So you’ve heard it several times before…what good is SEO and website traffic if it doesn’t convert. No matter what your conversion objective is (request free quote, buy a product, provide customer information, etc), if a site visitor is not engaged it will not matter how much traffic a site receives. Here are 5 SEO Tips to avoid common SEO mistakes.
Basic SEO Solutions for Common SEO Mistakes
These 5 simple SEO solutions for common SEO mistakes can save you time to market and countless hours of frustration trying to reverse engineer competitors, simple keywords or rankings.
1- Don’t target keywords target markets – Keywords come and go and search behavior and user intent is whimsical this is why you should target markets instead of keywords. Since no two people think or search alike, you have to play the law of averages in your favor by finding the most trafficked and relevant keyword clusters to funnel traffic to your pages. This means targeting groups of keywords then finding which ones gain traction first.
There are pivotal keywords that act as a semantic thread that run throughout the theme of your website, so, by finding, consolidating and unifying those pages with internal links (the only links you have 100% control over); by the time you need to acquire links for ranking factor from other sites, you are miles ahead of your competition.
2- Consolidate the focus and intent of your pages – Don’t try to target too many keywords with one page; you are better off by using a new page to target a new keyword to use “exact match” naming conventions, title tag prominence and on page consistency.
In other words, if you are going after the key phrase “internet marketing services” and your website has other related posts on marketing, the first thing would be to title the page Internet-Marketing-Services.html , aspx, cfm, .php or whatever programming platform you are using.
Then use internet marketing services in the H1 tag, once in a link (even as an on page anchor #) and feature the keyword in the first paragraph preferably closer to the beginning of the sentence.
Then if you have any other occurrences of the keyword on other pages, link them to the page that will act as the preferred landing page.
Even bolding the keywords when they appear or using them in block quotes (bulleted lists) can also increase the relevance signal for the keyword on a granular level as far as taxonomy for search engine spiders is concerned. SEO is about the layers of overlapping signals that reinforce relevance simultaneously.
The mistake would be trying to make that page rank for web marketing services, online marketing service and all manner of related phrases from using off page link building tactics. If you are targeting other unique keywords, then create unique content-rich pages for each to provide a tip of the iceberg for search engines.
Every competitive keyword should have a relevant landing page (close to the root folder) to serve as the apex of the hierarchy for that keyword.
You can also use a singular, plural format service/services and alternate in the meta description to lock in additional keywords based on similar search phrases.
However, they will not engage until you have topically aligned the page in question with (a) enough links internally or (b) enough deep links from other sites to allow it to stem into other keyword variations.
3- Don’t Disproportionately Rely on Your Home Page for Rankings – Spread links evenly throughout a site using deep links. Deep links implies linking to a specific page with a specific keyword related to the target phrase.
This way when someone searches for yellow widgets, they don’t end up on your blue widgets page or at the home page (which will just cause confusion) or antagonize the user since there is no indicator of relevance.
The more focused your pages, the easier it is to cross the tipping point to gain a ranking for that exact match phrase. Don’t let your site suffer from theme diffusion from not having multiple unique landing pages.
4- Don’t ignore the Long Tail – Ranking for one word root phrases is nice, yet, you cannot afford to neglect the long tail phrases (key phrases using three of more words or local or regional references) while having enough flexibility to appear for the long-tail phrases which are typically closer to conversion as well. Someone typing in “buy a car” vs. “black 2009 ford mustang in new jersey” represent two different types of consumers. In this case, the latter is closer to conversion.
5- Traffic Must Convert of SEO is a Moot Point – Getting traffic is only the beginning, yes, increasing traffic is the gist of search engine optimization, but start with a goal in mind. Don’t look past visitors as numbers on an analytics dashboard, they are people with needs and are there for a reason.
So often people want SEO when the call to action, value proposition and graphic appeal of the page leaves much to be desired. If you have a destination page optimized for a specific keyword, then do your best to make that page emanate relevance for the main phrase as well as have a singular conversion objective for consumers to carry out (not multiple conversion points overlapping leaving them confused).
Jeffrey, I’ve read a few posts that have mentioned this point…
“Then use internet marketing services in the H1 tag, once in a link (even as an on page anchor #) and feature the keyword in the first paragraph preferably closer to the beginning of the sentence.”
When you say once in a link do you mean on the actual page that is targeting that keyword? So on the “internet marketing services” page there should be a link to itself with the anchor “internet marketing services”? If this is correct, how much effect does linking to itself have?
Thanks again for your great posts.
Hey Justin:
Regarding your comment…
When you say once in a link do you mean on the actual page that is targeting that keyword? So on the “internet marketing services” page there should be a link to itself with the anchor “internet marketing services”? If this is correct, how much effect does linking to itself have?
We still have a #1 position for a very competitive keyword using this method. So, yes, it does work.
I found many years ago that (a) using block quotes to add hyperlinks (a bullet / list) to other areas of the page (using page #anchors) is a very effective technique.
Especially if that segment is first on the page (high up as a metric of prominence) compared to other contextual data.
The higher the better in the code, along the same lines footer links are devalued.
But,yes, the technique is effective and is the new way to do “on page sculpting” without losing link flow.
If you have a better page rank you will be on top of the list. If you be on top of the list you will get more traffic.
Hi Jeffrey, thanks for your reply. That’s interesting and might explain why one of my sites is currently no. 25 in Google out of 6.5 mil in quotes for a two word keyword, and no. 16 out of 8.5 (quotes) for the plural. I’d been trying to figure out why the site ranked so high with little effort link building so far (180 external links), but the internal link structure is along the lines of what you say in this post, and others on your blog. Despite not realizing at the time that it would have so much effect on ranking, I’m really glad you explain it so well and provide so many useful tips. I’d better get going on my other sites to see how the changes effect rankings!
Thanks once again.
Justin:
I have built new sites with less than 200 links that outrank seasoned authority sites and gathered over 2500 keywords in 4-6 months deliberately using tactics from on page alone.
External links are great, don’t get me wrong, but if your on page is leaking like a civ from poor site architecture or lackadaisical incongruousness, then you will need more links to supplant competitors.
Use the power of block quotes, on page anchors, internal links (which you have 100% control over, etc.) before even considering off page ranking factor.
Its all about the synergy… Now to push your landing page from page 6 to page 1, either build more supporting pages to link to it with crucial anchors (preferably with RSS)attached so they get spidered and can get their own links, make sure url is “exact match” and make sure it’s in the root.
and by the way, getting 20-30 deep links to that page would not hurt either.
All the best!
Excellent, thanks for your help Jeffrey, I really appreciate it.
P.S. You need a ‘tip’ jar on this blog!
Organic search engine optimization is essentially an online marketing strategy which is dependent on having momentum and some long term commitment. By utilizing SEO, you’ll be taking a step in the right direction in terms of accumulating information regarding link building campaigns, relationship building with other webmasters, and even some respectable and desirable publications.
Loved the post.Thanks a lot for the tips..very useful ones indeed.
I especially like #4: The Longtail is a must to pay attention too, especially in the beginning while you are building backlinks, internal link structure, and adding new content. I have a fairly new site (3mos) and already outrank my competitors on MANY longtails in a very competitive target market. My site is only a PR1 and I do well in the SERP’s over PR4-5 sites.
Never ignore the longtail.
Good Idea Justin,
I think we are launching a members area soon for a fair fee where we really get into some good stuff. The tactics we discuss now are good, but deliberately watered down so we don’t breed competition from giving away the farm. Sure, you can dig for it, but the members area will be straightforward like to “fix this problem or rank using this method, here are the steps”. More like a tutorial / module style of sharing SEO tactics.
No Doubt Keith:
Since 80% of most websites get traffic from the long-tail more so than their main keywords, not to pay attention to them and only target the top level keywords (which are typically more broad and convert less) would be foolish.
Hello
You have given very nice 5 SEO tips.I completely agree with your 2nd tip from all these tips which you have written about keywords.I like that you give us such good tips to avoid common SEO mistakes.
Excellent, I’ll look forward to that Jeffrey.
I get #1 and #4 tips are very connected. And I advice using that to all of my costumers. Although, “one keyword logic” is very spreaded on net so sometimes I have to explain it days untill costumer get the idea. :)
Great list and quite common seo mistakes.
That’s why you should have clients and SEO project / sites you own yourself to monetize affiliate revenues instead of putting all your eggs in the client model “basket” all together.
Thanks for Commenting.
No doubt that Page Rank comes in second a laser like optimized page with strong internal links. Keep it up and you will be the new authority on the block and people will try to figure out how you dominate the SERPs without backlinks.
All the best Keith
Completely agree with you that:
Don’t target keywords target markets.
We should learn more about our niche, it is then that we can decide which keywords we need to select.
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