Common mistakes small businesses make with SEO

Being an entrepreneur is a risky endeavor, and risks are inevitable in business. Running a business is a bumpy ride where one has to be cautious of every step taken forward and every decision made. The first step to building a successful business is ensuring a strong digital presence and visibility, which can be achieved with SEO strategies. For small-sized businesses, branding and visibility are crucial in reinstating their value in the competitive landscape. Mistakes in businesses are common, and every business is in a continuous process of identifying, learning, and rectifying mistakes. However, these mistakes can be expensive for small businesses owing to their limited funds and resources. In optimizing websites, small businesses should be aware of the common mistakes that could affect their brand growth and online presence. 

SEO is all about driving traffic to the website, generating leads, ranking higher in search engines, and enhancing visibility. It is a long and meticulous process wherein businesses should be wary of mistakes that could happen anytime. Small businesses need clever SEO strategies to prove their efficiency and promote their business. To achieve the same, business owners must be well-informed about SEO strategies and possible mistakes in the process. Some of the missteps small businesses make when using SEO are discussed below.

Duplication: The originality of content adds to the credibility of your website. Duplicate content on your website may be unintentional, but plagiarism could affect your reputation and ranking. For websites with multiple pages, the chances of content getting similar content are high. A website with duplicate copies, titles, and meta descriptions may be viewed as unoriginal and of no value. Hence, it is crucial to steer clear of such mistakes by adding new and unique content and doing quality assessments and double-checks before publishing it.

Not having a plan: For your website to drive traffic and gain traction, essential to draft an SEO strategy and go by the plan. Ignoring this could be one of the worst mistakes you would make. With a clear idea of SEO strategies applicable to your business and where to begin, you will be able to set your business goals, identify your target audience, determine your keywords and analyze the SEO strategies of your competitors. It is also important not to set unrealistic goals and ignore the challenges involved.

Keyword Stuffing: Most businesses do the mistake of overusing high-traffic keywords in the content, headings, and meta descriptions by stuffing them in irrelevant places, adding to redundancy and unnaturalness. This mistake happens when the content is created with the intention of improving the search score rather than about the product or service or what the customer wants. Ideally, the keywords used in website content should fit in naturally. 

Not building a mobile-friendly website: Another common SEO mistake by businesses is ignoring the mobile traffic and its potential for conversions. Around 58% of traffic to a website is from mobile devices, indicating the number of mobile users over desktop users. Given the higher mobile traffic, building a responsive and high-performing website optimized for mobile devices boosts your search ranking and user experience.

Ignoring long-tail keywords: Businesses tend to use high-traffic short-tail keywords over long-tail keywords. This ignorance can be attributed to the misconception that high-volume short keywords bring large traffic. In reality, short-tail keywords (e.g., pizza) are vague, general, and shorter. Long-tail keywords (e.g., pizza delivery Seattle) are more specific, clearer, and longer, which is vital for driving traffic to small businesses. 

Ignoring social SEO: Social media channels hold the potential to boost search rankings, and it is not a wise idea to ignore their capability. For small businesses, being active on social media adds much to their branding and visibility. SEO strategies like adding social media snippets to posts and blogs, sharing website content across social platforms, filling up the ‘About’ section on social media pages, and listing business in Google Business Profile better improve visibility in local searches. 

Assuming text is content: SEO is not all about blogs but about engagement. Businesses often forget to keep their visitors engaged. Besides blogs, a website should have interactive elements like images, audio, videos, CTAs, quizzes, and checkboxes that add to its appeal and improve user interaction.

Businesses commit these mistakes intentionally or not, assuming SEO is free and cheap. They neglect SEO’s potential as a high ROI channel that involves a great deal of time and resources. Though generating traffic is the direct benefit of SEO, it is also a powerful way to drive conversions. Small businesses shouldn’t expect instant results and need to realize that it is a long process: optimizing pages, creating routine content, and developing an effective SEO strategy, and mistakes may not be affordable. Chrysalis Digital, a digital agency based in Kuwait, has a proven reputation for providing SEO services with effective strategies and steering clear of any mistakes discussed before. Their SEO experts take care of your website ranking and make it capable of gaining traction.