4 SEO Mistakes of Michigan Small Businesses
Using the wrong keywords
One of the biggest SEO mistakes small businesses make is guessing what your keywords are for your business without doing any research. Hey, we know you know your business well and you should absolutely know what terms and phrases are related but this isn’t enough. The proper research needs to be done to find out what people are actually searching for and how competitive each keyword and key phrase are. Also, search traffic is always changing so your keywords need constant monitoring and adjusting.
Forgetting about local directory listings
SEO and social media sites are not the only pieces of the internet marketing puzzle, you know. I am sure you have noticed that in the search engine results pages, Google returns directory listing sites such as Yelp, Merchant Circle and Yahoo. So why not take advantage of these sites as well? You should be using every available marketing tool to promote your business. When listing your business in these directories, be sure to upload pictures and don’t leave any fields blank. If you have multiple locations for your business, don’t just list one, list all of them by each location.
Over optimizing
Over optimizing means taking SEO strategies and using them excessively. This is a common SEO mistake that business owners and webmasters make. A prime example of this is the over use of keywords. Keywords are an important part of SEO, but if they are abused, the results can actually do more harm than good. Gone are the days of stuffing keywords into pages, hoping for better rankings. Google has been there and done that, so to speak. Your keywords must now fall within a certain ratio if you want to promote search engine optimization.
And if you think about it, your content will not sound very good anyway if you are repeating the same key phrases too often. Read your page out loud. How does it sound? If it doesn’t flow right or sounds like keyword overload, this is a good sign that you have gone over the recommended keyword ratio for Google. Another way of looking at this is that Google favors sites that people actually like, so make sure your content will be something that people will enjoy reading.
Never providing new content
Another huge SEO mistake website owners make is thinking that at some point, they are “done” with their website. Perhaps the initial construction of the website might be complete, but you should never stop adding new content. This increases your search rankings for 2 reasons. First, Google spiders fresh content and ignores content that never changes. Why spider sites that always stay the same? And Second, sites with higher page content receive better rankings, so if you write new blogs and add content consistently, your medium sized website will turn into a monstrosity in no time.
Avoid the SEO mistakes small businesses make
Russ Cuthrell is a Michigan SEO Expert and Internet Marketer with over 24 years of experience in the Information Technology space. He is the owner of Spyder Byte Media, Inc., a Michigan Website Design company located in Shelby Township, Michigan. He has helped hundreds small business owners in Michigan use make it to the top of the search engines and stay there.
