Not knowing how online marketing and SEO work can lead you down the path of hiring an inexperienced or unscrupulous website development company or attempting to do a DIY website.
Is your business website not showing up in search results? Common mistakes include not using the right target keywords or using too many.
Your website may contain lots of words but it’s important for that content to be relevant to your company, easy-to-read and makes your reader want to buy your product or schedule your service.
Common Mistakes Made By Small Business Website Owners That Can Be Easily Resolved
The goal of this article is to help you learn from other people’s mistakes who also wanted to compete in local search results.
Why Local Customers Can’t Find Your Business Online
A typical mistake people who are new to owning a business website is to pick a site builder service without knowing anything about how online marketing works first. The next is trying to do SEO yourself without any sort of training. Then, you probably didn’t take the time to fill in all of the fields provided on your social media and business listing pages. These are just a few of the tactics that can hinder your chances of showing up in local search results if not done correctly.
Things You May Be Doing Wrong With Your Website
Creating a website for your small business is one of the most important things that you can do to gain an audience online. It’s typically a company’s first interaction with a consumer searching online for services or products your business offers when they land on your website.
Unfortunately, people can’t find your website right now. Your traffic numbers are low and no one is contacting you. So, what’s the problem?
We list the 5 most common mistakes to avoid when your main goal is to get your website in front of local customers.
5 Most Common Mistakes Made By Small Business Website Owners
Reason 1: Website Build or Server Issues
It’s easy to build a great-looking business website but that doesn’t mean it actually is a great website. For it to succeed organically, the hosting server needs to be reliable and the website itself needs to be built on a sound content management system.
Unfortunately many small business owners are not familiar with website coding so they don’t always know what they are getting. If you hired an unqualified web developer to build your website, it could be the reason why your website is not showing up in local search results.
How To Fix Small Business Website & Server Mistakes:
- Run your website through a diagnosis tool like SEMRush to get a full report of issues, warnings and errors you should fix to improve your site’s performance.
- Rebuild your website using a fast-loading theme that is responsive if it is not currently SEO or mobile friendly.
- Migrate your website from a slow hosting company to a better one. Site speed is important when it comes to ranking it in search results. Google and other search engines want your website to load fast. For WordPress hosting services, we recommend Pressable.
Reason 2: On-Page SEO Issues
Wondering why your website is still not showing in Google search results for keywords you thought you would rank for? If your website is not optimized or over-optimized for organic search, your site will rank lower in search results than your competitors who are also implementing basic SEO strategies.
How To Fix SEO Mistakes:
- Write custom META titles descriptions for each page. Keep character count within current industry standards.
- Avoid using the same keywords and phrases over and over again. Be creative, use synonyms and acronyms for variety.
- No keyword stuffing. Think quality over quantity when writing page titles and descriptions.
- Create image ALT tags for every photo and graphic you have on pages you are optimizing for organic search.
Reason 3: Content Issues
Recent Google algorithm updates are highly focused on the quality of content found on web pages. Your site might be suffering from content issues which can be easily addressed by updating the page content to better utilize the latest SEO on-page tactics. By writing better content for your existing web pages, it will help influence search engine rankings for target keyword and long-tail phrases.
How To Fix Content Writing Mistakes:
- Use the E.A.T SEO strategy when writing content. The EAT acronym stands for Expertise, Authority and Trustworthiness.
- Once again, we’re mentioning keyword stuffing. It doesn’t work, don’t do it. Repeating a keyword or phrase over and over again doesn’t improve page rankings because the overuse of the word doesn’t improve the quality of the content nor user experience.
- Create content about topics that relate to your business. Educate site visitors by writing content that answers their question, provides a solution to their problem or satisfies their desire to learn more.
- Absolutely no duplicate content, no one wants to read the same thing twice. Search engines penalize websites who churn out duplicated pages. Instead create new content to reinforce your existing content.
Reason 4: Business Listing Issues
There are a few factors that can impact a business’ online listing showing up in Google or other business listing websites. Simply having a business listing isn’t enough to appear at the top of local map results. Businesses need to manage their online listings to improve their chances of appearing in relevant search results. By providing as much information as possible in your online listings, it improves your chances of more local customers visiting your website and business location.
How To Fix Business Listing Mistakes:
- Business listing should be as detailed as possible. Having incomplete, inaccurate or missing information will prevent your company from showing up in map results.
- Ensure your business name, address, and phone number (also known as NAP data), along with other relevant information are correct. Having outdated, inaccurate or inconsistent NAP data makes it difficult for people to find your business.
- By having an unclaimed or unverified listing, your company will not show up in search results. Take ownership of your business listing immediately or create one if none exist.
- Duplicate listings will damage your chances of showing up in search results. Having several listings with the same address will result in less users finding your business. Stick to one listing and make it great.
- Don’t use a single listing if your business has multiple locations. Create a listing for each address and write custom content for each one to make it unique to that location.
- Add images of the interior, exterior and any other pictures you have to your listing. Business listings with images tend to do better than listings that do not.
Reason 5. Online Marketing and Promotion Issues
Having a lack of online presence is one of the main reasons why a lot of small businesses have a hard time getting found online. Websites fail when business owners do not invest into online marketing. If you are not actively promoting your business online, your website will not perform as well as your competitors.
How To Fix Online Marketing and Promotion Mistakes:
- Improve your website’s organic traffic by implementing a better content and SEO strategy.
- Do a better job promoting your business pages on social media by posting to your accounts on a regular basis.
- Implementing an email marketing plan is one of the best ways to reach your consumer base. Don’t always sell when sending a campaign, offer your subscribers information that also educates and informs them about your services, products and industry.
- Running a small ad campaign targeting your local business area is an effective way to reach new people. Using paid advertising (PPC) helps people find your business if your website is struggling with organic traffic.
Bonus Tip: Have a WIX Website?
WIX is the most popular website builder available online and a lot of people use it for their small business. While the service is easy to use and you do get a website, it’s terrible for any type of organic online marketing. If your business referrals are mostly word-of-mouth, then a WIX website is sufficient. If you own a business that requires online exposure to reach new people, a WIX website is catastrophic!
Won’t take our word that WIX is terrible for small business websites, then maybe this article from AHREFS, a trusted industry source, will change your mind. Read their very informative article: Wix SEO vs. WordPress: 6.4M Domains Studied