Scottsdale SEO: 5 common SEO mistakes to avoid

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If you aren’t ranking first in Google for your business’ keywords, there could be any number of reasons why. But the chances are that you are committing one of these common SEO mistakes It doesn’t matter if you are a massive website or a small website, any of these mistakes can be enough to ruin your rankings. Find out what the most common SEO mistakes are below and how you can avoid them.

Your website is slow

A fast site is essential if you want to rank well in Google, but so many website owners don’t give site speed a second thought. Because a fast site will always rank higher than a slow site, you need to head over to Google PageSpeed Insights to find out how fast your site is and what you can do to make it faster. A good tip is to reduce the size of the images on your site. Large images can take a long time to load so this is a quick and easy way to make your pages load faster.  

You are focusing on the wrong keywords

It can be tempting to focus on high volume keywords to try and get a small percentage of that traffic. But if you aren’t in the top three places, you probably won’t see any traffic at all. The higher the volume a keyword has, the harder it is to rank, too. So much so that it is almost impossible for small sites to rank for all but the most targeted of terms. As a small business owner, you should focus on narrower, low volume keywords that include your state or city name.

You neglect meta data

Meta data is still important for SEO. Your site’s page title is a ranking factor for Google and so should include your keyword near to the start. Your pages’ meta descriptions are important, too. Googlers use meta descriptions to choose which websites they want to click on in Google. The more persuasive and enticing yours are, the more likely users will click on them. So don’t forget to spend time make yours as good as possible.

Your website isn’t optimized for smartphones

A mobile website is no longer just a nice-to-have, it is a must-have. Google now uses a mobile-first index, which means that it favors mobile websites over all others. If you don’t have a mobile responsive website, therefore, you could be missing out on hundreds of visitors. A mobile site is also faster than a traditional website meaning that you could get an additional ranking boost as well. Not to mention that having an unresponsive website an result in huge bounce rates for mobile visitors.

You don’t give visitors a reason to stay

If visitors leave your site soon after landing on it, you’ll have a high bounce rate. Google uses bounce rate as a ranking factor so it is important to encourage your visitors to take action. One way of doing this is by writing great content that users want to read. Another is by creating great calls to action that encourage visitors to take the next step such as making a purchase or signing up for your newsletter. The longer you can keep them on your site, the better your SEO will be and the better your business will be.