Hi and welcome to our latest video. My name’s Martin and I’m the founder of Blue Thirst, a digital marketing agency.

Today we want to address the common SEO mistakes people make. SEO can be very technical, and it’s one of those things that lots of people try but often get wrong. We wanted to share with you the common mistakes you should be aware of, so that you can avoid them.

Not Setting Clear Goals

First, not setting clear goals.

Many people start working on their SEO or hire an SEO agency without a clear idea of what they want. They just want more people coming to their site and they think this will increase sales. But that’s not always the case, more traffic doesn’t necessarily mean it’s good quality traffic.

To make sure your SEO results really meet your expectations, you need to get clearer on what you want. Do you want better quality traffic, do you want increased sales or more leads?

Now aiming for the above may produce a reduction in traffic to your site. However, if the traffic is better quality, it should be increasing your sales. Which is far better than increasing your traffic but getting no return. When you’re starting your SEO or approaching an SEO, really try to drill down into the results you want. This way, everyone involved knows what they’re aiming for and can adjust their strategy as required.

Overlooking Mobile Traffic

The next mistake is overlooking mobile traffic.

A part of SEO that some people forget, is page speeds and mobile friendliness. These are two of the biggest factors which could cause a user to bounce from your site.

With more than 50% of traffic coming from mobile devices, it’s not traffic you can afford to lose. The easiest way to ensure you aren’t losing this traffic is to make sure your website is responsive. You also need to make sure it loads within 3 seconds.

If you don’t do these things, you will be at risk of having a high bounce rate which isn’t good for ranking.

nother area of SEO where people make mistakes is link building. This involves links to and from your site, and it can indicate to Google the authority of your site. But building links can be one of the hardest areas of SEO to improve. It requires lots of good content and relationships with owners of reliable sites.

You need a healthy number of links from reputable sites. If you have lots of links from bad sites, this is going to be worse for your search ranking.

The mistake people make is buying backlinks. Sites that sell backlinks are often very well known to Google, which automatically devalues any links on them. It will also indicate to Google that you’re trying to play their system, which could lead to penalties for shady behaviour and damage to your ranking.

Ranking Multiple Pages for the Same Keyword

The main area people think of when they think SEO, is keywords. This seems to be the most well-known SEO technique, yet people still make mistakes.

It’s essential to have a list of keywords that you want your site to rank for. However, creating lots and lots of pages to rank for the same keyword isn’t going to help. Instead, you’ll just be competing with yourself for search ranking positions.

You want to focus on having pages that rank very well for individual specific keywords. Not just having lots of pages that are trying to rank for generic keywords.

Poor Site Navigation

As well as your pages, linking and search results. Your site structure can also impact SEO.

Google needs to be able to see clear paths around your site. Surprisingly, people don’t seem to consider this when developing websites. You need to have a good navigation structure on your site. Good navigation tells Google that you provide users with a good browsing experience. If they asses that your site navigation is poor, they will decrease your rankings because they don’t want to provide users with a poor experience.

Make sure that your navigation makes sense and that users can easily access your most important pages.

Not Reviewing Your Site Regularly

Another major mistake that people make with SEO is not reviewing their site regularly. Over time it’s easy for errors to crop up such as 404 errors, missing meta descriptions or images that are too large.

It’s important to crawl your site regularly to stay on top of these issues. While most are not critical errors, it’s still best practice to keep your site in the best shape possible.

You can use a tool such as Screaming Frog to review your website and make updates as necessary.

Not Creating Link Worthy Content

The final mistake we’re covering today, is not creating link worthy content.

To be successfully with link building and with keyword ranking. You need to be writing content that people would share. If you’re just writing for the sake of keywords and to have content, you’re likely not writing things that people would actually want to share with their friends.

When writing new content, ask yourself “would I actively share this with people in my field of people I know?”. If the answer’s no, then that content may not benefit your site as much as you thought it would.

Avoid These Mistakes

Now that you know the common mistakes, you should know how to avoid them. SEO is a very big area of digital marketing, so it’s always ideal to enlist the help of a professional.

If you can’t afford to enlist a professional, then make note of the mistakes we’ve mentioned. And try to do your research before trying new SEO techniques.