As a new blogger or website owner, you would be impatient and very enthusiastic about your new venture. All you would want to do is drive traffic to your site as fast as possible. So what do you do? Write an article or get it written probably. Post it online and then maybe share it with your Facebook friends. The next you do, is dash off to your dashboard to check statistics and find the number of views and visitors you had that day. What happened? Some visitors pour in on the day you published your post. But the following day the number of views and visitors dwindle. Now are you the only one who is staring at your blog post? Well, that is not surprising.
Now in your impatience to drive traffic, you again start writing an article and post it online. As a newbie, if this is what you have done or what you do, then this is one of the biggest SEO blunders. This act of yours is not only wasting your precious time but also does not contribute to a solid result.
Search engine optimization requires your time, patience, smart thinking and a lot of hard work. You should not desire for 1,000 visitors visiting your site every day, when you have not fully optimized or promoted your content. There are many websites and blogs online who write good stuff but only a few rank on page 1, 2 or 3. This is only because they have been in the market for some time now and have tried different SEO methods to promote their site online.
Now if you are doing the above blunder, then get off it. Read below and you will find some other very common SEO mistakes that you might be making unknowingly and keeping Google off its favorite list.
1. Hurrying to Post Online
Posting a blog or an article in your site is a definite way to attract traffic, but this does not mean that you write and upload content every day. Writing mediocre or stuff that you have copied from some other website is not going to drive traffic. Just like you, there are many other readers and bloggers who check different websites. If they find that your content is not original but has been copied from a particular site, then it is only going to damage your standing online.
‘CONTENT IS KING’ and it will always be. Quantity is necessary but not at the cost of quality. Keep both these things in mind and then start writing. If necessary try a posting schedule, like for example post on Mondays and Fridays or on weekends. This will not only give you sufficient time to research, brainstorm and write on a topic but will also give readers some hope of reading fresh and original piece from you every week.
2. Stuffing Too Many Keywords
Infusing keywords in your content is a great SEO tactic, as it aids visitors as well as search engines to reach your post. But in the quest of attracting traffic or increasing your page ranking, do not stuff too many keywords and ruin the natural flow of your content.
There are many websites online that have articles where all of a sudden a keyword phrase (used with an intention to sell service/product or increase SERP) pops up. This makes the entire content look poor and distasteful. Neither readers nor search engine sites would love to visit such sites again. While writing, stick to using around 2% keyword and then build up your content using LSI words and synonyms. This will be of great help. But again, beware of going overboard.
3. Not Enough Promotion
Why do you know Twitter, Facebook or say even Bill Gates? Only because they have marketed themselves well and continue doing so. Just posting your blog and waiting for people to read it or just sharing it with your Facebook friends is not enough. These are not your real target customers. Your customers are people who need your service/product or like-minded people with whom you want to build professional relationship.
If you want people to know that you are offering a service or product online, then you need to market yourself aggressively. Instead of writing a fresh post, uploading it, waiting for people to read it and then forgetting about it after sometime, start sharing it with others. The more you share, the more number of people will know about your work. Be it Facebook, Twitter, Stumbleupon, Digg, Delicious or any other niche site or forum; make your article/blog post known. Always be on the lookout for such avenues and opportunities and use them to your benefit.
4. Too Much Reliance on Link building
Link building is definitely one of the most important SEO strategies. Google and other search engines favor websites that have more links. But more links does not imply low quality links or links directed from poor directories. Good and naturally produced links go a long way. Instead of leaving an unrelated comment on a blogger’s site with a link in it, try and build links naturally. You can submit your blog posts in social bookmarking sites, social network sites and niche forums. You can also find a good article directory and submit your post under a suitable category. All these are good ways to build links.
But the best way to build natural link is by writing an original, informative and interesting content. If you have written a good article then people would automatically start following you and sharing your posts. Building good online/offline relationships with genuine bloggers is a great way to spread the word about your site.
There are a lot more SEO blunders that newbies make. But the above ones are the commonest.
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