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When troubleshooting SEO campaigns I often find that the same mistakes happen over and over again. Here are three of the most common pitfalls I’ve come across over the years that I’ve been optimising websites:
1. Targeting the wrong keywords
Keyword research is the most important part of a successful SEO campaign, and if you target the wrong keywords, your campaign may not even get off the ground. High traffic keywords can be desirable but often they’re the ones which are also highly competitive. If you choose keywords that are too competitive then you’re going to find it difficult to gain high rankings for your website. Similarly, choosing keywords which are too niche also causes problems, not because it’s difficult to gain rankings for them, but you’ll soon find that your traffic levels aren’t increasing because nobody is searching on those words.
2. Website Re-launch
Seeing rankings drop after re-launching a website is a common problem. When re-launching a site, you need to consider your existing rankings and take measures to ensure you keep them intact, or at least try and minimise the loss of rankings in the search engines. This can include re-directing old web pages to new web pages and ensuring you have a ‘404’ error page in place (we’ll cover these in a future post).
3. Limited Optimisation
Some companies only optimise the home page of their website. If you do this you’re limiting your success in the search engines since any page of a website is a potential entry point for visitors – they don’t all arrive on a site via the home page. It’s important that you optimise as many pages of your website as you can, however small your website is, and if you’re selling more than one product or service then you’re severely limiting yourself by only optimising the home page.
I hope this helps if you’re experiencing less than satisfactory results from your optimisation efforts!
About Louise
Louise Barnes-Johnston has been working in social media marketing since 2007 after realising that it was a powerful marketing tool which would enable her clients to raise the profile of their businesses on the internet, even when working to a limited budget. Her specialism is in researching social media practices; trying out the most effective online tools and then sharing the best of them with her clients.
