Scary Yet Common SEO Mistakes You Can Avoid

If your website isn’t properly optimized for search, you may inadvertently be scaring off potential patients. If you are able to avoid common SEO mistakes like keyword stuffing, duplicate content, and not optimizing for mobile, you’ll have more treats and fewer tricks to look forward to. 

Scary Yet Common SEO Mistakes to Avoid

Keyword Stuffing

When it comes to using keywords, the less-is-more approach is quite prescient. While it’s important to use relevant keywords in your content, using keywords unnaturally and using them too often can do more harm than good. Whether you’re using long-tail or short-tail keywords, try to work them into the first 150 or so words of your content—ideally into the introductory paragraph, which should summarize your topic for readers. It’s also a good idea to incorporate keyword phrases into conclusions as those paragraphs tend to summarize the content and contain business-relevant calls to action. On the whole, keywords should make up no more than 3% of your content and only be used when they naturally fit into the copy. 

Low-Quality Content

High-quality content will connect with your audience in some meaningful way, whether it’s explaining the benefits of a service or product your business offers or answering a specific question they have about a condition they’re dealing with. Having content on your website is important, but if it exists as a means to satisfy keywords more so than user interest, it won’t help you all that much in the long run. Try to avoid publishing content that’s vague, derivative, inaccurate, difficult to read, and poorly written. Well-written and informative content helps establish Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (or E-E-A-T), which can help your site rank higher over time. Another acronym to consider: YMYL, or Your Money or Your Life. If you’re running a business with medical implications, it’s important that your audience can trust you with either or both, and low-quality content can make discerning customers more skeptical. 

Duplicate Content

Duplicate content, much as it sounds, means having pages with the same repeated copy. Ideally, each page on your website should have fresh, unique content. This serves to help with Google rankings while also allowing you to naturally rank for more keyword phrases as users find your website. If your website features duplicate content, you might rank lower and have issues with indexing. An SEO site audit can help identify duplicate content across your sitemap. 

Not Optimizing for Mobile

It shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that a large percentage of internet users visit sites on their smartphones. So if your website isn’t optimized with the mobile user experience in mind, you might be losing out on business without even knowing it. Responsive web design should be flexible and scalable with desktop, mobile, tablets, and other devices in mind. Part of this includes ensuring that images load quickly, that your UX can easily be engaged on all screen sizes, and that there’s a clear path from the landing page to the sign-up page. Test your web design before launch to ensure that everything works to desired effect on a smartphone—if it doesn’t, you may be sacrificing a percentage of your audience.

Page One Digital Makes SEO Less Scary

Optimizing your website for search engines can feel scary, especially if you’re figuring out how AI engines fit into the equation. And that’s why it’s so beneficial to work with a top-notch agency like Page One Digital. We can audit your website with SEO in mind, make meaningful recommendations for improvement, and act in ways that can help you get the results you’re looking for. Contact us today for a free evaluation, and let’s work together to put the SEO scaries to rest.