Our Top SEO Don’ts:
1. DON’T Keyword overload
Use relevant keywords, more isn’t necessarily a good thing. Overloading your metadata, meta titles, and page content with keywords and phrases will only have a negative impact on your ranking. Text should flow naturally and not appear forced (just to include more keywords); doing so will put users off and reduce your chances of conversion.
Top Tip: Use an appropriate amount of keywords relative to the volume of content on each page, and limit yourself to one primary keyword per page.
2. DON’T have slow page speeds
The reason for this is simple: website visitors are impatient. According to a recent study, 83% of users expect website pages to load in three seconds or less. Meaning that you need your website to be fast, there is no point in spending money on a fancy website if the pages don’t load quickly; users will simply go to a competitor’s site.
Top Tip: An easy way to improve site speed is by image compression, reducing the size of your CSS, HTML, and JavaScript files that are larger than 150 bytes.
3. DON’T neglect responsive design
In 2021 mobile devices accounted for nearly 57% of web page views worldwide, meaning your page needs to work just as well as it does on desktop as it does on mobile devices for it to rank highly on google.
4. DON’T ignore user-search intent
Google can tell if something is relevant and will rank it accordingly. For example, you came to this page looking for information on SEO, imagine the first thing you saw was a gloversure product/service offering, it would put you off, right? Exactly, it’s not user-search intent, and the results would be a higher bounce rate, lower engagement, and fewer organic search conversions.
Top Tip: Don’t deceive customers into visiting pages that are trying to sell them something. This will only have a negative impact on their perception of your brand.
5. DON’T ignore Key Performance Indicators
An absolute must. There’s no point doing any of the above if you fail to track KPIs. SEO is a trial and error process that must be taken slowly, some things work and others don’t. Using Google Analytics, you can track site metrics to see what is and isn’t working, enabling you to make any necessary changes.
Top Tip: Check them on a regular basis! At least once a month to check on any changes that have been made and to make further improvements.