Search Engine Optimization Blunders: 11 Deadly Sins

Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the most important aspects of search engine marketing. Unfortunately, it’s also one of the most misunderstood and misused segments of the industry. Identifying problems with SEO can be difficult for marketers who aren’t experienced in this area, but it’s critical to know what not to do when you're trying to improve your website's ranking in search engines like Google. Here are eleven mistakes commonly made by marketers who want their sites to appear higher in search engines' results pages:

Insufficient “Search Content Friendly”

Search engine optimization is a process, and like any other process in the digital world, it takes time and effort to get results. It’s not a quick fix or something that can happen overnight—it is a long-term strategy.

The good news is that with proper SEO content creation best practices in place, you will see more traffic from search engines sooner rather than later. The key ingredients? Relevant keyword research; well-written content that answers questions your customers have; relevant links from authority websites; backlinks leading back to your site; social sharing options on every page (cross-promotion); responsive design across all devices (e.g., smartphones); fresh content published frequently; user experience optimization (UXO) throughout the site (think mobile friendly).

Paucity Of Link-Popularity

If you're looking to get your site ranked higher on search engines, a good rule of thumb is that every link-popularity point counts.

Links are critical to search engine rankings. Links from other sites (especially those with high page rank) will increase the visibility of your site and thus its ranking in the SERPs (search engine results pages). Likewise, if you have any friends or family who own blogs or websites—or even just email addresses—those can be used as well!

Keyword Research And Updates Are Deficient

The best way to avoid keyword research and updates being deficient is to do some research. You should use Google's Keyword Planner tool or Google Analytics, but don't stop there! Look at Facebook's Insights or Twitter analytics in order to see what people are saying about your industry, company or products.

In addition, you will want to conduct some research on your competitors. Which keywords are they using? What sites appear above yours when those terms are searched? This can help you better understand where the market sees itself today and what they might be looking for tomorrow.

Once you have found a few relevant key phrases that describe your business as well as its products or services, it's time to start optimizing them on your website! Make sure that each page has at least one keyword included in its title tag—and no more than seven words if possible—and include a short description of yourself (or whatever else seems appropriate) within the meta description field

Design And Then Optimize

Design and then optimize.

Design is a process of planning, organizing, and creating the UI and UX of an application or service. When you’re designing something, it’s important to think about how users will interact with your product and what the experience will be like for them. The same goes for optimizing—you need to consider what your user wants from the experience before you start optimizing things like content length or bounce rate. If you don’t design well first, then there’s no way you can tailor your optimization strategy properly for success!

Rely Heavily On Paid Search Advertising

Paid search advertising is an important part of a good SEO strategy, but it's not the only way to get traffic. You can use paid search campaigns to complement organic and other forms of digital marketing and advertising. Paid search campaigns can be expensive, so you have to make sure they're effective before you invest more money in them.

Remember: The best SEO strategies involve multiple types of digital marketing and advertising, such as organic search results, display advertising (banner ads), social media marketing, content syndication and email marketing.

Lack Of Support For The Conversion Process

The conversion process involves converting a visitor into a customer. The conversion rate is the percentage of visitors who buy your product or service while they are on your website. Convertible traffic is the percentage of visitors who are ready to buy your product or service.

For example: If you have one hundred visitors and ten percent buy something, then your conversion rate would be ten percent (10%). If only five percent of those one hundred visitors are ready to buy something from you, then only fifty people will actually convert — so your convertible traffic would be five percent (5%)

Use Graphics For A Text Link

You want to pass along your website address to friends and family. You could just write it down, but that's not nearly as fun as creating a graphic image of the text link. While this might be a good idea for some people, it's not going to help you to improve your search engine rank like Google. In fact, when done incorrectly, it can actually hurt your rankings because search engines can't read graphics—they're simply ignored by crawlers and bots looking for links on websites. So if people can't see what you're trying to communicate via graphics (i.e., a link), then chances are slim that they'll click on them or even know what they are."

Use Of Frames

Webmasters have been using frames for many years to improve the look and feel of their web pages. The problem with frames is that they make it very difficult for search engines to index your content. With frames, you will get a lower ranking in search results because search engines can't crawl through the frame or understand it.

For example, when a user clicks on your site, they are taken to another landing page within your site rather than directly to what they're looking for on your main page (this could also be called "JavaScript redirects"). This makes it difficult for users because they need to click through several pages before reaching their destination. This can be frustrating and confusing when trying to navigate a website!

Splash Pages

• Splash pages are not search engine friendly. If you're looking to optimize your page for search engines, don't use a splash page because they redirect users to another page before they can view the full content of your web site. This is frustrating for users and has a negative impact on SEO.

• Splash pages are not user friendly. If people want to go to your homepage, they should be able to do so easily, without being redirected somewhere else first—especially if that "somewhere else" is another page that requires registration or other hoops to jump through just so visitors can get back where they started!

• Splash pages are not conversion-friendly (or mobile friendly). You've gone through all the work of creating a beautiful website with an eye-catching design; now it's time for potential clients/customers/patients/etcetera who visit this site from Google search queries or referrals from other sites into yours...but instead of seeing what you have available, here's some information about how great our company is! Not only does this make them feel like they're on trial rather than shopping around freely with no pressure whatsoever but chances are high that those same people will leave immediately due to frustration alone!

• Splash Pages Are Not Mobile devices Friendly: As more people begin using smartphones and tablets for all kinds of activities such as reading emails and checking social media accounts among others things such as online shopping (sometimes even by choice rather than necessity), having splash pages will lead customers away from buying anything from these devices altogether due their inability access relevant information quickly enough without using multiple clicks which means less revenue overall over time due lack interest levels decreasing steadily over time due these reasons combined together which ultimately defeats purposeful efforts made towards increasing sales volume over time...

Submit 10,000 Search Engines

You may be tempted to submit your website or blog posts to 10,000 search engines. This is a sin. The reason you should only submit your website once is because the more submissions you have of the same content, the lower their ranking in search engine results pages (SERPs) will be.

When submitting your site, make sure you use relevant keywords in meta tags such as title and description fields so that the search bots can easily discern what the topic of the page is. You might also want to consider using keyword variations within these fields too, but don't overdo it; Google wants quality content more than anything else!

Another way to ensure that your site ranks well on SERPs is by making sure all links point back to original sources like other blogs or websites rather than redirecting readers through intermediate links without adding any value or insight into whatever topic they're trying learn about first hand experience-based knowledge gained through community activities etcetera...

Action Points Aren’t Clearly Defined

When you create an action point, you should have a clear understanding of what the reader should do. If you aren’t sure, ask yourself these questions:

• What is the purpose of this action step?

• Why is it important to take this action now (rather than later)? Is there something that will happen in the future if they don’t act soon enough? Is it urgent? Who needs to take this action and how many people are involved (one person or multiple people)? Do they all need to take it at once or can they get together later on and do it as a group activity? When should they complete this task by (i.e., deadline) and why is that deadline so important for whatever reason(s) stated above (if applicable).

Conclusion

It is clear that search engine optimization can be a very effective way to drive traffic to your site. However, if you don’t follow a few simple rules, your SEO efforts will be wasted and may even hurt your business. Contact us to know more about SEO or if you want to get a free SEO Audit for your website