8 Important On-page SEO Mistakes To Avoid as a Digital Marketer

Optimizing your blog or website for search engines is an important part of digital marketing. This makes every digital marketer or owner of blogs be more serious about it, and you will hardly see any serious marketer that cares less about SEO (Search Engine Optimization). As a digital marketer or owner of a blog, in your quest for SEO, there are many On-page SEO mistakes you should be avoiding just to be on the right track.

Having knowledge of what SEO is all about is not just enough. The SEO game is dynamic and it does experience constant change, so you should always change your strategies or tactics to blend with the latest SEO trends. It amazes me this day when I see bloggers and online marketers buying backlinks and stuffing a very short blog post of theirs with keywords. This is an example of On-page SEO mistakes people are still adopting today.

We are in 2017 bro! A lot of Google Algorithm have changed too from what it was in the early 2000s

We are in a period where content marketing and SEO works together hand-in-hand. No serious online marketer should be talking about black hat techniques anymore, but it is unfortunate that many still do. These are SEO mistakes that could ruin your entire content marketing strategy.

Let us now look at some SEO mistakes and some clear explanations why you should not delve into them.

8 On-page SEO Mistakes You Should Avoid From Now On

First of all, let me make some facts clear enough. We all know the main purpose of SEO, which is to gain a reputable amount of organic traffic from search engines, right? Though some of the techniques listed below might have worked for you in the past, be rest assured that if you are still following any one of these, your blog or website might be heading down the drain.

1. Writing for search engines and not humans

You might think that writing an article and keeping Google in mind will actually make it feel flattered, but you are quite wrong because it is just the opposite. If you are conversant with each Google algorithm update, you will notice that it proves over and over again that only websites or blogs that offer relevant and valuable content can rank high today on SERP (Search Engine Rank Pages).

What is the meaning of this fact?

This actually means that before planning to write a post, you should ask yourself this simple question, “What does my audience/reader want to read about this time? Is only when you arrive at an answer you should start conducting keyword researches and planning on how to optimize your content.

If you readers does not want to read about your topic, then Google will not boost its rank. It just as simple as ABC.

2. Stuffing you articles with keywords

It is quite amazing that many article writers of today still have no idea of what “keyword density” is all about. In order words, they still stuff their contents with keywords. Most of their articles have keyword densities of more than 3% and some go as high as 5%. These are big On-page SEO mistakes you should avoid.

Instead of stuffing your content with keywords, try to use synonyms. For example, if you are writing about SEO, you should try to include words like rankings, page indexing, copywriting, SERP, Google crawlers, etc, and you should try to include them in a natural way. Search engine algorithms will pick up the words in a natural way and understand what the page is all about. You do not have to repeat the same keyword over and over again.

Must read: LSI keywords And Their Importance In SEO

3. Not checking for broken links

If you are my kind of person that does a lot of interlinking or constant design and changes to your blog or website, you are bound to have broken links certain point in time. Additionally, some of the sites you linked to so many years ago may no longer be in existence or they might have removed that particular page. Google can actually penalize your site severely because of an issue such as this.

What measures can you take to avert this?

Periodically, you should be checking for broken links on your site pages. Check older articles and the outbound links they contain, if the pages are no longer in existence, then you should remove the link.

4. Not making use of internal linking

Internal linking is the act of linking to one or more of your old blog posts. Whenever you interlink, you send a signal to Google that the article is still relevant plus you can generate more traffic to the older article(s).

Whenever you interlink, you should make sure that the anchor text is relevant, ideally, it should be the exact word you want the article to rank for.

Also read: Tips for a successful blog in 2017 And Beyond

5. Not linking out to other sites

I know this might be quite controversial because you might be asking yourself why you should be linking to someone else’s site and help them improve their rankings for free? Well, the answer is simple, linking out to relevant sites benefits your site too.

Google loves sites that contain relevant information, and to have valuable information on your page, you need sources too. If you are afraid of linking out to relevant sources, then it is an On-page SEO mistake you should avoid.

Do not be afraid to link to reliable and relevant blogs or sites that share the same niche with you. I am not suggesting you link out to your competitor’s page, but rather you should link out to reports, surveys, or opinion pieces of related niches. There are other SEO essentials for every blog post.

6. Not having a mobile-friendly website

If your website is not mobile-friendly, then you are surely losing a lot on SERP. For sure your site might be appearing on desktop searches, but it will be quite difficult to achieve this on mobile searches.

If you think this is not really worth it, then you should have a second thought. Records have it that there are more mobile internet users than desktop users. If your blog or website is not mobile-friendly, you are not just losing your rankings but also potential users. Simply avoid these On-page SEO mistakes.

Also read: List Of Countries With The Fastest Mobile Internet Speed

7. Not making use of the right keywords

Come to think of it, making use of short keywords will hardly make your SEO pursuit successful. Not only is it very difficult to get your page optimized for them, but they are not really useful.

For example, if you are running a digital marketing agency, it is not worth it to try to rank for the keyword “digital marketing”. This is because websites like Wikipedia should be on the number one spot for this keyword, and not my agency.

On the other hand, you need to go for more targeted long-tail keywords like “digital marketing agency in Lagos” or “best digital marketing specialist in Lagos”. These examples are perfect because they are keywords potential clients can search for.

8. Not making use of image tags

I am very sure you are aware that blog posts without at least an image are of great disadvantage. Okay let’s agree you make use of mages in them all, but do you take time to add image tags on all the images?

If your answer is no, then you should try as much as possible to avoid these On-page SEO mistakes. Google is very fond of them, so you should always use them. They prove that the entire content (text and images) is relevant for the keywords you are trying to rank for.

Avoid these 8 important On-page SEO mistakes listed above as from 2017 and beyond.

You will notice it is achievable and actually easier than you think, since i made the explanations a little bit simple.

As long as you write naturally, having your readers in mind, you will see it is easy to avoid the most important On-page SEO mistakes. Do you have any questions or confused in some aspect? Kindly ask your questions by using the comment box below. Also before you leave, use the social share icons to share this post with your friends on various social media.