One of the best ways to get your website seen by a larger audience is to implement broad SEO campaigns (search engine optimization) that’ll help grow your brand at home and across the globe. If executed correctly, this marketing tactic will help get your business in front of tons more prospective clients, exactly the thing you need to keep your business growing.

On the other hand, if you ignore SEO, you could find yourself:

• Wasting time, money and effort on a fruitless cause
• Doing damage to your online ranking and your reputation
• Getting punished by the major search engines for trying to use blackhat SEO methods to improve your ranking

Always plan your SEO campaign with care and learn to do it the right way. Start by avoiding these costly SEO mistakes at all costs.

5 Major SEO Mistakes

The 5 mistakes listed below are in no particular order and you need to avoid them all if possible. Prioritize the techniques most viable for you and your company.

1. Assuming you know everything.

The SEO game is an ever-changing one. Major search engines, especially Google, change their algorithms almost every year. In their attempt to curb “cheaters,” they make tweaks to the way they rank website content, which can wreak havoc on even the most well-maintained SEO campaigns.

Unless you are an SEO expert yourself – or part of a business that deals directly with online digital marketing – you would be wise to hire people who have made tracking these changes their bread and butter. It’s better to pay someone to help increase your website’s ranking than suffer the consequences of being blacklisted.

2. Ignoring the Google keyword tool.

With Google being the biggest fish in the search engine tank, you have to make you’re using their keywords research tool, which requires only a Google account to use. This gives you a good idea of what keywords people are using to search for businesses and products like yours, including short and long-tailed keywords, for a broader perspective of your users’ state of mind.

Learn how to use the Google keywords planner tool and use it to optimize your pages around those keywords. You’re sure to see a healthy rise in your site’s rankings.

3. Not taking your social media accounts seriously.

If you think your SEO campaign should only focus on making your business website keyword-rich, you’re wrong. A free and very effective way of driving traffic to your website is to build up your social media platforms, too.

Apart from driving a healthy number of people to your sales pages, social media will directly affect the way the search engines rank your website. They presume that a popular website has authority and deserves a higher ranking.

4. Not using analytics tools to gauge your SEO performance.

While you may be putting everything into ensuring your website is continuously improving in rankings, you need to be sure you’re heading in the right direction. Before you start your SEO campaign, you’ll need to set up milestones. These dates will dictate your performance and give you a better idea of where you’re succeeding or failing.

There are tons of analytics tools that you can use to gauge your number of visitors, the number of followers you’ve gained and the amount of engagement you have created with your content. You’ll be happy to know that many of these tools are free to use and give clear insights into your overall performance.

5. Underestimating the local market.

You’d be surprised how many businesses ignore their local markets and turn their attention toward audiences beyond their reach. If you actually own a brick-and-mortar shop, this is especially tragic.

With a tweak to your SEO campaign, you can not only drive people to walk into your stores, but also cater to a niche market looking for loyalty to local businesses or audiences who simply want to support their local community. Create a website and optimize it so people from everywhere, but especially your neighbors, can be reached and engaged with.

It should always be relevant.

Don’t make these 5 SEO mistakes. You can push your website’s ranking higher by implementing them. But, it will all be temporary if, at the end of the day, the content on your page is of no relevance to your visitors. Apart from drawing in your visitors, you need to make sure they stay; and that will only happen if the content of your website makes them want to stay – either by capturing their attention, making them want to sign up for your mailing list or by converting them into paying customers.