Search engine optimisation is an important strategy that should be included in every webmaster and website owner’s overall marketing plan. It allows small businesses, blogs or websites to compete against bigger companies in a search engine’s ranking, meaning you’re more likely to get those visitors, and it also optimises a user’s experience, making them less likely to leave your website.

However, unless you’re working with an SEO agency or have an SEO expert on your marketing team, it’s likely that you’re going to be making a few mistakes that can, at best, see your website miss out on ranking well, or at worst see your website receive a Google penalty.

These are some of the commonest SEO mistakes we see businesses making on their website. Are you one of them?

Keyword stuffing

Keyword stuffing is a tactic which involves loading a webpage with the keyword you want to rank for in order to get a higher ranking. It’s a dirty tactic which puts off readers, and as of Google’s Panda update it also puts off Google, meaning you’re more likely to be penalised than rewarded for it.

What you should be doing: creating regular, rich and relevant content which will allow Google to see you as an authoritative leader in the sector you want to rank for. Use keywords only when they’re relevant and read well – writing content for humans, rather than Google bots, is the only way to do SEO.

Not using the title tags

There are so many websites out there we see where the page title has either been left blank, or with a title like ‘Home’. Great – if you want to rank for ‘home’, which I’m guessing you don’t. Giving each webpage a unique title will allow Google to easily see what the webpage is about, and increase its ranking for that topic. A meta description might not be so relevant for Googlebots, but when it comes to getting humans to click through to your site, think of it as a 140ish character way to sell your website. Data also suggests that click-through ratio is part of the way Google assesses the quality of your site – and decides how well it should rank for a given term.

What you should be doing: giving each page a unique title and meta description which accurately describes the webpage. Use long tail keywords in the title tag, and optimise the meta tag so that it is reader friendly.

Not targeting long-tail keywords

One mistake we see made over is where businesses want to rank for a relatively small set of general, high-traffic keywords rather than long-tail keywords. Long-tail keywords are longer, more specific phrases that are used when searchers know exactly what they want from a product or service. While ranking highly for a general term is likely to draw in a considerable amount of traffic, the likelihood is that someone who is searching for ‘bathroom cabinet’ is very much in the early stage of the buying cycle and is scouting for ideas. Someone who is searching for ‘white mirrored bathroom medicine cabinet’ is probably ready to make a purchase there and then. By focusing on long-tail keywords, you are more likely to make a sale.

What you should be doing: use a keyword research tool such as WordStream to help you to find relevant long-tail keyword variations, then incorporate these into your website’s page descriptions – each page should have a unique title, description meta tag, h1 header tag and body content that allows your website to rank for several various long-tail keywords. Just make sure these are relevant to the page and product you’re selling.

Not providing fresh content

When Google first discovers a webpage, either through internal or external links, the page is given a freshness score. The freshness score can boost the content for certain search queries, such as search queries on hot topics, events or updates. A freshness score decays over time, meaning newer webpages are more likely to be given higher search rankings as time goes on. Not providing regular, fresh content on your site will mean Google deems your website as less relevant as time goes on.

What you should be doing: creating new, relevant pages on a regular basis, or updating old pages so that it provides newer content. If you can’t regularly update product pages, consider starting a regular blog which talks about content related to what you’re trying to sell.

Irrelevant anchor texts for internal links

You’ve likely included a number of navigational and contextual internal links on your site to help users make their way through your content and find what they’re looking for, and this is exactly what we’d recommend from an SEO perspective as well. However it’s important to ensure that users and search engines alike are able to tell what content they’ll be landing on when they go through a given internal link. Linking through to a page by using a non-descriptive anchor text like ‘click here’ can reduce the relevancy of that internal link from an SEO perspective.

What you should be doing: use relevant anchor texts which describe the webpage you’re linking to. If you can’t make a natural looking sentence by just describing the web page, write a call to action which includes some relevant keywords such as “read more about our gardening equipment here”.

Not having a mobile-friendly site

Not having a mobile friendly site is now a pretty big oversight in search as it turns off mobile users and sends them to more responsive websites. However, from 21^st April, Google will begin rolling out a new algorithm that will favour “mobile friendly” websites in mobile searches. While this does mean only searches carried out on a mobile will be affected, it’s worth updating your website and making it fully responsive anyway – it’s 2015, we’re a nation of mobile addicts.

What you should be doing: check to see if you’re website is mobile friendly using Google’s mobile friendly test. If it’s not, you will get a clear list of reasons why, allowing you to change them. Preferably before 21^st April!

Fixing these mistakes is an easy way to improve the visibility of your website in search engines, and can all be done by simply changing the content of your website. If you’re concerned about other aspects of your SEO strategy, such as natural ways of getting external links, check out our SEO services or keep an eye out on our blog as we’ll be talking about them soon!