More and more SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is present in the life of anyone who works on the internet, be it a blogger like ninja Mario SAM, an e-commerce owner, a website developer, or a provider company for services such as Score Media.
All of these people are looking for better organic search engine rankings to leverage their sales, lead generation and even to get new readers for their content, but often during the day-to-day run we can not keep up with all the algorithm updates. Searchers, and even realize that we are making some SEO errors (some basic, some advanced).
The purpose of this article is to highlight some SEO mistakes that due to these updates, you even know you are committing:
1. Meta Keywords…. Blergh!
This mistake may be one of the most obvious of this article, but even so when we start SEO management with our customers we find people who still fill the meta keywords field of your site.
Meta Keywords is still interpreted by Bing, but the time X benefit of doing it simply does not pay off, as relevancy is almost nil.
2. Yes, the meta description is still VERY important
Unlike meta keywords, the meta description is still an important factor for SEO. You’ll probably say, “Henry, I think you’re mistaken, because the meta description has a low ranking factor compared to other SEO items like site speed.” Calm down, I’ll explain.
In fact we must consider that meta description is one of the biggest factors of indirect rankings of SEO, because today according to Search Metrics search, the main ranking factor is the CTR (Click Through Rate) that is basically represented by the formula ((clicks / impressions) * 100). Knowing this we should always optimize our search result so that it has an increasing CTR rate (you already know where I’m going to get it, right?), Today a search result is composed of:
– Title
– URL
– Meta description
Example Meta Description
An inviting and well-developed meta description enhances the clickability of the search result, raises the CTR and consequently its organic positioning (does not it make sense to click on your result again and again to increase CTR ok?)
3. Social signs YES affect ranking in search engines
Remember the research quoted above? It also states that social signs (Likes, Shares, Pins, G +, Tweets, etc.) on the page also influence how search engines interpret and position the site itself, so a common mistake is to ignore these social signs on your pages. (in E-commerce example, category pages, products, home and etc.).
A very simple tip to start showing social signs on your site is to install sharing tools such as Addthis or the Get Site Control (they are both free in some sharing features, and have Premium packages), they are very simple to install, just insert your JS code in the site and manage via their respective control panels.
4. Responsive layout, beauty, but is it fast?
My site is responsive, come organic positioning \o/. Not exactly.
Yes, responsive layout is great for SEO, but the loading speed comes soon afterwards like a bucket of cold water, so always consider the customer’s mobile experience and not the technology.
Example: “Iza’s website is responsive and has a photo of its main products in the home ordered by flavor, however when analyzing the home of your site through tools loading sites such as Pingdom or Webpagetest.org, we came to the conclusion that the site of Iza is about 10MB in the home and takes about 20s to load due to banners in high definition of 2800 x 1200 px (imagine then in a cell phone with 3G technology the time of loading practically would double to 40s or more).”
In this example, the responsive technology could even offer a pleasant experience for the purchase of cakes, but due to the loading time of the site and the banners with unnecessary sizes, the user experience is compromised, as well as their positions in the search engine.
5. www.BuyDomainWithKeyword.com
This mistake is common and believe me, everyone who works with the internet has thought or committed at least once.
Avoid buying large domains with the keyword you want to position yourself, this is a practice that worked for a short time some time ago, but today adds little value and sincerely for the user experience is not pleasant, so imagine a world where have domains:
www.BuyYourAlienatedCarPaidAtSight.com
www.Pregnancy&ParentingBabiesAndChildrens.com
www.ChocolateFactorySwonka.com
www.SeoConsultingAndSponsoredLinksScoreMedia.com
This certainly would not be easy to memorize, it does not add anything to the user experience on the page and would certainly look very strange in search engine results.
The area of SEO is still very new in the digital field, so do not judge yourself too much for committing any of the above errors, as most of them do not result in punishments (maybe the error 5 in excess yes), in case you still feel insecure to perform SEO on your own or do not have time to upgrade, consider hire an SEO consultant.
This article was written by Henrique Troitinho – CEO of Score Media (ABComm award winning company Best digital business consulting 2016).
