If you’ve ever been to a butterfly garden, you’re familiar with the challenge of catching—and keeping—one of those fluttery creatures within your palm. Not exactly the easiest feat, right? Without the proper marketing strategies, catching and keeping a potential customer on your company website can present the same challenge. Thankfully, search engine optimization (SEO) acts as a butterfly net for that swarm of web activity, so your company website can rank higher on search engine results pages (SERPs). As a result, you can attract new visitors straight to your website and get customers all aflutter about your business. Don’t let business opportunities fly away by avoiding these SEO website mistakes companies make!
Social Butterflies
Whether you have a newly designed product/service page that’s ready for the world, photos from your latest project you can’t wait to show off, or an informative blog post that demonstrates your expertise, customers deserve to see your content. Each one of those website links is an opportunity for companies to leverage their social media presence. By posting those links to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or another social media platform, companies don’t just get customers abuzz about the business. Active social media accounts also boost SEO rankings, giving new meaning to the term “social butterfly.”
A Cocoon of Content
Without fresh, relevant website content, however, you won’t have anything to link to! Some companies go through the process of creating search engine optimized web pages, but neglect to update their website with new, exciting content. By maintaining an updated company blog, you can keep customers informed regarding upcoming events, new products or services, and keep their energy towards your company in high spirits. Consistent content—and adding keyword SEO to that content—will keep your company within sight (instead of tucked out of view in a low-ranking cocoon).
Just Winging Keywords
Once you have content, it’s important to provide customers with a path that leads them straight to your website. Keywords (a string of words used to describe your product or service) are the beautiful blossoms customers are bound to fly for. Using the wrong keywords—or neglecting to use keywords at all—can hinder customers from discovering your website during those searches. Using the same keyword across numerous pages won’t help much, either, as it deters your website from ranking for those keywords.
By strategically selecting an array of relevant keywords, companies can target those ideal customers with blossoms aplenty!
Paying “Antennaetion” to Tags
Using SEO on web pages and posts is just a start. There are other components of your website that require attention, such as title tags and meta descriptions, which show in SERPs to tease the web page’s content. Since they both advertise your website, it’s paramount to feature your high-flying keyword within the title and description. Customers are more likely to click on a web page if it reflects the keywords within their search. Leaving those details unattended could cause customers—and sales—to fly by!
Landing on Links
Linking a blog post or web page to additional content on your website is another effective strategy for keeping customers all aflutter about your business. Using irrelevant internal links—or failing to fix broken links—can cause customers to fly off out of frustration. Instead, link to content that will keep customers interested, direct them to make a purchase, or encourages them to call for more info!
Subheadings Slip Through The Net
Heads up: Google skims through the body text of your web content to search for your keywords. As a result, it’s a pretty good idea to include your target keywords within the subheadings of your content in addition to the body text. Potential customers tend to skim-read content, too, in order to confirm that content is relevant to their interest. With that in mind, adding keywords to subheadings within your content ensures customers and Google that your web pages reflect the keywords you’re optimizing for.
Alt Insects
Google also “crawls” around searching for the alternative text, or alt text, on your images and videos. Including your keyword within the alt text of web page visual content ensures that customers can find that content when completing Image or Video searches within Google, too. With those images linking back to your website, you offer customers another opportunity to fly (not crawl) straight for your business!
The Friendly Mobile Caterpillar
Of these SEO website mistakes companies make, neglecting mobile optimization is a definite don’t. Without a mobile-optimized website, companies are far too likely to miss out on customers who are searching for and accessing your website from smartphones and tablets. Accrding to www.digitalestate.co.nz, when customers visit your website and experience trouble navigating wide-spread pages with small, illegible text and contact buttons they can’t click, they’re more likely to slip through the net. Google cares about user experience, so it might not boost your ranking without that optimization.
Need some help, instead of flying solo? That’s what we Doo.
Google’s Flying Blind
If you’ve searched around for your targeted keywords, but still don’t see your website ranking in SERPs, it’s possible Google hasn’t indexed your website. Basically, that mean’s Google’s flying blind and can’t see your website to crawl it for relevant content. If Google doesn’t get the chance to crawl around, you won’t get the chance to rank! Definitely a no-go.
The Slow Crawl
This list of SEO website mistakes companies make wouldn’t be complete if we failed to mention high-flying speeds. Remember, Google likes giving their users an A+ user experience. Slow-loading websites don’t make for happy users and can often cause an increased bounce rate (meaning visitors leave your website without clicking around). If your website is loading at a slow crawl, Google could lower your ranking, costing you potential customers.
Using Google’s PageSpeed Insights, you can determine your website speed and troubleshoot possible problem areas. Then, you can get your friendly web developers to help you reach those high-flying speeds.
Attract a Swarm of Web Visitors by Avoiding These SEO Website Mistakes Companies Make
By avoiding these 10 SEO website mistakes companies make, you can cast a wider net for attracting customers. As part of your digital marketing strategy, SEO invites a swarm of potential customers to your website so those opportunities don’t fly by!