7 Most Common DIY SEO Mistakes You’re Probably Making

If you are a fan of the famous video game Fallout, you know that “war never changes,” but if your line of work has anything to do with SEO, you probably know that the situation with online ranking is completely the opposite. The SEO war changes all the time. Old rules fall into oblivion, new ones are being born as we speak, so if you want your page and your posts to achieve high rankings, you will definitely want to keep up with the game.

Should you even begin to think if it is time to consolidate and refresh your SEO tactics, it probably means IT IS time to consolidate and refresh your SEO tactics. Here are some of the most common DIY SEO mistakes you might obliviously be making with your current digital marketing strategy.

Not Having Strong Content

First and foremost, make sure you are not trying to boost your SEO for posts containing weak and thin content.

Is my content weak and thin? – you are probably wondering. Well, the easiest way to find out is to answer the following questions: Is my content too short and not exactly helpful? Is it oversimplified? Is it copied, outdated and dull? If the answers are mostly positive, then you probably need better content management, and you need it fast.

Any good content marketing plan is based on quality content that has the power to engage and deliver. Even though generating engaging content is getting harder and harder every day, this is considered a must in almost every online industry.

As Google is all about providing only the best to its users, your page needs to be one of the best in its field, otherwise Google won’t see you as relevant anymore. In order to rank well in search engines, you simply must provide your audience with useful, witty and well-written content. However, that’s easier said than done.

Ignoring Local SEO

Another very common and widespread DIY SEO mistake is not taking care of local Search Engine Optimization. This one goes out to businesses that serve customers in their physical store. If you want your future customers to be able to locate your physical store and then come and spend their money on your products, you will need to invest in your local SEO. Users often search for your physical address, want to know your working hours, or need the phone number of your business, and this is where local SEO comes in.

Be sure to check out the Local Citation Finder by Whitespark and Moz Local tool in order to check out where you currently stand when it comes to local SEO and get to work.

Ignoring The Title Tag Section of the HTML Code

Most people don’t know this, but the title tag of your post is what is being displayed when a user sees the search results of your page in any given search engine, which is why it is crucial to optimize this element on all your posts. Even though this has been known for ages now, it turns out that many businesses make this mistake all the time. Don’t be one of them.

Letting Keywords do All the Work

Yes, keywords are pretty helpful, and sometimes they can make all the difference, but far too many companies think keywords are ALL they need. Relying just on keywords is like barking up the right tree when you actually need the whole forest.

For a bigger SEO impact, you will want to: make sure you are targeting the right audience, give microdata and social tags a try, focus on link-building (but making sure you target the relevant external pages), include Google+ authors and publishers, etc…

Also, make sure you research the variations of your basic keywords as well. The thing is that a bulk of search requests on websites won’t always match your exact keywords, but are actually variations of the ones you use. One of the greatest keyword analytics tools for this kind of research is SEMrush, and you can use it to explore your organic or paid keywords, while you can also get reports on traffic, search volumes, trends, related keywords, and other useful data. Once you have this info, cross-reference it with what you have in Google Analytics, your social media management suite, your email marketing platform, etc. You will be amazed with what you can find there.

Building the Wrong Links

Another pretty common DIY SEO mistake is building random links just for the sake of building links. This is never a productive SEO strategy as you will merely end up shooting in the dark. You must make sure you are building quality, relevant links that search engines will consider when assigning rankings. Give up on links from directories, and focus on those from well-respected pages that are trusted within their niche.

Focusing only on Google as a Search Engine

Although Google is THE search engine of modern Internet, many companies make a mistake by focusing exclusively on it. Disregarding other ones is a huge omission as they can also be used to boost your SEO. Make sure you prepare your page for other search engines to get the full benefit of SEO. Some of the most popular search engines other than Google are Bing, Yahoo, Ask.com, AOL.com, Blekko, Boardreader, Wolframalpha…

Not Targeting the Right Audience

Aside from having a killer content, paying attention to your local SEO, not thinking keywords can do all the work, building the right links, and focusing on more than just one search engine – you need to get to know your target audience, learn as much as you can about them (without being too stalky, that is), and then use that info to build an even bigger audience base.

Unfortunately, many companies still don’t realize that they need to keep their target audience in mind when thinking about their SEO tactics, for only then can their digital marketing strategy have the “all-round” adjective in front of it.