5 Common SEO Mistakes To Avoid In 2017

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a constantly evolving industry. Some techniques that worked great in the past can absolutely ruin your website rankings today. That’s why it is so important for business owners to only hire SEO professionals who keep current in their field and can offer expert SEO tips that have stood the test of time.

Below are five SEO mistakes that could cause your site to run into trouble, so be sure to avoid them.

1. Keyword Stuffing

Can you believe we are heading into 2017, and we are still seeing old-fashioned SEO mistakes like keyword stuffing being used by SEO companies? That’s just crazy, but there are still a lot of inexperienced – or perhaps unscrupulous – SEOs out there who are using keyword stuffing to temporarily boost their clients’ search rankings.

Oversaturating your content with keywords will get your website penalized! It’s only a matter of time!

For any keyword consisting of two or more words, a keyword density of 1-2% is more than sufficient. You can get away with slightly more than that for one-word keywords, but longer keyword terms must not be overused. Instead, make greater use of LSI variations and related terms to add more weight and context to your pieces of content.

2. Lack of Keyword Focus

While keyword stuffing is no longer a useful tactic in the long term, it is still useful to limit the focus of each piece of content to a single keyword. Unless your site is seen as a major authority by Google, your chances of ranking any particular page for multiple keywords are slim. It’s usually best – especially for small business websites – to focus each piece of content on a single keyword.

You should still include related keywords to add context and to provide value for readers, but each page should focus primarily on a single keyword. So be sure to shape your content strategy with this principle in mind, and then have your primary keyword in the post title, introduction, tags, body, and conclusion without falling into the trap of keyword stuffing.

3. Spammy Links

Watch out for marketers who promise your first place rankings in Google with a matter of weeks. Unless you are operating your business in a very unique and unknown niche, the chances of leaping to the top spot in the SERPs in a matter of weeks using only organic SEO are very weak.

Most marketers who promise overnight results are using outdated, black hat techniques that will give you short-lived benefits but will ultimately ruin your website rankings and reputation. Do not fall for these tricks. Throwing low-quality links at your website is one of the most common SEO mistakes you can make, and it will kill your website’s long-term viability, so do not let that happen.

Link building is not always harmful, but it must be done properly to be effective. So don’t let outdated SEO techniques hurt your search rankings. Be patient; quality results take time.

4. Duplicate Content

The Internet is filled with plagiarized and curated content, and if you are publishing content on your site that is already out there on other pages, you could get slapped with a duplicate content penalty. To avoid this, you must be sure that the content you are adding is unique. If you are not creating your own blog posts but are hiring an outside agency to provide you with website content, be sure to hire marketers who create fresh content that passes Copyscape and isn’t just scraped from other websites.

5. Poor Local SEO

Another SEO mistake made by many small businesses is poorly optimized local SEO. Be sure to claim your listings on all the local platforms such as YELP and Glassdoor, and make sure that all the addresses, phone numbers and other types of contact information are consistent. Many small businesses don’t do this, and their poor local SEO brings mixed results.

If you need help getting your small business website to rank better – without making any of these or other SEO mistakes – please contact Lucid Advertising and talk to a marketing professional who will help your company get long-term results.