SEO is the wild west of marketing. The only rules are those set by search engines and they only tell you some of the rules some of the time and change them all of the time. There is no SEO Bachelor’s or Master’s or Doctorate Degree yet, and how could there be? By the time they wrote the book it would be obsolete.
Maybe that’s why every day a million sites at least make one of these common mistakes even though professionals in the field have been warning against them for nearly a decade. Here are some of the common mistakes that seem like good ideas, but can be disastrous in the long term.
1. Irrelevancy – So the obvious rule that most people know is not to have ‘cute puppies” as part of your SEO strategy if you do not sell cute puppies—no matter how popular cute puppies may be. A couple things happen; you tick off the people you tricked into visiting, and even if they want your stuff in the future they aren’t going to buy it from you now, and Google will penalize your site once they catch on. This goes for your online ads as well, though Google does not penalize for irrelevant ads, you customers will.
That’s a bit obvious, but there is another type of irrelevancy that can be more difficult to avoid in ads and in marketing. Understand where your product or service fits in the life of your customers and try not to overstep that. Avoid for example equating purchase with patriotism, a very common mistake, especially during Holidays like the 4th of July or Veteran’s Day. It’s okay to have subtext or a theme, but when products or services cross the line it almost always hurts the brand.
2. Using common keywords – If you are using only very common keywords you may find it nearly impossible to get on the first page of a related search. Try localizing your keywords and getting more specific. Don’t just use “cute puppies” because you’ll never beat out the million + videos on YouTube and elsewhere. Instead use for example “Beagle puppies in Las Vegas”—while not nearly as common as cute puppies, this will certainly be more helpful as a keyword.
3. Updates – Content should be updated regularly, a couple times a year if possible. If you have a good position in search results already you might not want to risk a total rewrite, but be sure you are adding to your site either through new products or services, testimonials, a blog, whatever the case may be. At the same time, only update when there is an actual update (unless you need a rewrite for other reasons like poor content or bad optimization). There are always reasons to update at least once or twice a year though, so that should be a minimum.