As a small business owner, you know how competitive the local market is. Anything to give yourself an edge to improve your visibility, get more leads and increase sales is a must. When a user searches for a local product or service, Google automatically presents a list of the first three businesses it considers the most relevant.
However, the total number of reviews increases the social proof for your business and contributes to localized search ranking factors. While positive reviews improve the credibility of your website, having only positive reviews makes it look very suspicious. At the same time, several customers expressing dissatisfaction about your website can even drive away traffic. She loves creating user-friendly content and making it easy to find for people and search engines. No, visitors from these sites probably won’t convert , but the links still help build the overall authority of your domain.
Most SEO experts agree that social signals are gaining more ground as a ranking factor and besides the hidden SEO benefits, social media is also a good source of traffic. This is what search engines and users read first when they try to understand what a page is about. Some people believe that by using a keyword research tool before creating their content, they are somehow cheating. This is nowhere close to the truth, it is in fact a big SEO mistake. In this post you will read about the 18 most common SEO mistakes to avoid and what to do instead. The title tags and meta descriptions are always confused with the on-page SEO elements.
It also has a negative impact on your page's domain authority. Living in a mobile-first world now, many users rely on mobile devices rather than computers. There are several advantages to havingmobile-friendly websitesas they make up more than half the search results on Google. At the same time, you will likely lose viewers if your page is not optimized for mobile. If you haven't made use of this feature, then your site is also missing out on the most advanced types of design. Duplicate content refers to content that is either similar or identical to other content on your site.
There is also the issue of ensuring that any strategy has executive buy-in and internally understand the importance of SEO, and are trained on SEO best practices. Utilize both historical and real-time data to understand how behavior is changing. While historical data still gives SEO great insights into seasonal trends, marketers’ methods to understand their customers have to be holistic. While many marketers think they know their audience, they often fall into the trap of not understanding how consumers behave in their market and then at a granular level. It is never easy to stay on top of the most successful optimization techniques. As a result, SEO methods are constantly evolving due to search engines’ developments and consumer behavior changes.
If you haven’t been doing site audits so far, get into the habit now. A 404 HTTP code is a bad experience for your visitors, and a 302 HTTP code is a bad experience for Googlebot. Because it tells Google and other search bots exactly what pages to index as well as the hierarchical relationship between individual pages. This is very useful when it more info comes to ranking well on pages that may be three or more levels deep on the site. Admittedly, you don’t need to hire a designer or even a developer anymore to build a half-decent website. Tools such as Weebly , Spaces , and the like eagerly await the DIY entrepreneur.
These are the top 6 small business SEO mistakes that entrepreneurs make. So knowing what areas to improve on and what are the typical mistakes is essential to understanding how to take your SEO game to the next level. Some small business owners might see SEO as another useless expense, but SEO is key in marketing for future success.
Responsive design is also a must — this means your site is "mobile-friendly" and can be viewed on any device. Some SEO mistakes are less serious because they're just poor optimization, and not an outdated strategy that Google now penalizes for. Another related mistake is to promote content when it’s published and promptly forget about it.