Semalt Expert Explains Which 8 Dangerous SEO Mistakes You Should Avoid 


 
If you really want to make the promotion of your site successful, then you understand how big the cost of an error that was noticed too late can be. But everyone can make mistakes, no one is immune from this.

In SEO, there are also several points, the admission of which can lead to negative consequences. Even experienced pros make mistakes, what can we say about clients or specialists who are only at the beginning of their professional career.

We've compiled a list of the most common SEO mistakes to avoid, and we hope this information will save you a lot of time and money.

Misunderstanding of the target audience

To do something well, you need to understand who you are doing it for. A site that does not meet the needs of the target audience will not bring enough profit, and the budget for its promotion will, in fact, be wasted.

You won't be able to make a landing page that is good enough for both a professional photographer and a beginner who first took a camera in their hands. Understanding who you are reaching out to is a prerequisite for a good conversion rate.

Keep this in mind and be careful not to try to grasp the immensity. When you focus all your efforts on reaching a specific segment of the most valuable target audience for you, the chances of a return on your efforts increase by an order of magnitude.

And the search engines themselves have learned well to distinguish between intents and attempts to optimize landing pages for too many keywords, which usually do not give good results.

Sloppy work with semantics

Here, the mistake made by most people is that they start with the selection of exceptionally high-frequency queries with high competition and incorrect penetration of the actual demand, and end with a total disregard of the semantic core as such.

You don't have to use expensive software to get good results. There are free tools such as the Dedicated SEO Dashboard, which allow you to quickly get a selection of keys. 

Look for keywords for which competitors' sites are ranked. How exactly do you do this with the DSD tool? We wrote in the article "How to benefit from DSD".

With this SEO Tool, you can collect those keywords that have the highest traffic potential and find completely unobvious topics for articles or a group of requests for new landing pages. And it is advisable to adhere to the good old rule - one page should be optimized for a group of keys that have the same intent.

Low-quality content

Budget articles from the exchange can sometimes not only be unuseful, but also harmful. Even if you listen to the advice of a "guru" and start publishing sheets of text, in the hope that it will bring you an avalanche of traffic.

The volume of the text is not the decisive factor, the key point is its usefulness to the user. Failure to understand this leads to dire consequences in the form of filters for spam / low-quality content, a high bounce rate and a low conversion rate.

Finding a professional practitioner who will create cool content for you at an affordable price is still a challenge. It is difficult to imagine that a master who specializes in repairs will also write articles to order after work.

In any case, it is worth spending time looking for just a good author who will produce decent material with a minimum of errors. And then the editor's correction and a good design will do the trick.

Too Much Too Fast

"We have been promoting for two weeks and still not in the TOP!" - probably almost every optimizer has come across this type of customer at least once, to whom you should serve everything at once. The main thing is that you yourself are not among them, since everything happens quickly and easily only in fairy tales.

SEO is a long-term game, and if you expect immediate results, you will be disappointed. Even a high-quality article after publication begins to bring traffic in a few weeks, and it takes months to reach "full turnover".

Keep this in mind and be realistic about your expectations. This also applies to the pace of work - an attempt to take on everything and at once inevitably leads to spraying and low efficiency. Move gradually and according to plan. The important thing is not how fast you run, but whether in the right direction.

One-sided approach

Strange, but for some reason, we regularly encounter such a mistake as a sincere belief in the superiority of one factor, the pushing of which can confidently lead the site to success. Two main examples: expecting growth from articles alone and internal optimization, and trying to get Top through bulk link buying. In both cases, the expected result can be achieved only in very rare cases.

The site must be approached as comprehensively as possible, even if competitors do not do this. Today it is, but soon everything may change, and more diligent newcomers will squeeze the old-timers out of the SERP.

Technical aspects, internal factors, usability and external link mass - everything should be worked out in a complex manner.

Ignoring mobile SEO

The fact that the mobile audience needs to be paid more attention to has been discussed for a long time, and this aspect will become important today. Even in B2B niches, smartphone and tablet users already make up about half of the entire audience, what can we say about content projects.

And imagine - there are still enough site owners who have not taken care of the transition to a responsive layout, not to mention working out such issues as loading speed, font size and other components of high-quality mobile optimization.

Lack of strategy

Even if you perfectly understand what and how to do, a good plan is still necessary to ensure the continuity of the process and the correct sequence of steps. The work strategy should include an approximate budget and directions for its development, the planned time for work, the amount of content that is planned for publication, the frequency of new materials release and their distribution channels, the dynamics of link building, etc.

Otherwise, there is a risk not only of losing time and money, but also in the case of business - hopelessly lagging behind competitors. Spending a few hours at the start can literally help you save a lot of time in the future.

It is not necessary to make such a document too detailed, it is enough to outline the general points, and postpone the specifics for each step directly to the moment of implementation. The main advantage of such work is the ability to make the work as consistent as possible and increase the return on the efforts made.

Stop along the way

If your site is at the Top, this is not yet a reason to open the champagne and go on a well-deserved rest. Competitors do not sleep, and those who stop working to promote their site usually first encounter stagnation in growth, and then a slow and steady decline.

In addition to the already mentioned competition, there are many other reasons:
  • a gradual decrease in search demand for keywords for which existing pages are optimized;
  • changing the request intent from commercial to informational;
  • the appearance in the search results of documents that are more relevant and give better answers to similar search queries;
  • search engines record a long absence of updates on the site, which can also affect their attitude towards it;
  • In addition to internal factors, it is worth noting external ones - the link mass weakens over time since some of the links fall off, and some begin to transfer less weight.
The second side of this coin is the stoppage of SEO work in the first months of promotion due to the lack of the desired effect. You need to understand that in modern conditions it takes a good six months, or even longer, to achieve stable growth in attendance. And only then can one expect that the investment will begin to pay off.

Conclusion

The Internet is confidently becoming the main source of clients even for those entrepreneurs who, several years ago, did not even understand why they needed a website. If you have not yet started working in this direction, it is high time to take the first steps. 

And you can get help from the SEO DSD tool to avoid making mistakes as a beginner or even if you are a pro. If you have any complication in using the tool, just contact one of our specialists. We offer 24/7 support in over 15 different languages. So, no matter what your request is, in your native language, one of our assistants is available for you.

Hopefully, this article will help you avoid common mistakes along the way, delivering great results and a worthy bang for your buck!