Hello, 2022!!! Let's start the new year off on the right track with some good search engine optimization, said no one ever. It's a new year and over the course of the past two years, the world of business has changed dramatically. It's funny when people are forced to communicate in ways that make IT departments and internet service providers cringe and now, it's no big deal. Most companies are doing some things digitally now when before they simply relied on a manual process or a piece of paper. Want a job interview? Don't go in person, just hop on a Zoom meeting. Here we are looking at 5 common search engine optimization mistakes to avoid and how to make up for them.
1. Failing to perform a technical SEO audit
A technical SEO is somewhat a complicated task to perform if you run one manually. Sure, there are tools out there to help you, but let's take a look at what makes up a technical SEO audit.
A technical SEO audit is a type of website audit that is looking at the technical structural details of the website. Common elements on a technical SEO audit are the following:
- Page Speed
- Server information
- Image structure
- Cascade style sheets usage
- Javascript usage and errors
- Thread blocking
- Mobile-friendliness
- Usage of CDN's
2. Not setting up a business profile
A business profile is essential if your business provides services or products to the area around you. Think of services that are popular in your surrounding area like dentists, attorneys, and restaurants. If you want to be found in your service area, you would benefit greatly from a local business profile.
Here are a few places you can go to get your business on the map and ranking in local search:
- Bing Places
- Apple Maps
- Google Business Profile
- Yelp Business
- Yext
- Yellow Pages
3. Broken links
Broken links are a web admin arch-nemesis. Broken links are referred to as 404 errors and lead to other problems down the road. It's considered best practice to keep 404 errors to a minimum of 0. There are tools out there that will scan your website and report back how many pages have 404 errors. We recommend Webolytica for website scanning and monitoring.
4. Copying content from another website
Stealing content from another site is a big no-no. First, it's not ethical to steal others' content. Second, you get dinged by search engines for doing it. Third, you have a good chance of being penalized for copyright infringement especially if the party can prove you stole it. Finally, many larger websites offer RSS feeds so that you can see updates to postings and pages. Be careful when using these tools for posting on your own website. It's always a wise choice to take into consideration where the information is coming from. Also, it's best practice to write your own original content.
5. Not utilizing Schema or structured data (JSON-LD)
Structured data is a markup language that search engines understand. Structured data has the ability to create rich results for display in search engines. For example, think of recipe results.
The results from above are because the website that owns the result uses structured data to aid in the search result.
It's amazing to know that we can adapt and so can your business. Sometimes we are better off stepping out of our comfort zones and taking on what we don't already know. After all, search engine optimization is a very broad topic with so many moving parts. If we stick to the basics and really understand how the components of SEO work together with making your business visible then that's a great start.
If your business needs help with search engine optimization or if you have any questions on the topic, feel free to reach out to us and we will gladly assist you! If you want to know more about our SEO services we offer, visit our SEO Services page.
