The Top 10 Common SEO Mistakes and How to Fix Them for Free

Okay, so fair enough if you didn’t know SEO means Search Engine Optimisation, but I’m going to hazard a guess and say you do want to improve your SEO.

Why? Because good SEO for your site means you’ll rank higher up in organic search results, above your competitors, ideally on page one.

That way when potential customers type in the brands you offer, and the types of products and services you provide, there your site is right at the top of search results on page one.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how to not only get more traffic to your website, but attract higher-quality visitors who are more likely to spend money with you instead of your competitors.

Wait up – is this anything new? Aren't there a million articles on simplifying SEO already?

Oh hell yes there are. Plus this article IS long, I mean, really long.

That’s because I’m neither going to treat you like an idiot, nor presume you know what everything means, so I will take a bit more time than others do explaining what the heck everything means as well as what you can do to fix your site.

So my goal here is to get you way more organic traffic.

Hang on, though, what’s organic even mean? No, it’s nothing to do with food silly billy.

Organic traffic means visitors to your website who found and clicked on your website from search results, not by clicking an ad, not by typing in your website address and going direct to your site, not by following a link from somewhere else like an email, or clicking through from social media...

Organic traffic ‘should’ make up at least 50% and an average of 64% of your traffic. Crazy huh?

That average of 64% was from a 2015 study of over 310 million visitors by the way.

So if your website pretty much doesn’t appear in search results on page one of Google when you type in your products and services - ahem, that does NOT including where you rank for your own company name – then you could potentially at least double the number of visitors to your site, and therefore grow your leads and sales big-time.

But so what?

Don’t need more convincing? Then skip ahead to mistake number 1.

Here are all 10 mistakes by the way in case you want to jump to just what you want to know...

1. Having both www and non-www for your site
2. Missing SSL certificate
3. Nothing new to see here
4. No social share buttons
5. Shallow content
6. 'Invisible' images
7. Not mobile optimised
8. No optimised pages
9. Not knowing your actual keywords
10. Missing or non-optimised page titles and meta descriptions
11. No headings
12. Keywords missing from your body copy

Yes, I know that's more than 10. Consider it your 'free steak knives' ;)

In case you do need more convincing that you need to know and fix these SEO mistakes, picture this my imaginative, creative readers:

There you are now, in 3rd position on page one of search results. Feeling pretty chuffed right? Good job for making it on to page one and into the top 3! I’m not being sarcastic by the way. Genuinely well done. I get wrongly accused of sarcasm all the time, Anyway, this isn’t about me…

There’s SO much more traffic you’re missing out on!

A seemingly small shift from position 3 in search results to position 2 for example, could result in a huge increase in visitors.

How much more traffic could you get?

The 1st organic search result (see the screenshot below) averages over 50% of the click!

So if 5,000 people are looking for one of your products each month, say hello to getting 2,500 of them coming your way #winning

And yes, you can easily find out how many people in your region are searching for your products and services. More about that in mistake number 9, coming up.

So how much traffic does position 2, position 3 and lower get?

The 2nd organic search result averages less than 15% of the click. Yep, you read that right. Goodbye 2,500 visitors, hello 750. Still not bad though compared to…

The 3rd position? That averages just 9%. Yep, 450 visitors instead of 2,500 *sigh* and everything below that averages 5% or less of the click.

BUT that’s better than nothing!

PS: Want to get to the TOP of search results instantly for free? That’s where Google Adwords comes in. But I digress (again)…

Right, feeling more on to it now with what all these geeky terms mean? Let’s move on to something more positive and proactive towards getting you way more visitors.

Here are just 10 (ahem, 12) of the most common SEO mistakes and how to fix them for free (not in order of importance so pick the easy ones first if you like)…

SEO mistake #1: Having both www and non-www for your site

Cost to fix: Free

First-up, do yourself a favour and check this right now.

Type in your domain name with and without www in front (eg: www.yoursite.com and yoursite.com) - what happened?

Did one redirect to the other?

If both www.yoursite.com and yoursite.com stayed the same - ie: one did not change to the other – then you’ve got a problem mister.

If you don’t know how to redirect one to the other (and no, it doesn’t matter whether you redirect www to non-www or the reverse), or one version didn’t work at all, then get in touch with your website company stat and ask for a 301 redirect (eg: Please 301 redirect the non-www version of my site to the www version).

TIP: You should NOT have to pay for this to be done! If you have both versions of your site running then you’re diluting your rankings in Google and this is something you should not have to have asked any worthwhile website company to take care of in the first place.

SEO mistake #2: Missing SSL certificate

Cost to fix? Low

Hang on, SSL? What’s with all the acronyms and initialisms already? Take it easy, gees.

Yes, us geeks live in a world of acronyms, for good reason. SSL stands for Secure Socket Layer. Try saying that fast 3 times.

SSL is encryption technology (Bond, James Bond), used to transfer data from a user’s browser to the web server.

That means if you collect any information from your visitors (ie: your contact form asks for their name and email, they enter any information before checking out like creating a guest or site login, entering their home address, or you have an email sign-up form), then you NEED an SSL certificate.

It prevents hackers from sneaking in-between that process and getting people’s information for anything they enter on your site. Turns out privacy and security matters. Who wodda thunk it?

Okay, so that does sound very 007 I know, but it also helps (or harms) your website’s ranking in search results.

As Google’s own John Mueller said back in December 2015:

So the message back then was ‘…you can’t hide forever’ but now almost a year has passed and you are harming your search rankings by ignoring this any longer.

That’s why we’re seeing these headlines now…

Why does Google matter? In 2015 it was found that Google accounts for more than 90% of global organic traffic. Can we give that the moment it deserves?

Okay, so obviously it’s smart to pay attention to Google’s ranking factors.

We know Google is already taking into account whether you have a security certificate as one of many factors that decide how well your site ranks in search results - and soon your site could have the “unsafe” label - so even if you do get on page one, who’s going to click the unsafe site in search results, what with privacy and security being one of the number one concerns of website users?!

The good news? Once you’ve got your SSL certificate sorted, you will see ‘https’ and a green padlock appear before your URL.

Unlike a certain brand in the liquor industry (hint, who is a queen married to?) who you can see hasn’t sorted their SSL out yet!

TIP: Yes, if your geekiness is worth writing, I mean emailing home about, you can buy an SSL certificate and install this yourself. However for most of us, that’s what our website company is for. Do ask around for quotes though (PS: if your company is charging you what seems like a fortune, ask me for a go-to recommendation provided you’re based in NZ).

But how much?

As you can see by this cheeky exchange below in reply to Google’s John Mueller, it can be a costly business (and no, except in unusual circumstances you absolutely will not be paying $1,000 a month, nowhere close, as it does depend on your site).

In most cases it’s either a low one-off cost or a more reduced initial certificate purchase and install cost to cover your website company’s time, then a smidge more on top of your monthly hosting – and I do mean a smidge.

SEO mistake #3: Nothing new to see here, move along folks, move along

Cost to fix: Free

Yep, if you never (or barely ever) create any new content for your site, Google may just pass you by.

Fresh, new and unique content is so key to improving your search engine results.

Websites with fresh content added regularly are given more authority by search engines, and therefore rank higher.

Does your competitor, smugly sitting above you in search results, even blog? No? Ok then, that’s one serious opportunity for you!

However, you still need your search demand report (see mistake #9 if you don’t have yours yet), so you know what to write about!

What was that? Your competitor does create their own unique content on their site? Right then, do some snooping.

Which of their articles rank best? What are getting the most likes and shares? Feeling a lack of inspiration? Waiting for your search demand report? Then in the meantime, start by writing your own, unique version on the same topic. Learn from what’s working!

TIP: Haven’t got your website set up for blogging? Writing content but it’s on a normal web page without categories, breadcrumbs or the ability to like and share? Make your life easy. Don’t get a whole new site. Just get a blog area added to your domain using Wordpress or similar. Need some pointers on that? Get in touch with me and I’ll point you in the right direction.

PS: Not 100% sure what a keyword is (hint: it’s almost never just one word), let alone what yours are? Mistake #9 is just for you.

SEO mistake #4: No social share buttons

Cost to fix: free to low

What SEO gurus call ‘social signals’ is something search engine look for to prove to them what you have to say is worth putting in search results when you do write content.

When people share your posts on sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Google+ etc – that gives your content a dash of SEO juice to spice up your chances of being ranked, and ranked higher, in search results.

There are free social sharing button plug-ins you can add to your site yourself, or you may want or need your website company to look after this one for you.

SEO mistake #5: Shallow content

Cost to fix: Free

I’m speaking to you awesome content creators out there. Don’t understand how I take more than 8 hours (yes, seriously) to write 1 article? This one is currently 10 hours in by the way (plus countless cups of tea).

No, I’m not saying do what I do.

What I am saying that your short article you wrote in an hour – wham, bam, thank you mam – is not going to cut it with Google any more. Frequent content is great, but search engines now place far more importance on in-depth, detailed, unique content that more fully explores the keyword it’s written for.

So don’t write 500 words on ’10 DIY Christmas decorating ideas’, write 1,000 words about ‘3 DIY glitter Christmas baubles you can make yourself at home’ with a step-by-step guide and photos for each bauble.

By the way, if you’ve got this far (well done) you’re more than around 2,000 words in - so 1,000 words is easy peezy I promise.

If that’s just ridiculous and you feel like sitting down with a cuppa about now to recover, then at least continue your too-short content but keep it very frequent and don’t make it too general.

So change ‘5 work outfit ideas’ to ‘5 outfit ideas for your next job interview’ and re-write your old content first.

Keep a notebook handy as you’ll be surprised how many new article ideas will come out of changing your old general articles to being more detailed.

That’s one of the quickest ways to get to the top of page one above your competitors by the way. Write more in-depth content using your own keywords for those longer search terms.

Take advantage of your competitor’s mistakes!  

SEO mistake #6: Invisible images

Cost to fix: Free

I’m hoping your website has some images, right? Okay, but do they all have alt tags?

I don’t mean they are invisible to you and me by the way. Missing (or unhelpful) alt tags make them all but invisible to search engines.

Alt what? An alt tag is the description of your image that Google ‘reads’ (yes, Google is pretty blind remember, you need to tell it what your picture is of).

Firstly, you do need at least one image per page or article. Pretty is not just for your website visitors.

Google places a relatively high value on alt text to determine what the image shows - but also to determine the topic of surrounding text.

When you upload an image to your site, there should be a box to enter the alt tag. Describe the image and use your keywords. Don’t worry about connecting words or writing a full sentence though, you’re writing this just for Google.

If you’re not entering your own alt tags, your images are probably using the file name you called them when you created or saved them, and ‘screenshot5.jpg’ really isn’t going to cut it sorry.

Enter your domain name into this free alt tag checker and find out how you fare. Another quick check you can do right now is go to your website and just hover your mouse over one of your images. See that text that comes up by your mouse pointer? Yep, that’s your alt tag.

SEO mistake #7: Mobile who?

Cost to fix: free to high

I’m trying not to judge here, but if you still don’t have a mobile-optimised website this should be your number 1 priority, not just for Google, but more importantly for your poor website visitors!

I do not use this word lightly, but it is critical to sort out a mobile-responsive website asap. Mobile usability (mobile UX) is a distinct Google ranking factor people. Get it sorted!

The reason the cost to fix varies is due to your existing site, your existing template and more. So check in with your trusty website company to find out what your options are.

SEO mistake #8: No optimised pages

Cost to fix: Free to medium

Let’s move on to the last set of mistakes, which may freak you out, but honestly, just breathe, slow down, and pay attention as you really do want to know this, I promise (plus hey, you’ve made it this far!).

You’re more than half way through at this point by the way, so feel free to bookmark this page and come back to the rest later if your brain has reached capacity at this point.

If you're not sure if you’ve had onsite SEO done, then this next section is for you…

SEO mistake #9: You don’t know what your keywords are (search demand report anyone?)

Cost: Free to Low-cost

Let’s get a little SEO 101 out of the way first to help with this one as you need to know what a keyword is - and isn’t - before you find out what your keywords are.

A keyword is not only one word. Think of it as meaning one search term.

Yes, it can be one word, but these days people are typing longer and longer, more exact search terms into Google (that’s good news for the little guys by the way, as you may not able to rank for that high-search-demand single word keyword, but you can for longer search terms).

So, back to your website. Bear with me on this one as it sounds complex but really isn’t. This is 'SEO basics 101' for each page of your website if you like:

If, like most people, your website is all about you. Your keyword on your home is probably your company name. That’s ok. But what about the rest of your site?

Work out your keywords first…

What you want your keywords to be on your site start with your main non-brand keywords (ie: not your company name). Usually this will be your main products or services, sometimes along with a location if you aren’t global.

Maybe you are Havaiana, so you’ll start with ‘jandals’, or you’re Liquorland, so you’ll kick off with ‘liquor store’ or ‘bottle shop’. Are you an Auckland plumber and don’t want clients outside your area? Your keywords list might start off with ‘plumber Auckland’. You get the idea.

So yes, you do need to know what your primary keyword (ie: search term) is first that your website should rank well for. But here’s the catch, you need to find out what your one keyword is per page because everyone else is trying to rank for that main keyword too.

Let’s say you’re a stylist offering personal shopping, wardrobe clean-outs, stylist services and make-up lessons: You’ve (hopefully) got a separate page on your site for each service (so Google can rank you for people searching for your individual services). Your main keyword might be ‘stylist’ but good luck ranking well for that one ;)

Got all your products or services bunched together on one services page? Yep, you guessed it, bad move.

What you need first is your own search demand report for your country or region.

If you search for ‘free keyword research tools’ and follow the many articles full of advice you can create your report for free - or - save yourself time (and a geek-induced headache), and ask your website company to create a search demand report for you.

They will need some starter keywords from you of course.

If you’re not even sure about that much, hit me up. I’m happy to get you started for free so you know what to ask for and what starter keywords are right for you (hint, if any of your keywords are one word, you’re probably on the wrong track).

…then use your keywords here:

Depending on the admin area of your website, you can probably do some or all of this yourself.

You want to match the correct keyword to the right page, in these places on each page:

There are 7 key places (hehe, see what I did there?) on each page of your website to get those keywords into.

1. Page Title
2. Meta Description
3. Main heading (called your h1)
4. Sub heading (called your h2)
5. Body paragraphs (ie: in your copy on the page)
6. Image alt tags (no image should be on your site without an alt tag!) – see mistake #6
7. Page URLs

Don’t run away yet, I promise to ungeek each of these for you if you’re patient. It’ll be worth it and we're so close to the end now…

…um, however if you are already seeing a white haze descend about now and the words are getting blurry, then get some expert help with this bit (one of the many services an SEO specialist works on is onsite SEO, which includes these 7 areas for every page on your site).

So each of these areas make up the remainder of our top 10 SEO mistakes. Yes, I can’t count. We’ll end up with more than 10, but 10 was a nice round number and I didn’t want to scare you off.

Let’s keep this moving. I'm losing my own mind so you're probably a lost cause by now too. But I'm determined. Come on, We can do this!!!

SEO mistake #10: Your page title and meta description aren’t optimised

Cost to fix: Free to low-cost

As they say, a picture speaks a thousand words. This is why these two matter so much, but for different reasons:

So, yeah, they’re a pretty big deal.

A good page title:

• Is below around 65 characters (including spaces and punctuation).
• Uses that page’s keyword (ie: the search term that best matches the page’s content on your site, not your entire website).
• Places the keyword before your company name, as close to the start as you can (as some search engines and devices may cut off the end of your page title).

A good meta description:

• Is about your potential customer, not Google.
• Should be focused entirely on convincing your visitor you’re the best match for what they were searching for.
• Is between 150 and 160 characters (including spaces and punctuation).
• Uses one of your keywords so users know the page content will match their original Google search (Bonus TIP: Google will automatically bold words in your meta description that match words the user searched for).
• Should be different for every page on your site (but don’t freak out, just start with your most popular pages first).
• Avoids using non-alphanumeric characters like “ ” & () [] {} : ; and /

Your page title and meta description could be two areas you cannot edit in your admin area. If that’s the case, do the rest below then ask your website company to help with those bits instead.

SEO mistake #11: No headings

Cost to fix: Free

Your main heading is usually the first thing people see when they land on your site.

Like how your Contact Us page probably has a big heading at the top of the page saying ‘Contact Us’ – that bit. Also called your h1 (heading 1), tag or title tag.

Then you’ve got sub headers or sub headings, called h2, h3 and so on in order of importance.

A lot like a book really - the main chapter is a book’s h1, then any sub-chapters that relate to the main chapter are the h2 and so-on.

More about h2 in a tick though.

A good h1:

• Includes your entire keyword (ie: search term).
• Should be the only h1 on your page.
• Should not include your company name.
• Uses different wording from your page title (so use a slightly different variation of your search term for example).
• Can be longer if you like, but remember to focus on your visitor first so short and snappy often works better as your main page heading.

What about sub-headings?

Ok, so then’s there’s your h2, h3 and so on.

No, you don’t have to have each heading type, but at least add one sub-heading (h2) for your user’s sake if nothing else, so you break up long content on your page making it easier to read.

Normally I’d stop at h1, h2 and h3 myself.

You can have multiple h2’s (sub-headings) and if you need to break content down into more detail within that sub-heading, you’d use an h3 and so on.

A good h2:

• Explains the sections on your page, not what the entire page is about (that’s your h1’s job).

SEO mistake #12: You don’t use your keywords in your content

Cost to fix: Free

Last but not least, are you even using your keywords on your page in your copy?

Use your search demand report (see mistake #9), and naturally include slightly different variations of your keyword that your page relates to, in your copy.

Don’t go crazy stuffing your keyword into content where it starts to feel like a robot wrote it. That’s only going to harm your SEO.

Use it naturally but be mindful of different ways people might search for the content you’re writing about. Mix it up a bit, don’t just repeat your keyword.

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It’s CAVEAT time! SEO is a crazy, complex, confusing beasty and clever people tend to specialise in SEO for a reason.

What about me? I do my best to simplify it and act as the translator between the smart cookies and business owners wanting to be upskilled without losing their minds, while trying to work out what they really should spend your time and money on, and in what order.

Patient people do SEO, because SEO takes time (which is also why it can be costly and needs an ongoing investment).  That’s not to say that you can’t do a lot yourself for free, hence this article.

To make things even more fun, SEO specialists know A LOT but will never know every ranking factor and the exact importance of each because it’s obviously not in Google’s best interests to go ‘Hey guys, here’s how to game our system’.

Oh yeah, and there are hundreds of ranking factors!

One more thing, SEO changes all the time.

Although the basics remain largely unchanged, search engines like Google frequently update and change their ranking factors, adding brand new ones that never mattered before, and devaluing ones that used to be the bee’s knees (often because people cottoned on and started gaming the system).

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Thank you very, very much :)

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