Top 3 On Page SEO Mistakes to Avoid

As a rabid student of web design, online marketing and SEO (over two years now), I have seen many of the same SEO mistakes being made time and time again that adversely affects a web site or blog’s traffic and overall web visibility.  Being visible means you’re content is getting indexed by the search engines on the first page (no further out than the second page), and that means more traffic.  More traffic can mean conversion – turning that traffic into paying customers on your blog or site.  So please pay attention to some of the top SEO mistakes most site authors make to maximize the Search Engine Amore.

So what are these Top 3 SEO Mistakes You Should Be Avoiding to Bring More Traffic to your Web Store or Small Business?

The following tips relate to “on page SEO” all of the factors on your site that contribute to the ease of the search engine bots crawling your content and seeing the relevancy of the keywords you use to the content you have authored.

SEO Mistake #1:  Crafting an SEO Rich URL for you Blog Post or Web page

Having your mail keywords in your url (link) to your blog post or website page is weighed heavily in SEO.

Most site owners are unaware of this and have plenty of urls with funky characters, letters and random words that do not help with your SEO.  If you’re using WordPress a quick fix for this would be to change your “permalink” settings to mirror the name of your blog post.  Now this means selecting a juicy title for your blog post (See Crafting Blog Titles that Get Clicks) as well as using a plugin that gets rid of the “seo slug words” i.e. “and, the, but.”

When you can condense your permalink/url/link to contain your keywords, this will be more attractive to the search engines.  Now remember, you have to deliver value and unique content, as well as implement other on page SEO strategies as outlined in my blog post about the Sen SEO plugin.

My recommendation is to learn SEO yourself, have an employee or partner learn it, or outsource it to a reliable SEO in order for you to get that visibility your small business deserves.

SEO Mistake #2:  No use of Header 1-6 (<h1>-<h6>) Tags

Header tags (especially h1, h2, h3, h4) are important from an SEO standpoint. When the web spiders crawl websites to determine their relevancy they search the title, description, and header tags as well as content to see if the keyword phrases are located where they ought to be.  Not only will using header tags help the search engines determine if the web site is relevant for Google searchers but using them in your web content will help your readers see that your content is relevant and will break up the boring long paragraphs of text that you visitor is only skimming through.  Make sure to use header tags where they seem appropriate as well.

SEO Mistake #3:  Using Your Business name, your Name as the only Keywords in Meta Data

Most web designers use the business name as their keywords.  A big mistake, by the way.  Your visitors will not know who you are unless you already have a super huge reputation and brand.  If you are just starting out and are looking to build your clientele with your web presence, then you must conduct keyword research and know what your visitors are searching for to find your content.  Only once you do this will you know what your audience truly wants…and then you can truly give it to them.

Bonus SEO Tip: No Search Bar that is Visible on the Blog or Web site (web usability mistake)

Your readers will not always find what they are looking for, and in the event they do not, you bet they will be looking for a search bar to type in a term or phrase to look for content on your blog or site.  A great plugin for WordPress bloggers is the Psychic Search Plugin, which will keep track of the search terms being searched for on your blog.  This not only will help you create better content, and give your prospects what they need, but it will make your site much more user friendly.  The more user-friendly your site is, the higher the chances are that you will keep that reader and that reader tell others about your awesome content.  They may even pay you for your products or services.

As a reminder, off page SEO is very important.  If you have other relevant and high profile sites linking to you, the search engines love that.  However, optimizing your content even if it’s just on page will help you rank in the search engines as well.   And as a matter of fact, you can really build your on page fast, as opposed to getting others to link to you fast.  Your authority is built over time, so do all you can on page to maximize visibility for your web site or blog and bring in the customers!

Related SEO Articles

Top SEO Mistakes to Avoid (blogsessive.com)

Kick Butt On Page SEO Training – Sen SEO Plugin (secretstowebsuccess.com)

About The Author

Dali Burgado, also known as "The Dali Blogger" teaches creative entrepreneurs how to carve a web presence that connects with their Inner Guru and their target audience. Her first online marketing love is SEO. She's an avid connector on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. When she's not coaching or teaching, she's tweaking sites for Search Engine Visibility, working on her PHP and Javascript coding skills, Singing Opera, or learning about gardening. Circle Dali on Google+