SEO Mistakes to Avoid: how would you like to share with you mistakes I have done as a beginner in SEO Marketing?
I tried many shortcuts and tricks that made things worse, and I can say this only today after I have done it.
What are the Seo Mistakes to Avoid if you are a beginner?
1. NOT LEARNING HOW TO USE WORDPRESS
I would say that not learning how to use WordPress slows me down a lot. I was so frantically trying to get started that I ignored tutorials that showed me how to use WordPress.
As a result, I did not know many tools I could use; the articles weren’t as professional as they should have because I used only the bare minimum functions.
I did this for a long time until I started to look around and saw other bloggers having great layouts, galleries, images, sidebars that looked great. I had no idea I could customize so much.
So at this point, when I had published so many articles, I had to finally take the time to watch videos and learn how to customize my site correctly.
I had to go back and correct the articles, add images, links, and things I had not included and customize them to look better. I also had to customize the entire site.
What I learned: When starting with WordPress is better to take a few hours to see the tutorials, it only takes a few hours, but in the long run, you are going to capitalize on those few hours.
2. NO STRATEGY
When I started, I had no idea of SEO and Keyword Research. I just wrote many articles and critical pages with no full concept of what I was doing. I did not know what the Google ranking factors and basics are.
Since I was blogging to create an alternative job, which eventually should have become my only job, It has been deadly not to know any SEO basics and ignore for a year how to do keyword research.
After several months of no traffic, I finally did research and learned the basics of SEO and keywords research, and I had a good idea of what could be a strategy for starting a new site properly.
When a site is new, it is better to write articles with low competition keywords and work up to the higher competition keywords.
For example, let’s see this keyword phrase: “post generator WordPress plugin.”
Using a tool as Ubersuggest, you can see that the keyphrase has low competition. It also has little traffic. Meaning a few people are searching for this.
However, with a new site, I would go to write an article that outranks the competition in terms of lengths and in-depth details answering people’s questions.
You can see which other sites are ranking for this key phrase and see what they are writing. Then you can see what general people are searching for and write a better piece of content.
Let’s see what people are searching for. Let’s go to Google and start typing the keyphrase ” post generator WordPress plugin.”
Now let’s go to the bottom of the Google page and see what the Google suggestions are:
Google is already telling you what people are searching for.
Now let’s go and write a great piece of content to answer all those questions and to outrank the competition.
At the very beginning, with a new site, depending on the niche, one can research keywords and key phrases with low competition.
Writing 30 or 40 articles in such a manner would get some traffic to a new site, Google sees that it is ranking thus gaining credibility.
At this point, you can aim for higher volume and higher competition keywords.
I am still going back and correcting my earlier articles and doing now what I should have done one year ago. Please don’t be like me. Start with a strategy.
What I learned:
- Learn basic SEO.
- Study my niche.
- Establish which articles should be written and in which sequence and have a strategy don’t just do something.
3.NOT CARING ABOUT THE TECHNICAL ASPECTS
I did not care about the site speed and other technicalities as back-ups, securities, and other tedious technical aspects of WordPress.
Let’s face it; if you are entirely new, learning those things can be challenging, not always you find easy tutorials for beginners easy to follow.
However, when starting, one should look for a fast hosting provider, fast theme, and learn how to optimize it to respond fast to searches.
People hate to wait a long time for a page to load, and so does Google.
I think I had tons of plugins at some point, and my site was super slow, so that I could not even open my WordPress dashboard without having to wait.
Again I had to backtrack and resolve all those problems. I think I spent a week optimizing my website, starting from compressing pictures and files, canceling useless plugins, doing speed tests, and so on.
Well, one can do this right from the beginning maintaining high standards from the start. It helps Google ranking, user experience, and ultimately gives you traffic.
What I learned: keep the site optimized for speed from the beginning, rather than fix it later.
4, NO BACKLINKS BUILDING
I think the point here is more on quality backlinks rather than no backlinks at all. When I started, I used some backlink services that built links on a weird site, with low DA.
When later I did some research on this field, I discovered that it is better to build quality backlinks in reputable sites. The penalties for doing otherwise are that Google can penalize the site and consider it as a spammy site, and therefore never send traffic.
Again I had to spend time researching, finding all the low-quality backlinks, removing them, or disavowing them.
It is not always possible to reach the site owner and remove unwanted links. It is much better to learn this from the beginning and do it right.
What I learned: learn to build high-quality backlinks from the beginning and do it the right way.
CONCLUSION
It is way better and works faster to learn some basics on SEO, keyword research, WordPress, and proper strategy.
Those few things done right are going to prevent a massive loss of time. There are better chances to rank faster and start getting traffic by doing things the right way.
In a few words: know before you go.
Vittoria is a full-time blogger and affiliate marketing expert. She worked in sales for the past 18 years for others until she started her blog. She loves to write and show others how to make it avoiding common mistakes, Infos often not shared by others.