Top 5 SEO Issues

When a business owner comes to me for a Discovery call or strategy session, I typically see the same reoccurring issues with their websites. I’ve listed my top 5 below so you can check them against your current practices.

Google looks at many things to determine the ranking of your pages so the more of these issues we can smooth out, the better your site will rank. Here are the five most common issues businesses run into when applying SEO strategies to their site.

Issue #1 –

Cutting corners on technical SEO. I check for 80+ technical issues that have to be addressed before I can go forward. A large portion of those technical issues, especially for eCommerce stores, is the site’s structure. I’m looking for obstacles that make it difficult for Google’s crawlers to navigate, understand, and index your site because if Google is having difficulties… there’s a good chance your customers are too.

Issue #2 –

Creating content without creating a content strategy. It’s common practice to come up with a topic that you think you have enough information on to write a blog post or article, and then hire a writer to write and optimise it for SEO. Going about this all willy nilly is not the right strategy. You must research and plan your content. You need to know what the headings should be, word count, what to use for framing keywords, etc.

Issue #3 –

Ignoring Link Building. This third piece is very important, but it’s also a lot of work. Many SEO companies will specialise in this area as it is a whole job in itself! Others may tell you they will get you 500 or 1,000 links. The quality of these links (unless you’re in a really unique situation) is a waste of time and money. You have to work to get guest posts, be on podcasts, and create infographics to get quality links back to your site. These complex strategies take an enormous amount of time and effort, but it’s well worth it.

Issue #4 –

Neglecting to watch that Bounce Rate. If people click through to your page from Google and bounce back to look at another page, Google interprets this as your page not answering the user’s question. You must focus on the value of the content and the on-page experience to increase your dwell time. If you don’t have enough content, the user will likely look elsewhere for what they need. 70% of re-work websites that come across my desk lack content.

Issue #5 –

Overlooking the importance of Internal Linking. Proper internal linking can get your Page Rank up fast. It’s one of my many favourite easy wins. Neglect it at your risk! I’ve seen pages increase their ranking dramatically and quickly using this strategy.

So there are some frequent issues that pop up with most sites I audit. If you find yourself wondering how your site stacks up, reach out and let’s schedule a Discovery call. I can’t guarantee we’ll work together, but I can guarantee you’ll come away with some ideas, you can use right away to improve your site. Happy SEO’ing.