As a digital marketing agency, our business is helping people put their best foot forward on their SEO campaign. With that in mind, we have created a list of website errors we never want to see again. So, would every website owner please raise your right hand and repeat after me:
I will have a mobile friendly site.
Mobile friendly sites became a ranking factor in 2015, a very important one at that. If you do not have a site that plays well with mobile, Google will rank mobile friendly competitors above you. Remember that the growth of smartphones and tablets has sent mobile traffic skyrocketing and many potential customers can be lost because small screens do not display full websites well. If you are worried about your websites mobile compatibility, check out our responsive design page.
I will have unique meta descriptions for all of my pages
Meta descriptions provide the text below your link on a Google search and they are how people are introduced to your company. Yet every day SEO executives and web developers find sites with no meta descriptions and duplicate meta descriptions. At best this is annoying and at worst it can have a negative effect on your business. Think of your meta description as your websites handshake. It is often the first thing a customer or search engine sees.
I will have an active social media presence
Too many companies ignore social media or neglect it. Throwing together a Facebook page is not enough to take advantage of the benefits social media offers. Many people will use social media to contact businesses for information or to make a complaint. If you are not on top of your social media, these people will be ignored and may be angered. Social media is also a great place to share your success. Show pictures of your product or service, tell your companies story on social media. If nothing else, it is a way to promote interesting news in your sector. Plus many social networks are striving to help companies sell via their channels. If you would like to reach your customers on social media MRS can help.
I will provide alt tags for all of my pictures
This is a particular pet peeve for many SEO professionals. Google can not see the pictures on your site. It relies on alt tags to describe what is in the picture and uses that information to help determine the relevance of the page. If you are not using alt tags you are depriving yourself of one of the easiest SEO wins available.
I will eliminate all duplicate content
Google has always disliked duplicate content and their panda update made that very clear. While duplicate content on a website does not automatically mean an SEO penalty, it does make a search engines job harder. Duplicate content means that a company like Google is not sure which of your pages to rank for a specific keyword. That means you essentially have two pages competing with each other for attention. It also looks lazy if customers notice that you have the same content on two pages.
This oath is not particularly difficult to deal with and can even be carried out if you are not an SEO expert. We chose these SEO mistakes because they are such common problems and it hurts to see a website struggling in the rankings because of minor issues.
