And now some words on SEO

Here are 8 tips of things to avoid –

• One of the most common SEO mistakes is reusing or copying content. Duplicate content refers to any content that you have either uploaded to your site or as part of a guest post somewhere else.This confuses Google, forcing the search engine essentially to pick one that it thinks should rank higher. To avoid this, make sure that all content you produce either on your own site or on external sites is totally unique. Each piece should be researched and well-written. Originality is what helps to drive SEO results. You can also fall victim to poor ranking as a result of duplicate content on your own site. This can be easily done if you are selling products that are very similar. To ensure this does not happen, create product descriptions for each individual product. While time-consuming, this pays off in the long run with notable improvements to SEO performance on these product pages.
• Mobile-friendliness is one of the more important ranking factors in Google’s algorithm. In fact, Google included it in one of its Core Vitals updates earlier this year. This means that the algorithm now uses mobile performance of websites to determine part of their ranking. Typical mistakes when it comes to neglecting mobile optimisation is layout and design. What might look great on desktop, may not translate well to mobile, which can lead to poor user experience. You can easily check how well your website performs using the Google Mobile-Friendly Testing Tool. You simply enter your URL and Google will tell you some of the issues that need fixing or improving.
• Contact information plays an important part in your ranking abilities. If your contact information is difficult to find or is inconsistent, users are less likely to trust your site.
• If your business aims to serve or sell to consumers in a specific area, you should be optimising local search capabilities and avoid selling to the world! Tailor your keywords to the region you operate in. Include these in your page titles and meta descriptions. You should also put your address and phone number in headers and footers on your site too. This will help you to show up in search results of consumers in the area you’re targeting.
• Optimising the wrong keywords when trying to rank for keywords that have an incredibly high search volume will not help your SEO success. Some of the common mistakes include: trying to rank for global keywords even though you are a local business; using generic keywords that do not actually offer any insight into your brand; or using keywords that serve information results rather than customers looking to buy. Finally avoid targeting broad keyword terms that even full-time SEO experts struggle to rank for.
• Not varying your anchor text on internal and external sites. People (your customers) can spot odd-looking links like a sore thumb. Your links, whether internal or external, should look natural and organic. If you are linking anchor text with a call-to-action  (like ‘click here’) will make users far less likely to click through.
• Focusing on link quantity over quality. In order to improve the overall ranking and metrics of your site, you need to be getting links from authoritative external sites. These external links get picked up by the Google algorithm which then starts to recognise your site as trustworthy and high-quality. Some businesses focus on quantity over quality. As with anything, having more of something does not necessarily mean it is better. Mass outreach and links to lower quality sites can damage your performance.
• When building links, use “white hat” SEO methods to ensure you are not violating any Google guidelines.