Do you know what Search Engine Optimization is?
Yes…
But, how much you know about it?
Do you think that SEO is just putting some keywords in your content and hitting the publish button?
The answer is a big NO!
SEO is to optimize your website or blog, for better visibility in search engines. It is done for every aspect of your blog.
But, due to lack of knowledge of Search engine optimization, majority of the newbie bloggers make huge mistakes with this important part of ranking a website.
At last their blog can’t get the deserving position in search engines despite having killer content.
This thing led them to disappointment and finally they QUIT blogging.
But, I have good news for all those masterminds who want to prove them through blogging. Stop quitting guys, because there is nothing impossible in this world if you want to do it and have determination.
Today I am going to tell you 6 most common SEO mistakes most of the beginners make with their blogs which prevents them from ranking on the position they deserve.
You can rank your blog’s content better if you take care and avoid these 6 mistakes. Believe me you can improve your websites traffic and rankings up to 50% easily by avoiding such small mistakes
- Too Long Titles:
The first mistake I’ve noticed mostly beginner bloggers make is writing lengthy titles for their blog posts. Let me tell you that Google and other search engines love the blog posts with title length below 70 characters (not words).
If your blog post’s title consists on more than 70 characters, it will only be shown till 70 characters and the rest will be hidden. Though, Google supports titles up to 70 characters, but I’d suggest to keep it within 60.
If you exceed the 70 characters limit then can put a bad impact on your website’s SEO score and along with that your CTR in SERP’s will be dramatically decreased.
Having a low CTR in SERP’s means low click rates even your blog is ranking higher in search results.
- Not doing Keyword Research Properly:
No matter about what you are writing. If you don’t research the keyword first, you can’t rank for it. Because you don’t know who your competitors are and how much effort you have to make in order to stand above them in search results.
By doing keyword research you can find the variation of the keyword for which you have to rank and you can also get an idea about the competition for that specific keyword. This can give you an idea of “How much effort is required to rank for this specific keyword?”
I am sorry because I can’t discuss Keyword Research in-depth because this blog post is not dedicated to keyword research topic. However, you can read our complete keyword research tutorial in Urdu/Hindi.
- Not focusing on Keyword Density:
This sounds weird?
You don’t know what keyword density actually is? if so then see my complete tutorial on keyword density.
The number of times a specific target keyword appears in a blog post divided by the total number of words of that post is called keyword density of that specific keyword.
Most of the bloggers (especially from India & Pakistan) ignore it and make mistakes with keyword density part. Sometimes they stuff the content with keywords and produce keyword stuffed content and some of them don’t even use their target keyword a single time.
You have to deal with keyword density sensitively. You have to make sure that the keyword density of your target keyword should be in the moderate range (2%-4%) and your content also contain some variations of that keyword.
This will ensure that Google can understand for which keyword you have written that content and where to rank it for that specific keyword.
- Underestimating the Power of Meta Description:
Meta description is an important Meta tag after the title and plays a vital role in ranking of a blog. Meta keywords tag is now officially dead and useless and it’s not useful now at all. Meta description actually defines the search engine, what your content is actually about.
This is the description shown below your blog post’s title in search results.
Mostly beginners ignore it and just stuff this part with lots of keywords. To ensure maximum ranking in search engine, your meta-description should be of correct length and correctly optimized.
According to some great SEO gurus in the blogosphere, your meta-description should not be more than 155 characters long in length and it must contain your targeted keyword but in a sentence manner.
Don’t put only keywords in you meta-description, it’s better to put them in a sentence style to get better ranking and to boost the CTR in SERP’s.
- Images without ALT Tag:
Near to me, this is the BIGGEST mistake made by 97% of newbie bloggers and if you are also making this mistake you are losing half of your traffic.
Using images in your blog posts can be good for readers. But how a search engine can understand what you have used in image format? The answer is ALT tags. Search engine’s crawler crawl your blog post and scan through all of your content, but unfortunately it can’t scan the images. This is the step where the Alt tags do their job and let crawler know “What the image is about?”.
So, if you want to get that 50% of traffic which can be driven from Google Image search, you have to use Alt tags with the images in your blog posts. You can describe the image in the alt tag, so the crawler can understand and rank it according to the description.
- Ignoring Anchor Texts:
Anchor texts are important for your visitors and also for search engines. If you are not focusing much on anchor texts you are just ruining your website’s ranking by your own.
A large number of bloggers (mostly beginners) use anchor texts like “click here” “link” “this article” and some other similar typical texts.
Search engines don’t like this type of anchor texts and they can throw your blog to the page 2 if you are using this type of anchor texts for all your internal links.
Your anchor text you use for a link to your blog should be keyword enrich. This will also looks pretty to the visitors and also loved by search engines. I am not asking you to stuff your anchor texts with keywords. Just try to make them pretty and use one keyword which is related to the blog post to which it was pointing. This can make it look much better and also help search engines to scroll through your content better.
Bottom Line:
If you are making any of these above listed mistakes, just don’t be sad. No one is an expert by birth, everybody learn from mistakes. No matter if you made any of these mistakes in the past, just correct them and avoid them now. You can get your rankings back or can improve them once the crawler re-crawl your blog and you will start getting your share of traffic.
Let me ask you a simple question before you move to the next blog post:
“Have you ever made a mistake in your blogging journey?”
If yes, then why you are afraid to tell it to the world, just let people know it and advise them to avoid it in the future.
At the last, if you liked this article and it helped you with your blog just appreciate my content by sharing it on Google, Facebook, Twitter or elsewhere you want.
Thanks for reading guys, have a happy blogging journey! 🙂