SEO is one of the most talked about marketing strategies. Yet, so many people get it wrong.
To help, here is a list of the most common and painful search engine optimization (aka ‘SEO') mistakes people make trying to get leads from Google, Bing and Yahoo.
#1. No proper keyword research.
Thorough keyword research must be done in order to target the best keywords when it comes to driving the targeted traffic to your website. When little or no keyword research is performed, it’s a shot in the dark – you’re literally throwing mud against the wall.
#2. No on-page search engine optimization strategy.
If you do not point your pages in the right direction, you will confuse the search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo) and their users as far as what your business is all about and what it has to offer.
#3. Having duplicate content on your website.
If you're site is full of duplicate content… BEWARE. I continue to see over and over websites that have the same exact service pages that are just targeting different cities. This type of activity does not give Google the vibe that you're trying to provide a great user-experience to your website visitors. Chances are Google will also penalize your site for this too if it hasn’t already.
#4. Not thinking about overall user experience of your website.
Remember, you need to make sure that you provide a great end-user experience on your website, so much so that your website visitors stay on your site as long as possible. You want them to share your website content with other people in their network. You want to track how visitors find your site, how long they stay on your website, how many pages they view during each session, etc. and then make the necessary adjustments in order to improve those metrics and the overall user experience of your site.
#5. Inconsistent content creation, both on-page and off-page.
You want to make sure that you’re business is consistently creating and sharing high-quality content on and off of your website through blog posts, videos, slideshow presentations, press releases, podcasts, and more to prove that your business is actively participating in the community online.
#6. Buying shady backlinks is a deadly, deadly SEO sin.
Don’t do it, this is called black hat. If you do buy backlinks, there’s a strong possibility Google will catch you and sandbox your website. You don’t want to jeopardize the potential value of your website just by making one bad decision, do you? That means buying 10,000 links in a cheap backlinking package is probably not a smart move. This is exactly how you’re going to get on Google’s bad side.
#7. Over-optimization of your website.
There’s a term called “over-optimization.” If you’re stuffing each one of your website pages and blog posts with your target keyword 50 times on each page, Google does not like that and will most likely penalize you by not promoting your content for very long, if at all. You want to make sure that you keep things looking “natural.” Natural is the key word here again when it comes to staying in Google’s good graces and having them look at your business as a legitimate resource online in your industry.
#8. Inconsistent SEO activity.
A lot of businesses think that they can do SEO for 6 months, get their positioning, and then stop. This is a big mistake that could eventually cause you to lose your positioning and, therefore, a lot of money in possible business revenue and profits in the future because you’re inconsistently marketing your site online.
You might ask: “Why would my rankings slip?”
Your rankings, visibility and positioning would slip on Google.com because Google doesn’t think that a business website that inconsistent activity is a 100%, legitimate company. If Google has that perception of your company, that’s not a good place to be. All the while, your competition is out there working hard to win Google over, and your inactivity will cause your website rankings to start to slip more and more as time goes on. And if you're rankings are slipping, that means less phone calls going to you and more phone calls going to your competition. Not a good place to be.
If you're ready to get a proven SEO strategy that will help your business gain more leads from the internet, then get a No BS marketing strategy call on the calendar now so you can figure out how to turn your SEO lead generation efforts around. We look forward to hearing from you soon.
Brian Horwitz is a co-founder of Online Visibility Pros, a certified digital marketing firm that specializes in online lead generation for home services businesses, trade contractors, construction companies and a handful of a few other select niche markets. OVP gives these businesses the power to leverage the Internet to generate a steady flow of targeted online leads. 
