The Few Deadly SEO Mistakes to Avoid in 2020

SEO is extremely important to develop your brand in 2020. This is especially after reducing the importance of social media traffic. Google became the major source of referral traffic by 35% of site visits in 2017. 

You can improve your website's ranking in Google's search engine result pages (SERPs) by using SEO and reach the top rankings. You should also do this because the first search result gets more clicks than other results.

There are a few things to keep in mind while doing SEO for your website. If you make any of these errors, you can damage your reputation. Here are some of the deadliest SEO mistakes you should avoid in 2020.

Unsatisfied Search Intent

If you write helpful content and it is not well targeted, people searching your website may not find it useful. You may have also detected your target audience, but if you do not take the search intent into account, all your efforts may be in vain.

Search intent is basically the intention behind search. Your website and content need to fulfil this intention by providing solutions. This is why it is important to understand what the explorer is thinking when they search for something. Your website needs to provide an answer to this idea.

For example, if a user searches for "SEO" on Google, it means that the user wants to know what SEO is? But, if a user searches for "SEO services" then that person wants to hire an SEO expert or company. Both keywords (SEO and SEO services) have a different intention. So, if you are targeting the keyword "SEO services", but asking "What is SEO?" So you cannot be successful with that content because you are unable to fulfill the intention behind that search phrase.

Traditional SEO Techniques

As the Internet is changing, SEO is also evolving and changing. To stay on top of search results, you need to keep up with the changes and apply modern SEO techniques. If you continue to apply traditional SEO techniques, you may get penalized. The days are gone when you could rank using keyword stuffing, PBN and other traditional methods.

Today, Google is smarter than ever. Now, it can also rank keywords that you have not even mentioned in your content. Recently, Google updated an algorithm called Google BERT, which helps Google better understand content and user-queries.

Update Yourself

SEO is a dynamically changing field. You need to keep yourself up-to-date with all the latest happenings as Google keeps on bringing new updates every time. If you miss a major update, your website may be affected and you may run out of valuable traffic.

Google released various updates this year including broad core updates such as Core Update on June 3, Google BERT and many more. You should keep yourself updated about them.

Ignoring Structured Data and Search Features

Structured data is essential to stand out from the crowd, especially when you reach the first page of search results. Through structured data, your search result may also end up above the first search result. Additionally, the result will look larger than all other lists and may become the choice for your searchers.

Similarly, you should focus on improving the internal search functions of your website. People visiting your website find it easy to find relevant information and the search feature can help with this. Try to incorporate search into your website and also try to optimize your listing, so that your searchers get what they were looking for.

There are various types of structured data for different types of content that you can use on your site. like,

• Product Review (For Product Review)
• How (for "how to" content)
• Frequently Asked Questions (For FAQ Content)
• Address (for company address)
• Books (for books)
• Events (for events)

Ignoring Conversion Optimization

The ultimate goal of all businesses is to get customers and for this, you have to generate leads first and then convert them. However, many businesses ignore conversion optimization and focus only on the top of the funnel.

Instead, it is necessary to provide everything your lead needs to become a paying customer. Load them with reviews, case studies and show why they should buy from you. Make it easy for them to shop. By ignoring conversion optimization, you can reduce customer load and revenue. This is the most important and no-cost strategy to increase your revenue that you should not ignore in 2020.

Not Focusing On Branded Anchor Text

Anchor texts play an important role in your link building strategy. When you can get backlinks from reputable sources, the anchor texts of these links are extremely important.

You can use anchor texts related to your page or blog. However, by ignoring branded anchor texts, you will not be able to improve the authority of your brand. Branded anchor texts can help improve your brand recognition and through this, your brand can also get a higher ranking on search results.

Branded anchors look more natural than keyword optimized anchor texts. Most of the sites that saw an increase in their rankings during Google's June 3 update had more branded anchor text than others. This is why you should focus on branded anchor texts.

Only Text Is The Content To Focus

It is true because video is the easiest way to learn and people prefer to watch videos on any other content format. This is the biggest reason for YouTube's popularity. But you may have noticed that videos also appear on Google's SERPs. Google knows that videos are the future and people like to watch videos. That's why Google shows them on SERPs.

Videos take less time to rank on Google than text content and the content format is more attractive. Google has also started adding podcasts to SERPs. These two content formats are still growing and are less competitive than text content. That is why you should focus on these instead of just writing blog posts.

Not Focusing On Branding And Brand Searches

SEO is becoming more brand-focused day by day. Now, SEO is not just about getting traffic. To build a brand you need to do it. If you want to make your business a trustworthy and profitable brand then you need to focus on branding.

You need to increase brand searches for your business. When more people start searching for your business on Google, it will automatically start ranking you on the top. It is an evergreen strategy to develop your business and establish yourself as an authority.

Not Ready For Mobile

About 50% of the traffic comes from mobile. If your website is not mobile friendly, Google will not automatically consider it for its searchers. Make sure your website is responsive and make it mobile friendly. By tapping into mobile traffic, you will also be able to increase the visibility of your website.

Mobile-friendliness and page speed are considered as ranking factors of Google search. So if you want to grow your business and achieve SEO success then you should not neglect mobile.

Unclear SEO Goals

Before doing SEO for your website you need to have a clear SEO goal. If you don't know what you want to achieve by doing SEO of your website, you will probably never be able to grow it. The point is to know what you want from your website & SEO and then plan your SEO strategy. You won't find a stupid strategy anywhere.

Give priority to people on search engines

Write your content and plan your SEO strategy for the search engine to be a real user. Because you need real customers to generate sales and revenue to run your business. Search engines are nothing. Your business depends on customers, not on the search engines.

Search engines like Google are a means of acquiring new customers. No one knows when Google will penalize a site and drop its ranking. But if you like your customers more, then chances are that your customers will promote you as well as Google will love you and give you high rank. Therefore you need to keep your customers satisfied with your services and products.

Conclusion

You have known almost all fatal SEO mistakes, so try to follow them in 2020. Use modern SEO techniques and keep yourself updated with the latest people to stay ahead of the competition.