Keyword Stuffing

Keyword stuffing is a problem a lot of newcomers have. Most people confuse keyword stuffing with keyword optimization. They believe that the more keywords they use in their content, the better their SEO ranking. This is however not the case. Keyword stuffing is something you need to avoid doing because it might not only affect how you rank on search engines but might also get you banned. Google has various technologies that are able to identify keyword stuffing and take appropriate action against you.

Therefore, it is a good idea to avoid doing it. Instead of stuffing your content with keywords focus on keyword optimization. This involves thorough research, analysis, and selection of competitive keywords that help drive all the potential traffic from the search engines onto your website. Keyword optimization will definitely give you an added advantage in SEO.

Not Paying Attention to User Experience

Google’s main priority is to ensure that every user has the best experience. For this reason, Google set a number of criteria that all sites need to meet in order to provide all users with great experience. One of the things Google expects your website to have is fast loading. This is because users are more attracted to websites that load faster compared to slow ones. Your website is also expected to be secure for the user. This means it should not have any viruses or malware. To ensure your website remains secure for users, it’s highly recommended to regularly use a reliable antivirus program such as Malwarebytes Antivirus to detect and remove any potential threats.

Last but not least, Google expects your website to have mobile support. Most people access the internet through their phones and tablets. For this reason, it is important for websites to have mobile support. This is because it makes the content available to more people. If your website does not fit these criteria your SEO will be greatly affected. To solve this problem, you need to seek professional website design. Make sure the person providing the services has a lot of experience in the business and a good reputation for providing high-quality services. Explain all you need your website to have and be involved in the process to ensure everything meets your vision.

Making Your Website Difficult to Navigate

This is one of the most common mistakes a lot of people make. It is very important to make your website easy to navigate. This is because it not only affects the user’s experience but also the search engine’s ability to go through your website. Search engines need your website to be easy to navigate since it is the only way bots can go through the site to determine how the different pages are related to each other. You should make it possible for someone to find what they are looking for in as little as 3 seconds. This can be done by labeling and formatting all pages appropriately. It is also a good idea to group the content in a central part of the website to make navigation even easier.

Not Hiring an Expert

High-quality SEO services are not cheap. In order to cut back on extra costs, a lot of people choose to do their own SEO instead of hiring an SEO expert for the job. At first, this might seem like a great idea. However, unless you have the expertise, doing so will be spelling the demise of your own website. This is because you will make a lot of mistakes that will not only give you a low ranking on search engines but also lead to more serious problems like getting banned. Investing in high-quality SEO services is never a loss. This is because high search engine rankings generate a lot of traffic to your website thereby opening doors for you to make a lot of profits. However, make sure you do enough research before you hire anyone for SEO services.

Duplicating Content

Duplicating content is also a common mistake among newcomers. Most newcomers want to come up with content as fast as possible in order to begin profiting from their website as soon as possible. Therefore, they duplicate content from other websites with the hope that this will give them a high ranking. Content duplication is something Google does not tolerate. It can make you get banned on search engines. For this reason, it is very important to take time in coming up with unique high-quality content. If you are not a great content creator, it might help to hire an expert for the job. This will not only give you a possibility of high ranking on search engines but will also prevent you from getting banned.

Not Updating Your Content Frequently

A lot of people start by giving their audience a lot of fresh and new content on a daily basis. However, when the traffic begins to increase at a fast rate and their website is doing great, they get used to it and stop creating new content for their audience. This has the potential to affect your SEO. Google needs websites that are active and engage their clients. Giving fresh content also benefits your website because it gives your audience a reason to visit your website again. Apart from this, there is a high chance that the content will be shared on numerous social platforms which is great for your search engine ranking. To avoid this mistake, it is important to come up with a way to develop new content for your audience. It could be getting inspiration from friends, the environment or hiring someone to help you with content creation.

Conclusion

In conclusion, it is very important to avoid making this SEO mistakes because they can greatly affect your ranking on search engines or get you banned. If you hire the right person for SEO services, commit to producing high-quality content and follow the simple SEO rules, all these mistakes are completely avoidable.

The post The Biggest SEO Mistakes and How To Avoid Them appeared first on Mike Khorev - SEO Consultant.

 Well — how does having more customers sound like to you?

 A report into the importance of SEO found that the top site for a search had an average click-through rate (CTR) of 36.4%, with the second and third sites achieving a CTR of 12.5% and 9.5% respectively. While you might be skeptical about the importance of SEO to your ecommerce site, it’s unlikely you’ll be skeptical about the benefits of more customers clicking through to your website.

But good SEO isn’t about artificially inflating your rankings — it’s about good business sense, content, and usability. By aligning your website with simple best practices and guidelines, you should see a positive rankings impact. Here’s how to get started.

Keywords

This is the first thing you need to get sussed in order to give your store a chance of ranking well. And keyword research isn’t techy or hard to do — anyone can do it with some simple tools.

There are various tools you can use to help you find out what the relevant keywords are for your ecommerce business. I have listed some of the best below:

• Answerthepublic.com
• Google Keyword Planner
• Ubersuggest

You may skeptical about their importance, but by using keywords which are relevant to the business your ecommerce operates in, you are showing searchers and search engines that you have a relevant website.

Mix up competitive commercial intent keywords with some top of the funnel keywords (often called ‘long tail’ or informational keywords) to ensure that your website content is natural and thorough. You may want to use these keywords in blogs or product guides.

Title tags

While keywords will improve your ranking on search engines, your title tag is the most important SEO tool for converting your searchers into customers.

Below I have highlighted the titles of pages that have come up on page one of a Google search that I made for “ecommerce.”

Note how ecommerce is included in each title tag and that they are short and succinct. You need to grab the attention of searchers quickly and demonstrate that they will find what they need on your ecommerce site.

A good title will be:

• Less than 70 characters long
• Unique
• Mention your brand and product where appropriate – it must be done naturally
• Include keywords – again, naturally

You might be skeptical about the impact of a title tag will have on your ecommerce site, but Google isn’t. Optimizing your title tags across your store is one of the quickest and easiest SEO wins for your business — and make sure that every page has a unique one!

In most content management systems, editing title tags is something you can quickly do yourself (or even automate). If you are on WooCommerce, you will want an SEO plugin like Yoast, whereas Shopify stores have an in-built system — or you can always download a metadata app if you’re looking to import data from another system in order to save time.

Content

Google considers content very important to how it ranks sites.

Previously, sites have stuffed their content with keywords in order to boost their rankings position. That no longer washes.

The key now with content is that it must be unique, informative, and relevant. If it isn’t, Google will penalize your ecommerce site by dropping you down the rankings in its searches.

Below I have searched for “men’s belt” to show you what relevant looks like in ecommerce:

As you’ll see, Google wants a close and relevant a match. There is a fair amount of diversity when it comes to exact wording and cataloging, but generally it’s pretty obvious how theses domains fit within the search.

If the content on your ecommerce site is not relevant, and does not incorporate the language used by your potential customers, then Google will not consider it a good match for their searches.

There are methods that you can employ to make your content more relevant and user-friendly:

• Utilize your keywords, but don’t spam
• Establish who your target market is and incorporate topics they care about into your content calendar
• Write naturally and for your customer, not the sales arm of your ecommerce company
• Include actionable points in blogs – things that your customer can do right now
• Offer answers to any questions your customer may have – if you can pre-empt then that will help you to remove sales barriers
• Be crisp and precise
• Incorporate video content where possible/applicable.

Relevant content will offer value to your reader and give them something that they won’t find elsewhere. Use the content on your site to explain how the products you are selling bring value to your customers.

Importance of UX

SEO has evolved and user experience (UX) is now an important part of what helps your ecommerce site rank.

Having found your site, your customers will have expectations of its usability. They’ll  demand that it is responsive, operates at a good speed, and that it is easy to get around.

This is where the latest design conventions and information architecture will come into play. Ensure that your menus and product catalogs are working well for you and invest in some user-testing to validate your site structure.

SEO and UX should be seen as partners, working together on your mission to take your customer on a journey (to your store checkout). As part of this partnership, search engines are now taking UX into account when determining search results.

Link building

Your Keywords, Title Tags, Content, and UX all come under the banner of “On Page Optimization.” OPO covers the things that you can do on your site in order to improve rankings. However, there is another thing for your brand to consider in order to maximize your SEO: link building.

SEO is about relevance and authority.

1. Relevance is about your site being the right place for search engines to direct their searchers to/. Google wants to know that when a user searches for conversion rate optimization (CRO), that they arrive at a site that is actually talking about CRO, not a spammy site stuffed with keywords and empty content.
2. Authority is about your site being a place that has been determined to be a good source of information — Google wants to take users to a site that has been validated. This is where link building comes in.

Link building is about getting other sites to link to your own: it’s about the public recognition of your site as a place people should visit.

The benefit of building links and raising your public profile is that it will increase your site’s authority. As your authority increases Google will consider your ecommerce site a better place for its searchers to arrive at!

There are a number of ways that you can build links. These include:

• Write a blog: this will allow you to build links internally. Also, if the content on your blog offers value, then it also gives other sites an incentive to link to it
• Linking out: link out to sites with authority, and create expert roundups to encourage other sites linking back to you
• Work with bloggers: there are loads of bloggers who are willing to collaborate with ecommerce brands over product guides
• Guest post on other site’s blogs: find blogs that are within your field, then ask if you can guest post on their site and include a link to your own.

SEO might seem like an obscure, impenetrable and difficult thing to quantify. But whether you’re a firm believer in its influence and power, or a hardcore sceptic, it’s real, here, and it isn’t going away anytime soon.

While it’s here, SEO will continue to have power over how your site is ranked and that means it has the power to influence how much money your business is making.

Even if you are still skeptical about SEO, make sure your ecommerce site is making the most out of its Keywords, Title Tags, Content, Link Building, and UX, because you can be sure that your competitors will be…

The post SEO & Ecommerce: The Ranking Factors That Even An SEO Sceptic Needs To Know appeared first on Mike Khorev - SEO Consultant.