What works in online marketing changes all the time, sometimes even daily, so it’s understandable that many businesses make mistakes while just trying to keep up with SEO demands. Whether you’re struggling with local SEO listing management or with your eCommerce SEO services, oftentimes, the problems are the same. To make sure that you don’t keep repeating the same mistakes, there are a few common things to look out for. 

Common Global and Local SEO Listing Management Mistakes

Below are some of the most common SEO mistakes we’ve found as an SEO consulting Cleveland-based agency that you should avoid making in order to succeed with your online marketing campaigns. 

Ignoring Your Google Business Profile

One critical SEO error that many companies make is not creating or properly managing their Google Business profile. With Google continuing to place so much importance on local searches when possible, the most significant opportunity for any small businesses is to clearly list their location and website on Google, as well as provide all of the necessary information and answer any questions that come in. If you don’t create a Google Business profile at all, the chance of your business popping up in local searches is slim. 

Ranking The Wrong Keywords

If you want to rank well on Google, you have to make sure that you’re optimizing your keyword usage on every page. One of the biggest mistakes that website owners often make is optimizing their pages for generic keywords. If you’re a small business that wants to rank for a generic keyword, such as ‘vegan food,’ you’re aiming too high. Try to use keywords that are more specific to what you sell. Otherwise, you’ll be competing with every single vegan food provider around the world, which is impossible. One great tip is to use location-specific keywords when you can, as long as they fit well in your content. 

The longer and more specific your keywords are, the higher your chances of ranking for that keyword are. Your website will eventually gain substantially more traffic using all of your optimized keywords than it ever would have if you continued to utilize any generic keywords.

Writing Bad Content

This mistake is one that many businesses make simply because they forget how important content actually is. It’s vital that each page on your website has quality content that is at least 300 words long. Google needs enough content available to distinguish what your page is about and whether you can provide the product or solution that people are looking for. You can’t expect Google to rank you higher than other businesses in your industry when you’ve only written two sentences about it on your entire website. Having such minimal content will only show Google that your website probably isn’t the best result to match any search question.

While ranking on Google is important, remember that you should write content for your audience first, not Google. Any search engine’s mission is to organize information and provide the best answers available. Writing quality content for your visitors is the best way to go about attracting quality customers. Writing quality content means writing original and well-written content that demonstrates your expertise or value. And make sure that you are just stuffing keywords into your content wherever you can. If your content isn’t readable, then no one will want to buy what you’re selling. 

Not Updating Your Website

Google also takes your website design and development into account before determining any ranking. You need to make sure that your website is fast, secure, and user-friendly. First, you should run your website through Google’s PageSpeed Insights. This will help you figure out what, if anything, is causing lag. Also, make sure “HTTPS” appears at the front of your domain name. If it doesn’t, your website needs an SSL certificate.

If your website is challenging to use, visitors will likely leave without exploring any additional pages. Your bounce rate will steadily rise because of this. A high bounce rate can indicate a negative UX to search engines, causing your organic rankings to drop. If these SEO problems sound like something you’re currently dealing with, make sure to hire an SEO marketing agency immediately.

Ignoring Trends

New SEO trends can significantly impact how your business ranks on search engines. Make sure to keep up with the latest trends to find new ways to appeal to your users. Keep in mind that many trends can be more or less popular with consumers of a specific age range.

There are a lot of trends that you can look into, but some of the most popular ones to look into right now are virtual assistants and chatbots. 

Having A Website That Isn’t Mobile-Friendly

Google always looks to see if your website is mobile-friendly when deciding how high your website should rank. So if the standard version of your website is set up well, but the mobile version doesn’t work well at all, this will be reflected negatively in your rankings. If this is the case with your business, make sure to work on mobile SEO.

A great way to test whether your site is mobile-friendly or not is to use Google’s mobile-friendly test. This will give you an indication of how easily visitors can access your website on any mobile device. Just make sure you don’t stop checking after this. Try visiting your website on your own phone when you can to check on it. Click on every button, link, and image to see if everything is working. It would help if you also verified that visitors are able to make purchases and can view all of your products easily. You don’t want to miss out on the large amount of traffic that your website will gain from the number of mobile users.

If you’re looking for an SEO marketing agency in Ohio with stellar eCommerce SEO services, then Shift Refresh is perfect for you. 

Shift Refresh is an SEO consulting Cleveland-based agency that enables businesses to smash their competition and emerge as a leader in their respective industries with the help of our eCommerce SEO services. We are ready to help your business not only grow but thrive. To learn more, call us at 1-888-467-3249 or Contact us today!