Small Business SEO Mistakes To Avoid

Many small businesses are making SEO mistakes and are losing potential traffic. These mistakes can stem from inexperience, lack of knowledge or simply failing to realize the importance of SEO. Fortunately, there are ways to repair these mistakes and get the most from your website. These mistakes are preventable if you know what to look for.

Content over links is the biggest mistake marketers make with SEO

A mistake many marketers make is focusing on link building without addressing the content itself. While links are a powerful marketing tool, they are useless without good content. The best way to attract more links to your site is to create high-quality content that answers your audience’s questions. Then, promote that content through outreach. But make sure you don’t just send out generic emails; instead, involve your SEO team from the very beginning.

Old or outdated information

Old or outdated information can pose challenges for business SEO, especially with search intent, but it’s important to remember that Google values evergreen content. That’s why most marketers value content that is not only fresh but also stays relevant for a long time. But it’s not always easy to get rid of old information from your website – some of it may still be generating leads, and you may not even be ready to remove it. Fortunately, there are some ways to determine whether your old information is genuinely outdated and what you need to do to fix it.

Using the wrong keywords in the content

Using the wrong keywords in the content of your business website can hurt your ranking in the search engine results. When you optimize your website for the wrong keywords, you’re missing out on potential customers. Instead, you should focus on offering something people want. This way, you’ll avoid keyword cannibalization, which can actually hurt your ranking.

Duplicate content on your website

Duplicate content on your business website can be problematic for a number of reasons. Some cases are caused by intentional copying of content from other sites, while others are due to technical issues. For example, online retail stores often use product descriptions provided by the manufacturers. These websites can have thousands of products and in-house copywriters.

Regardless of the reasons, duplicate content on your business website can impact the search engine rankings and your website’s user experience. In addition, it is illegal to copy other people’s content. If you find yourself making this mistake, you should take the appropriate steps to remedy the situation.

Redirecting pages to the closest matching page

Redirecting pages to the closest matching page is one of the most common SEO mistakes, but it can also harm a website. This problem arises when two pages target the same keyword. In this case, you should look for opportunities to redirect a page to another. One way to find these opportunities is to paste your site into Ahrefs Site Explorer. From there, you can export the data to a CSV file or Google Sheet. Once you have all of the data, you can then eyeball the results sheet for redirection opportunities.