some common SEO mistakes to avoid:
Not Using Keyword Research Tools
There’s no doubt that keywords are an essential SEO aspect as Google crawlers are analyzing your website to understand the purpose of your content. However, some businesses waste time and resources on keywords they think that people are searching for, or high competition keywords. This can lead to ranking for key phrases and keywords that do not lead to any profitable results.
Proper keyword targeting on a page-to-page basis, with each page having specific keyword targets in mind is essential. These keywords should come across naturally in the URL, title, content, and tags.
Using tools like Google Keyword toolwill give you an idea of the type of questions people search for in search engines. Moreover, you make it more relevant to your users and easier for search engines to know what your website is about. If you’re looking to get more leads to your business in New Jersey, SEO using keyword research is a must.
Targeting the Wrong Keywords
Optimizing your SEO with keywords is crucial. But are you choosing the right keywords? If you’re just starting out, ranking for high competition or generic keywords will be impossible. Instead, go for low competition keywords (longtail keywords) instead of broad one-word keywords.
For instance, a new business trying to rank for ‘real estate’ might not get the desired result. However, adding the area in which you are located, like ‘real estate new jersey’ will make the keyword more longtail. You can also use keyword synonyms, competitor brands, and related topics that your customers may be searching.
According to Yoast, the longer and more specific the keywords are, the higher your chances of ranking for them. Once you are ranking for these low competition keywords, keep climbing up until you can aim for higher competition ones. Another important thing is to avoid optimizing for global keywords when your customers are local.
Keyword Stuffing
Avoid writing content for SEO; write to provide valuable information for your target audience. Often, businesses try to cram keywords and phrases into web pages. Keyword stuffing can lead to being penalized by Google, since it is considered spammy behavior.
It would help if you focused instead on addressing your customers’ needs by crafting thoughtful and relevant content. It’s not necessary to use your target keyword in every sentence in your content.
With its special semantic search called Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI), Google can recognize your content’s topic without you stuffing your content with repetitions of your target keywords.
Not Optimizing for Local Searches
Customers look for the best services and products near them. Are you providing answers to your local audience in New Jersey? SEO should take a strategic approach that is entirely different from a business that’s targeting a global audience. Ensure your business shows up when local buyers are looking, especially if you’re running a company that focuses on local customers.
Start by incorporating region-specific keywords in your page titles and meta descriptions. It’s important to include a local phone number and address on your website, so they show up in local results. All local signals across Google’s local search landscape should be consistent and correct.
Also, it would help if you listed your business on local-based sites and review networks, such as Google Places, Merchant Circle, Google Places, FourSquare, and more. Ignoring your Google My Business listing is a critical SEO error that makes your business miss out on the opportunity to claim your location, provide information, and answer questions from local buyers.
Lack of Quality Content
Writing original content is another overlooked aspect of SEO. Every page of your site should have decent content so that the search engines recognize you as an expert. Poorly done content indicates to Google that your page isn’t the best result to match the search query.
It’s important to note that you’re writing for your visitors and not Google. When you provide the best answers possible to the questions that users are searching for, you get Google’s approval. Moreover, you should write original content that’s not duplicated from other websites. While content spinning and copying used to work in the past, it doesn’t work anymore. Search engines penalize sites with plagiarized or spammy content.
Ignoring Unique Texts and Description
Besides including your keyword in your articles, title tags and meta descriptions are an essential aspect of optimization. It would help if you didn't have your company or website name as the title for every page on your site.
For SEO purposes, each page should have a unique title. That way, your unique titles will be visible when someone bookmarks any of your pages or shares it on social media. Search engines consider these factors when crawling your website. This can help improve your content’s performance.
The trick is to incorporate your company name with specific keywords that work for each page throughout your website. And don’t forget the alt tags! Though search bots cannot see the pictures, they can read the alt tags as they index your pages.
Lack of Quality Links and Anchor Texts
While it's easy to get a high volume of links, a few high-quality links will do more for your blog than several low-quality directories. So, focus on popular blogs that are relevant to your website and industry. These types of blogs do not have too many outgoing links or contain links to suspicious sites.
For your external links, quality should be prioritized over quantity. Ensure you link to relevant, well-ranking sites with a solid reputation. Also, use anchor texts in your internal links to signify to readers and search bots what the link is about. Instead of writing ‘click here’, use a variety of texts. Using the same anchor text over and over could be considered spammy, so avoid doing that.
Not Using Analytics
Once you start ranking in search engines in New Jersey, SEO conversion tracking is next. This lets you see those aspects that are producing the best results. However, many business owners underestimate analytics tools in measuring the progress they’re making on their SEO efforts.
You have to analyze and measure your campaign’s performance. Once you’ve received feedback, you can optimize the aspect that’s giving you the best result. Next, fix the SEO mistakes you’re making, and re-analyse.
Without a well thought out plan for your business website, SEO becomes random and unpredictable. Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools are excellent for tracking your SEO efforts. Checking your progress consistently, and tweaking your pages as time goes by will play a significant role in your site’s improvement.
Your Website is Slow or Not Optimized for Mobile
SEO optimization is not only about keywords and content. You also have to ensure that your website’s performance is high. Search engines also emphasize load speed. As such, slow site speed can lead to lower SERP. The faster your website, the more Google will favor it.
You can use Google’s mobile-friendly test to check if your site displays well on mobile devices. You should also browse your website on your mobile phone to see if everything is working as expected. Are all pages displaying well on the screen? Experts usually recommend that web owners optimize their images as large images take much time to reload.
A report by HubSpot states that more Google searches take place on mobile devices than on computers. It’s therefore not surprising the Google determines your ranking by looking at the mobile version of your website. You can be hurting your rating if you haven’t considered a smooth mobile experience for your audience.
Hiring an Expert to Correct Mistakes
SEO mistakes, such as slow site speed, lack of quality content, low-quality links, and more can hurt your business. It’s advisable to run regular website audits to check your site’s performance. Does the mobile version load quickly enough? Is site navigation user-friendly? Can users easily find relevant information?
A site audit lets you know how to improve load speed, search engine optimization, the checkout process, content quality and more. Are you looking to rank your business high on search engines? New Jersey SEO experts Reclaim Digital can help you identify the areas where your website needs improvement.
