5 Common Mistakes to Avoid in Your SEO Inbound Marketing Strategies
SEO is all about getting people to find your content when they ask Google to find something that relates to your products or services. Or in even more geeky terms, the primary goal of any SEO inbound marketing strategy is to have the search engines serve up your content in the top results of the SERPs. Yeah, it’s quite the jargon-filled mouthful.
Over the years, I’ve talked with a lot of clients who worked with other SEO and content marketers before finding us. And the stories they tell about how ineffective their efforts at SEO inbound marketing were are really disheartening.
Yet, I can completely relate to their experiences. When I first started playing with SEO I had no idea what I was doing either. And I want to make sure you can learn from my mistakes instead of making them yourself or letting someone you hire make them.
Here are the 5 most common mistakes people make with their SEO inbound marketing strategies:
Guessing what keyword to use
This is by far the mistake made most frequently by SEO novices. (And unfortunately, even by some who call themselves SEO inbound marketing experts.)
The problem with guessing what keyword to use is that you’re an expert in what you do – the products and services you offer. You talk about your expertise using different words than your clients do. (If you reread the first paragraph of this post, you’ll see examples of using jargon and plain language to describe the same thing.)
My clients are always surprised by the keywords their ideal clients actually use to Google their services and products. I was too when I first started doing keyword research. I thought I was a weird Googler instead of recognizing that I had expertise my ideal clients didn’t!Not sticking to the topic
When you select a keyword to use for your website or blog post or video or whatever it is that you’re creating, you want to make sure you stick to the topic for the entire creation process. Too many content creators start off with good intentions and want to provide a lot of value, but they wind up down a rabbit hole instead of giving their content consumers what they promised in the title or headline of the piece.
There are a few ways to address this. First, you can create an outline that helps you to stick to the topic. Second, you can do a final edit of your finished product at least 24 hours after it’s “done”. Finally, you can ask someone else to do a final edit for you.Hitting publish before you polish
Search engines are getting smarter all the time. They can tell if an article is written with AI. They can also tell if the content you’re publishing is high-quality or not. (BTW, high-quality content doesn’t mean it’s perfect in every way.)
High-quality content means you’ve done your due diligence to provide accurate and timely information for your ideal clients. When you take the time to polish your content, you’re more likely to gain traction with your SEO inbound marketing strategy.
No links
There are two types of links you want to include in the content on your website. The first is an external link. The second is an internal link.
When you’re trying to get SEO traction for a new website or channel, you must establish yourself as an expert. That’s where external links come in. An external link is a link to another more well-known website in the marketplace.
For example, if you’re opening a new chiropractic office, you may want to include a link to your local state chiropractic licensing board on your website. Or if you’re a massage therapist, you may want to include links to the Mayo Clinic’s blog post on the benefits of massage.
An internal link is a link to another page on your website. For example, here’s an internal link to a blog on my website about engaging the right visitors to your website.
(If you clicked that internal link, you’ll notice that it opened in another tab. I like to do that to help people find their way back to the original content.)
Ignoring user experience
Have you ever visited a website that was just ugly? What about one that was too difficult to read? And worst of all one that took too long to load?
These are all examples of bad user experiences. Successful SEO inbound marketing depends upon a good user experience because it’s another one of the things that Google considers.
If your website is ugly, outdated, or difficult to read, people aren’t going to stay very long on your site. This will drive down your average session duration which is one of the factors Google looks at to evaluate user experience. To resolve these issues, you may want to update your website’s template or hire a website designer.
If your website is slow to load, the problem could be with the hosting or with the site itself. Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool can give you a quick technical overview of where the problem may be.
There’s a lot to consider when implementing SEO inbound marketing strategies. So, it’s easy to make mistakes. By keeping in mind these most common issues, you’ll be better able to avoid them and improve your marketing results.
If you’re ready to learn more about how your SEO stacks up to your competition, here’s a free SEO competitor analysis.
