Frequent mistakes and tricks to increase SEO traffic

Chapter 6: despite being an activity that is anything but precise and scientific, SEO is no joke and must be treated with kid gloves.

After the general smattering of the previous chapters, where we explained the technical part, the research, the construction of the content and the social promotion, the time has come to explain some tricks of the trade and, above all, give you a general idea of what cannot be done.

Frequent mistakes, which experts generally agree on, are the best way to illustrate to the newbie what Google likes, and what it would be better to avoid instead. We therefore dedicate this final chapter to frequent mistakes, tricks and secrets that will allow you to bring the SEO knowledge you have learned here to a more practical and concrete level, so that you can immediately start producing quality material.

Breaking Google's Rules: Are You a Bandit?

With "SEO errors” we refer to negligence and bad habits on which newbies can stumble and on which sometimes the old foxes settle down who have now been working on it for a lifetime with optimization. Let's start from the mistakes, before the tricks, because sometimes a discipline is better understood through the mistakes made.

Be wary of "instantaneous" and "immediately measurable" results.

We can go into the specifics of the most common mistakes and same old black hat SEO tactics, but the list wouldn't be satisfying if we didn't mention buying and selling likes, traffic volumes, and last but not least, link buying. Anyone who tries to sell you an express result, causing tons of visits to your page from one day to the next, is selling you fake numbers and a shady product to say the least. Works? Sometimes, sadly, these charlatans actually manage to give you the results you require, getting away with it right under the not always watchful eye of Google. It is not a success destined to last, however. More and more often search engines update their algorithm to keep up and protect the reliability of their service, penalizing or completely excluding the site that has made use of non-transparent activities. Is it worth it? Experts agree that absolutely not, the risk is too high.

Don't forget the links.

The first mistake we hear about is neglecting links and link building activities. Links are the quintessence of the web and don't ever be told otherwise: you shouldn't be afraid to include them on your site without diverting attention from the strategy. If you're not sure about link farming, talk to an expert. In general, before inserting a hyperlink ask yourself the following question: “Does this link add value to my text? Do you elaborate on the topic? Or do I just put it there because I have nothing else to enter, and in this case it's better to leave it alone?”

Post content at irregular intervals.

Your content may be the best, but if it doesn't keep coming, you'll be hard pressed to keep yourself relevant in the eyes of Google, especially if you're competing for a highly coveted keyword. A site that publishes regularly, and publishes with quality, is a site that likes and works. Over time and with hard work it becomes a point of reference for readers, who will get carried away by your storytelling. The point is constancy: decide on a cadence (one post a day, one a week, one a month) and stick to the schedule, if the world falls. If you feel like you have nothing to say, try it anyway: publish anyway. You will have the time and opportunity to edit the content later to make it more in line with your standards. Don't stop posting!

Not having a mobile friendly site or with "fluid" graphics.

What do we say to sites that don't fit the small screen of our smartphone? "Not today". Your site isn't good enough to handle the heavy burden of not adapting to smaller screens and various operating systems or browsers. Your site needs to fit devices like a glove, enabling smooth, fast, and intuitive navigation whatever tool the user feels like using.

Rely on a do-it-yourself hosting service.

The point is this: if you're here, you probably want your site to be able to return the investment of resources you've made. Hosting is that physical and virtual place where your website is located and anyone can, through a link, access it. And what if the site is beautiful, complete and interesting but the page loading speed gives you hives? In the age of fibre, ADSL and 4G, fast connections are expected to buffer a WordPress blog that is not particularly optimized in terms of performance. The truth is the exact opposite: in the era of fast connections, no one wants to wait more than 2-3 seconds that a page loads completely, let alone partially. And there's no story: unless you're the only plausible hit for an abstruse, one-of-a-kind keyword, chances are high people will choose someone else's site to scratch their knowledge or shopping itch. Rely on serious paid hosting and check the speed of your site with tools like PageSpeed ​​Insights. Fight the slowness!

Use keywords repeatedly.

“My site deals with cat food. Cat food is food specially made for cats of all ages and is used to feed cats. Cats are big cats that are hungry for cat food." Sure you guessed the main keywords, but it doesn't take Hemingway to figure out that the above sentence is redundant, unhelpful, and downright unpleasant. This practice is called keyword stuffing and works on the same principle as stuffing a turkey, with the difference that the more you stuff a turkey, the better it is, while content overloaded with keywords ends up simply being unpleasant. The density of the main keyword should be proportional to the text.

There are still many errors to mention in this list, but this is the most important sum of activities that it would be better to check to avoid penalties or disappointing results.

Tricks and secrets to boost SEO traffic

Now that you know what not to do, let's make you a list of little goodies that will help give you that edge over the competition. On the web, there are people who like to say “if you follow this guide, your traffic will increase by 40%!”. Don't believe it too much: follow the best practices and work hard. The results will come, but certainly not by magic!

Do you have a sustainable editorial plan?

Is your blog full of content but you feel like you've run out of topic? Are you afraid that by writing about the same thing every day, you might lose the poetry you had in the beginning? SEO is effective when it is sustainable over the long term and is based on a lot of content. Reflect: create, fragment, embroider!

Take advantage of the current or next year.

Your contents are beautiful, but to be truly irresistible they must overcome the currents of space and time and must always be up to date. Take advantage of the power of the date (updated to the fullest) and use titles like "The most affordable air conditioners of 2019" to attract the attention of those looking for a new product. And fresh content.

The power of the synonym.

The best search queries are synonyms of the official keyword. Use synonyms not only to enrich the page, but also for your title tags, description, alt tags and internal links.

Compress photos.

Load time is an SEO ranking factor, and we know that. Users expect fast pages: make them fast. In addition to a good web hosting, always make sure to compress your high-resolution photos, so that they don't exceed 250 KB.

301 redirects.

If you change the URL address of a content, perform a 301 redirect to the new address. This way you will transfer the popularity of the page that no longer exists to the new one.

Work on the keywords you are already strong on.

It seems paradoxical, but to get on the first page of Google you have to focus on what you already have and boost it like there's no tomorrow. Strengthen them, optimize them, update them and get quality links for those keywords: only then you will be truly a winner.

Do you have any tricks to suggest that you would like to see published on the page?

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