Search Engine Optimisation...

Over the last decade it's become one of the most valuable forms of digital marketing an organisation can partake in.  With 93% of digital experiences beginning with a search on a search engine, there's no wonder as to why the SEO industry has amassed an $80 billion worth. 

Unfortunately, a lot of businesses make mistakes when it comes to SEO. They put resource into a strategy or plan that just doesn't cut it in terms of ROI.

That's why we've asked our PPC & SEO Specialist, Paul Hogg, to write a blog honing in on the five mistakes that are most common.

Is your business guilty of any of these?

Let's find out.

Not having a keyword strategy

Guessing what your customers are searching for can be a good way to begin research for a keyword strategy, but it is not a strategy in itself. There will be keywords you’ve not thought of and ones your competitors are ranking for that you could steal.

For a basic keyword strategy, Google Sheets makes for a great resource. Simply set up a new sheet with the following columns:

• Location
• Category
• Intent
• Keyword
• Search Volume
• Difficulty
• Page

Use keyword research tools such as Google Keyword Planner and SEMrush to find keywords to target. Copy them into your sheet with relevant metrics (we’ll cover difficulty in our 3rd mistake), and group them together using the location, category, intent and page columns.

This is a simple but effective keyword strategy document.

Not taking note of intent

Some product or service keywords would assume searchers are looking for exactly that, but not all searches are equal. A large portion of searchers are actually looking for information about their purchases before committing. For any given keyword you are looking to target, try Googling it first and seeing what kind of content is already ranking. Ask yourself “is there the opportunity to create content around this keyword, would that be useful to people before purchasing?”.

Sometimes, the right intent can be the difference between ranking page 2 and ranking position #1.

Failing to consider keyword difficulty

Ranking page 1 isn’t easy. So ranking position #1 is even harder. Right? This isn’t always the case.

After content relevancy, domain authority is the #1 ranking factor that Google looks at (amongst 200+ ranking signals).

Before you set up a page to target a given keyword, it is important to know what is realistic for rank for. Keyword difficulty can help with this. Any google SEO software will have a measure of this - Semrush, Ahrefs, MOZ.

Make a note of your domain authority using this software and the level of difficulty you are already ranking for, then put the keywords in that you want to target. If the difficulty is drastically higher than these, you might have a hard time ranking for them. Using this approach, you could end up finding a keyword (or set of keywords) that is relevant, high search and low difficulty (the holy trio of keyword research), this is deal for targeting.

 Not promoting your content

Creating a piece of content for SEO isn’t the end of the story. As mentioned in mistake #3, links are an important part of the picture. By reaching out to other content creators and influencers in your niche and giving them a reason to link to your content, you can give yourself the best possible chance of ranking it on page 1. 

PR, broken link building, influencer marketing, there are lots of different ways to approach it, but the focus needs to be on “does this benefit the audience” first and foremost.

Guest blogging can also be a good way of promoting your content. Take a section of your content and focus the guest piece around that, then drive readers to the full thing - this is a strong approach that could work well for your content.

Worrying about not having "too much content" on a page

As long as content is structured in a way that breaks it up into easy-to-skim sections, more content is generally better from an SEO perspective.

Google looks at not only relevance but also quantity of content. Comprehensive guides and articles will almost always outperform thin content.

In a 2020 study of 11.8 million Google rankings, Backlinko found that the average number of words on a Google first page result was 1,447 words.

Check out the competition, make a note of how many words they are writing and aim to be bigger and better than them. Authority and comprehensiveness will trump thin, content missing, points.

Time to step-up? 

Have you been making these SEO mistakes?

Perhaps it's time to get some real guidance on your performance marketing strategy.

Get in touch and let us know.