The Most Common SEO Mistakes For Small Businesses To Avoid

It is often said that “the best way to learn is by doing”, and that may well be true in some instances. However, when it comes to your SEO, the best way to learn is to learn from everyone else’s mistakes and implement the best practices from the get go.

Read on to discover the common mistakes that are being made in SEO, and how to avoid them for your business…

What are the most common SEO mistakes for small businesses?

As a small business owner, working on your SEO, means competing with other larger businesses in your industry with fewer resources at your disposal. As such, you gotta get smart about your approach.

With a comprehensive strategy from the right digital marketing agency or in-house team, small businesses can and do experience tremendous success – as long as they can avoid these common mistakes, that is…

1. Not having a plan

It really can’t be said enough; if you don’t have a plan going in, not only will you languish around wasting time and money, but it will be tougher to measure your successes as well. You need to know exactly what it is that you hope to achieve from your SEO, how you are going to go about it, and how you will measure your success along the way.

If you are unsure where to begin, you can utilise the expertise of a digital marketing agency to help you out. Just remember, you should be focusing on your business and your goals, and how you can appear more visible to your target market.

2. Failing to properly invest

SEO takes time and money to execute properly. If you aren’t interested in investing in an SEO agency to do it for you, you need to hire in-house talent and put together a capable team of your own. More importantly, SEO can take months to take off, which means you need to afford the appropriate amount of time to measure your successes and dial-in your approach.

In digital marketing, the difference between stagnation and growth often lies in the expertise guiding your strategy. This is where partnering with a knowledge-equipped SEO agency comes into play. Such an agency brings a depth of understanding about current SEO best practices and a global perspective on navigating the complexities of search engine algorithms to your advantage. With a world-class SEO agency, small businesses gain access to tools, techniques, and insights that level the playing field against larger competitors, ensuring that every dollar invested counts and multiplies in the form of enhanced online visibility and engagement.

3. Failing to properly research keywords

Remember how we talked about competing with big business? Well, with proper keyword research you can identify less competitive long-tail keywords and effectively rank for some highly relevant search terms.

Keyword research is arguably one of the most important aspects of SEO because if you don’t have a balanced selection of short and long-tail keywords that are relevant to your products and services – and indeed what your perfect customers are searching for – you’ll essentially be firing at a moving target with a blindfold on.

4. Failing to improve your website

It’s all well and good to have the perfect keywords that would have customers flocking to your site if your site is not good enough to convert them into paying customers. Page speed is an important part of SEO, as is the overall customer experience. Almost three in four people would leave your page if it takes too long to load, and Google doesn’t like it either. Fail to check your page speed at your peril.

It’s all about delivering an excellent on-page experience and there are dozens of considerations you need to perfect if you wish to achieve the best results.

5. Failing to track your progress, identify your successes, and dial in your messaging

SEO isn’t a ‘one-off’ thing. If you want genuine long-term success you need to be forever monitoring your progress while identifying what is working and what is not. This is key to dialling in your messaging and ultimately making the necessary adjustments to outshine the competition.

Final thoughts

Let’s have a quick recap:

• Plan thoroughly.
• Be realistic and invest the appropriate amount of time and resources.
• Conduct proper keyword research.
• Bolster your website with both technical and onsite SEO.
• Always track your progress and identify what is working for you and what is not.

Read more: 5 Signs Your SEO Strategy Isn’t Working (And What To Do About It)