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Download our Start-up Guide5 SEO ‘Search Engine Optimisation’ mistakes to avoid.
Building your own website is a cheap way to get your business online quickly. But building a website is not just all about the aesthetics you can see in the front end. There are many factors that determine how easily your website can be found through a search engine. In this article, we go through 5 of the most common SEO mistakes people make.
The Most Common SEO Mistake.
The most common SEO mistake people make is not thinking of an SEO strategy! Putting in place a ‘Search Engine Optimisation’ (SEO) strategy when planning the development of your new website will always benefit you in the long run.
It is easier and less technical to put down your SEO strategy before launching your site. Getting your headings and permalinks in place before going LIVE will reduce the chances of needing to set-up a whole range of redirects and ranking issues if you need to change them further down the line.
Heading Tags, Slugs and Permalinks.
What are they and what is their role? They all form part of a system that determines how your page and the content on the page is read, then placed in Google search results.
Heading Tags
Heading tags such as H1 and H2 are used to structure the layout of content on a web page. This allows Google to understand the hierarchy. Keep in mind that using the wrong heading tag will decrease your overall page score.
The golden rule is to only have one ‘H1’ heading, with subheadings being ‘H2’ and your copy in ‘Paragraph’. Do not use the heading function as a way to increase the size of your font.
Slugs
Slugs are used to identify a particular page within a permalink. This is the text that appears in a URL after the main domain name. This could be as easy as calling a new page Blog – intellistart.co.uk/blog. By keeping the URL short and concise it helps Google identify what your page is about.
Permalinks
Permalinks are the full URL inclusive of the ‘slug’. You should keep them as short as possible but still contain your keywords and explain what your page is about.
It is important to choose your permalinks well and decide before launching your website what your page permalinks might look like and whether you will choose a https://www.intellistart.co.uk prefix or a https://intellistart.co.uk.
You may prefer to not have the ‘www’ prefix and you should really decide this before launching your site. Changing your permalinks can be detrimental to the ranking of pages and your overall site. Always seek an experienced web developer before attempting this.
How Fast Should A Good Website Be?
A good website loading speed will encourage a positive perception to new visitors. If your website takes too much time to load – people will bounce. Google will recognise this and reduce the number of users able to see your website in search results.
This is one of the most critical factors in not only obtaining a good ranking – but can also determine if a customer will become a bounce rate statistic, or a customer.
The most common issues that we find with clients is that they are using improperly sized/ unoptimised images. They are either too large, thus making the page take ages to load, or they are not sized correctly forcing the page to resize them for mobile or tablet, etc.
A simple fix for this on WordPress would be to download the Short Pixel plugin to optimise the images. We also like to use TinyPng to Compress images before uploading.
Placing Too Little Content On A Web Page?
You have probably heard “content is king”. The more you have on a page, the easier it will be for Google to rank it. However, do not just fill the pages with content for the sake of it.
You do not necessarily need to write amazing content for your pages as SEO crawlers cannot always detect whether it’s a “good” or a “bad” copy, but your audience and prospective customers will be able to tell.
Do not Copy Content!
It could be tempting to just copy a bunch of blog posts and use them for filler content for your site. This is very bad for your rankings and google can recognise that it has been plagiarised.
You can hire freelancers of Fiverr or Upwork to write captivating blog posts that not only give your readers value, but also improve your SEO score in the process.
A good tip is to check out competitors and what their content is like on their page. Aim for 15% more content on yours in terms of word count.
How Long Do SEO Changes Take To Work?
Just like your website is always evolving – your SEO does too. This is why many people get bogged down when they implement all the changes the SEO guru tells them, but they do not wake up to 1000 sales.
Google cannot immediately drop everything it’s doing and throw your site to the top of its search results from your optimisations.
It is a very volatile search engine so you may even notice a drop. If you do – do not panic – be cool. It simply detects your new SEO tweaks. Just wait a week or two to let the dust settle and see if your optimisations improved your score. If not – there is further work to do.
Be patient and work on crafting your offer/ product WHILST doing SEO in the background. It is not a magic bullet that will fix everything.
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Tel- 0161 877 4888
Email: hello@intellistart.co.uk
