SEO is a complex process that will often leave you dumbfounded, even if you have lots of experience in the field. The sheer number of things you have to watch out for when optimizing your website can lead to some SEO mistakes here and there. Website owners often neglect their SEO and allow these mistakes to lead to a drop in search engine rankings, keeping their website off of the front page of results. To solve this, you’re going to want to introduce some content optimization tactics to get your search engine rank back. Here’s how you can achieve this.
Understand How to Convert with Content
Just creating viable content isn’t going to get you very far. You need to be able to use this content to convert visitors and get them to your shop. SEO is all about conversions and increasing your rankings on search engines. Remember that high traffic isn’t your only goal with optimization. You also have to use this optimization to your business’s advantage.
Analytics is the most useful tool that can help you understand how to utilize your content properly. With the help of analytics tools, you can figure out which keywords and phrases get the most conversions and adapt your content accordingly. List the most productive keywords that you find and then turn them into marketable content. This will help you optimize your website even further, while also showing direct results.
Solve Duplicate Content Problems
Having two of the same page is a big no-no in the eyes of search engines. When a search engine crawler from Google scours websites, it wants to index a unique site or page. When there are two identical ones available, the search engine can’t decide which one is real, and it won’t rank the website very favorably. Instead, it’s likely just going to drop it or simply keep it unlisted.
While avoiding duplicates and self-plagiarism might seem simple in theory, it’s anything but in practice. There are a lot of ways for your pages to be registered as duplicates, even when you’re careful to prevent it. For starters, there’s the issue of homepage duplication. Having two of the same homepage is a common issue in websites that are constantly updating, which leaves the page vulnerable to loss of search rankings.
Duplicate URLs are another critical problem that many local Australian businesses are dealing with, and it needs to be resolved pronto. There can be a lot of confusion with upper- and lower-case letters tying up your URL. If they are inconsistently used on your website, a search engine will treat these characters as parts of different URLs. Worse yet, there will be a noticeable split in internal and external links that lead to different URLs, further hurting your website’s ranking.
Tag Images Appropriately
Images are tricky to work with when optimizing and designing your website. There’s no way for the search engine crawler to determine exactly what is on the image, so it has to rely on other signs that describe it. When you neglect to tag your image, you’re telling the search engine crawler to disregard it and move on. Even when you do tag the image, it’s important that you know the most appropriate tags that will be ideal for search engine recognition.
Search engines could use a bit more information to work with in order to understand the image that you post on your page. An image description would be helpful for reaching this goal. Combined with a useful caption, the description would give the search engine ample information to figure out what the image is about and to properly rank the page according to a user’s need. Keep in mind, there’s no use stuffing the description and tags with keywords, as search engines value useful information first and foremost.
Do Thorough Keyword Research
Keywords are an essential part of your SEO strategy. They help search engines determine most of what you’re aiming for in your page. Hence the reason they’re named “key” words. With the right keyword choices, you will see visitors flood your website. However, to get the most appropriate research for your chosen field, you’re going to want to do a bit of research. Taking any random keywords into consideration isn’t going to give optimal results.
It’s just as important that you have your keywords match your content. When you have page content that differs from the keywords that you want to rank for, the search engine isn’t going to lead visitors to the website as often as it could.
When you try to fit one too many topics within a single form of content, it gets difficult to tell whether the keywords are relevant or not. It’s recommended that a piece of content should cover one topic, as this makes it easier to pick out your main keywords. Plus, you can count on specialized content to meet the needs of your subscribers more so than something that brushes the surface of many topics.
Optimizing for Speed
It doesn’t take a marketing expert to figure out that slow web pages are strongly disliked by visitors. Australian website owners are taking note of user’s needs and website speed is becoming a top priority. Visitors want to be able to view your content and products without much delay, and any lagging or long queues will quickly be noted. A slow website will have fewer and fewer visitors over time, even if its other elements are well-optimized.
There are a few reasons that your website might be slower than it should be. One of these reasons is a huge number of HTTP requests. With every new element added to your website, you introduce another HTTP request and slightly slow down the website. The more you have, the slower you can expect your website to be. Having an extremely flashy website might look nice, but it’s not going to get you anywhere.
Designing the website for optimal speed, while also enjoying some interesting visuals is not an easy task. You would have to find an optimal balance between practical and visual elements, without losing out on either. This type of balancing will often require the help of reliable SEO experts in Sydney with design experience that includes optimization. A well-designed web page that’s pretty quick to boot will attract visitors and keep them on your website.
Check for Broken Links
The last of our list of common SEO mistakes we are going to address is having a visitor bounce rate. If someone visits your website and leaves pretty quickly, there must be something wrong with your design. One of the most common causes of this phenomena is the presence of broken links. If specific links don’t actually lead to a page, the visitor has no reason to remain on your website.
Search engines look pretty unfavorably on broken links, which is why they need to be resolved as soon as possible. To avoid having your website drop in rank, you’re going to want to regularly check for the validity of your website’s links. This is easily achieved with a link checker, so it’s a wonder that certain websites even allow this to happen. As long as you remember to check every once in a while, you should be able to avoid this problem.
Conclusion
It’s normal to make SEO mistakes when designing your website, especially when you’re dealing with something as complicated as SEO. All it takes is a few key slip-ups and your website rank can significantly drop within the blink of an eye. This is why you’ll want to protect your website’s rank by optimizing the design and content to fit your needs. A few small tweaks can lead to some amazing results, which is why they’re worth considering.
