Orlando SEO Company
Although Search Engine Optimization has been around since roughly 1997, a lot has changed when it comes to best practices. What it used to bring you traffic 6 years ago is not necessarily what will bring you traffic today. However, fear not, here’s a list of the 4 SEO habits that you should be putting aside as of 2019.
Top SEO Mistakes to Avoid
1. Using Keyword Stuffing instead of Keyword Targeting
Search engines have become really sophisticated at understanding user queries and providing the most relevant answers by analyzing search intent and the relationships between words. This is why keyword stuffing (the practice of overloading a webpage with keywords) is a major SEO mistake nowadays.
Keyword (topic) targeting, on the other hand, is the way to go! Find related keywords (to the main keyword that you are targeting), and incorporate them to create a solid article about the topic that you are writing.
A great way to find similar keywords is to google your focus keyword, and take a look at your synonymous keywords(see the image below to find out where your synonymous keywords are hiding!)
Furthermore, the great thing about synonymous keywords is that they can be useful in understanding user intent and the context of the query. And, as search engines main goal is to provide relevant results to users, we can understand why discerning queries using context would be an important task. This process in which search engines analyze phrases to understand words beyond their literal meaning is known as semantic search.
In other words, search engines care a lot about understanding language as well as humans, and semantic search is one of the ways they try to do so. Thus, when crafting you SEO strategy make sure to include long-tail keywords that target users’ intent.
2. Publishing Thin (short) Content that doesn’t follow the Google Quality Rater Guidelines
Studies show that Google likes lengthy content. In 2012, a HubSpot Analysis of 6,192 articles found that 2000+ words articles earned more backlinks and social shares 2500+ word articles. And, as we know both backlinks and social shares are attributes that Google values and that translate into better search results positioning. Similarly, CoSchedules‘ Garrett Moon conducted an analysis of the first page rankings of 6 keywords. And, not surprisingly, he found the top 5 results averaged more than 2,000 words.
However, an article that is long and wordy without substance is still meant to be useless for SEO purposes. In order to avoid this, we recommend taking a look at Google’s Quality Rater Guidelines Update as they establish standards for the quality of webpages on Google. On the latest update of these guidelines, for instance, Google established that there was going to be a new emphasis on evaluating the quality of the content based on the authoritativeness of the authors. By having experts in the field write your content, you can have valuable information for your target audience and therefore for search engines.
3. Not having a Blogging Schedule
Google values consistency, evergreen content(fresh and updated information) and frequency when it comes to blogging. And even though blogging is a “the more, the better” kind of deal, you can find an schedule and amount of work hours that adjusts to your company. We recommend taking a look at Hubspots’ study on how often different size companies are blogging. Therefore, make sure to set (and stick to) a blogging schedule to build up your content library steadily.
4. Posting Duplicate Content
One of the most common SEO errors is duplicated content, which is frankly one of the easiest mistakes to correct since there are myriad of tools online to help you analyze your website for duplicate content. Copyscape is one of the most common ones, but Moz also offers analytics features to identify duplicated content.
These meaningful tweaks in your SEO practices could make a world of difference in your overall strategy implementation. However, it is also important to highlight that SEO is a long-term commitment, and that the longer you persevere, the better the results will be.
Orlando SEO
If you would like for Orlando SEO experts to create and implement an SEO strategy that delivers results, contact us! We are an Orlando web design company experienced at helping businesses improve their websites & Google search results positioning.
