A strong website forms the foundation of any cloud, IT, or telecom company’s online sales and marketing efforts. However, it’s not enough to have well-written copy and modern, clean design – especially as more competitors begin to invest heavily in their digital marketing.
As more users research purchasing decisions online before speaking to salespeople, SEO – “search engine optimization” – is no longer just a buzzword. A well-ranked website improves company visibility and keeps you top of mind. However, it’s key to ensure you aren’t going about it the wrong way. Read on to discover Mojo Marketing’s 5 SEO mistakes that are easy to make but important to avoid.
Page Load Speed
The problem: Users easily lose patience with a slow site, and will quickly abandon it if they are stuck on a loading page for too long. This is an even bigger sticking point for mobile users, since cellular networks are slower than most wifi networks. If users are constantly leaving your site because pages aren’t loading, Google takes this into account and will penalize you for it.
The solution: Google provides a tool called “PageSpeed Insights”. It’s free to use, and will show you where you can improve not only your page load speed but also your overall usability. We recommend reviewing the results with your developer, as sometimes the recommendations aren’t completely feasible to implement; some aspects of WordPress, for example, can’t be avoided.
Keyword Cannibalization
The problem: When you have two or more pages or blogs that are competing for the same keyword, Google will have a hard time determining which page to rank for that keyword. More often than not, Google will choose to not rank either page, and your search visibility will suffer.
The solution: It’s an SEO best practice to ensure that all of your site’s pages rank for a unique keyword (e.g., one page for “data center services” and another for “colocation”). If you write blogs about related topics, try to ensure they have their own keyword (e.g., “choosing a data center provider”). If you must publish additional content that’s optimized for the same keyword as an already-existing page, a plugin like Yoast SEO will allow you to mark the first page – or whichever is meant to be the most important page on your site for that keyword – as ‘cornerstone’ content. This signals to Google that your cornerstone page is what should rank for that keyword.
Using the Same Keyword-rich Anchor Text For More Than One Page
The problem: If “disaster recovery” is your main service, you probably have a page for that service on your website. But if you’re linking to multiple pages on your site in addition to your disaster recovery page, and all of those links say ‘disaster recovery’ even if they aren’t linking to that page, this can confuse Google and lead to decreased search rankings.
The solution: Try to be as clear as possible to show exactly what each page on your site is about. The anchor text – the text that is actually linked on the page – should be as unique and descriptive as you can. Go ahead and link ‘disaster recovery’ text to your disaster recovery page, but link to your business continuity page with text that describes that page.
Broken Outbound Links
The problem: Having links that don’t lead anywhere or display an error page can quickly rob one’s site of domain authority – in addition to frustrating your users.
The solution: When a website links users to high quality resources, this helps to build trust and ensure a user-friendly site. Resources like Dead Link Checker or Broken Link Checker for WordPress make it easy to review your site for dead links. Fix the links you want to keep, and remove the ones you no longer need – especially any that may be hiding in the “comments” section.
Duplicate Content
The problem: One of the quickest ways to decrease your search ranking is to use duplicate content on a site. Whether or not your content is a duplicate of someone else’s (which is plagiarism, and something you’ll want to avoid for many reasons!) or a duplicate of your own content on another page on your site, this is a big factor that Google takes into consideration.
The solution: Even if different pages on your site mention the same topic, or speak to the same topic using a different keyword (e.g., one page for “cloud services” and another for “cloud solutions”), be sure and keep all the content unique.
In a world where prospects do most of their own research online, SEO is a key component to help you stay ahead of your competitors in search ranking and in sales.
Jaymie Scotto & Associates (JSA) and Mojo Marketing are proud to partner to elevate and promote today’s leading cloud, telecom, and IT companies. Contact us today to learn more about how we can support your business.
