Common SEO mistakes that small businesses make and how to fix them

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is one of the most amazing assets in digital marketing today. It is one of the best ways to increase traffic to your website and especially works good for small business because it is a tool that is not so expensive but very effective. SEO if strategically implemented can drive traffic to your website and lift profitable conversions. But still there are a number of businesses are not quite aware of how to implement SEO and tend to make mistakes that can jeopardize their business.

We will list you below some of the most common mistakes made by small businesses in SEO and quick fix advices:

Not defining your audience

Mistake: Some small businesses don’t define their target audience well, instead they go with general approach which includes people who wouldn’t use their products or services.

Quick fix: Think about your ideal audience and appeal to these characters. You should define certain aspects like gender, location, wants/needs, marital status, age, etc. As you go deeper in analyzing of your customer, the easier it becomes to narrow down a highly receptive audience.

Too many keywords

Mistake: Lot of small business think that higher the number of keywords in a piece of content, more the traffic, but this is not good approach. Your keywords should fit naturally within the context of the content.

Quick fix: Your customer is the top priority, and traffic is second. Forced SEO can turn down the visitors of your website and also search engines do not react good on this kind of approach. The perfect proportion is a 1 to 3 percent of keywords to content, yet it may be higher or lower as long as the keywords fit normally into the specific context.

Inconsistency with your contact details

Mistake: You may have seen that various companies have no appropriate contact form and some contact numbers and area are even invalid. This is a serious mix-up in terms of SEO. Google as a search engine are exceptionally precise when it comes to checking the consistency of your contact details since this is a proof of your credibility and validity.

Quick fix: Make sure that the contact details through all your online profiles are consistent. Also, consistently update your location and contact numbers if any of them happen to change, so you can prevent losing a number of potential leads.

Pay attention to your title tags and meta descriptions

Mistake: It is the main thing that a user sees on the search engine results page, and despite that numerous companies fail to optimize these tags. The result is not enough user’s attention.

Quick fix:  The title tag and the meta descriptions are descriptive text, a sneak peek into your website. It should contain the most relevant keywords and should not exceed 160 characters, so be creative and original.

Ignoring the importance of internal linking

Mistake: Internal linking is a fundamental part of SEO that help visitors with discovering data that is useful on your site, but lot of business don’t use this SEO technique.

Quick fix: Internal linking can help search engines find more of your pages resulting in better search engine rankings. Best ways to add more internal links is to write blogs (on your website) that contain links that direct back to one or more of your past posts and services. Just make sure that the links are updated and working correctly.

Ignoring the importance of a mobile optimized website

Mistake: Today anything and everything is available through your mobile and people uses more mobiles to search their needs, than desktop. But lot of business owners ignore that and their website is not mobile optimized.

Quick fix: Your website needs to have a responsive design because if it gives a user a smooth experience, you can be sure that the same user will return to your website another time. Use tools like the Google Mobile-Friendly Testing Tool to check whether your website is mobile friendly.