Almost 20% of all businesses fail within the first two years. There are many reasons this happens, but the most common is a lack of brand awareness. It’s not as easy to get your name out there as some make it look.

The best way to gain the attention of your target audience is by polishing your SEO strategy. If you play your cards right, you’ll be able to pull ahead of your competition and drive traffic to your site.

The opposite is true if you make common SEO mistakes. If you try to rank for the wrong keywords, for example, you’re not going to get too far. Keep reading to learn more.

Neglecting Site Speed

Most users will only wait about 5 seconds for a site to load before they decide to take their business elsewhere. That means, as a small business owner if you don’t want people turning to your competition, you’re going to have to work on your website speed.

Start by optimizing the images on your site. Most of these files are fairly large but don’t worry. Many website builders have widgets that will resize images for you.

Failing to Understand the Importance of Local Search

If you’re a small local business, do yourself a favor and focus on region-specific keywords. Putting them in your headings and meta descriptions will help local users find your company when they’re Googling for goods and services like yours.

Keywords aren’t the only way you can capture the attention of local users. You can also display your address and phone number on your web pages.

Ranking for the Wrong Keywords

You never want to go too vague with your keywords. For example, let’s say that you own a sandwich shop.

You shouldn’t try to rank for the word sandwich because it’s too difficult. It would force you to compete with every other sandwich shop in the world. Turkey sub would be a much better keyword choice.

If you find yourself grasping at straws in this area, it’s okay to bring in the experts. They have all the knowledge needed to help you develop an amazing SEO strategy.

Failing to Write Killer Content

When it comes to innovative marketing, SEO content is king. If you only update your website every six months or so, your customers may get the wrong impression that you’re no longer in business. You also can’t rank with your content if you’re not putting anything out.

The content you write needs to be over 300 words long. If your posts are any shorter than that, Google won’t send people your way because the algorithm doesn’t view your content as relevant.

Your content also needs to be easy to read, and most important of all, original.

Common SEO Mistakes Everyone Makes

If you want your business to get ahead of your competition, you’re going to have to work on your online presence. Failing to rank for the right keywords or neglecting your site speed are two of the biggest SEO mistakes you can make.

If you find that you need a little help with developing your strategy, you can hire the experts or check out our SEO plugins.