8 SEO Pitfalls That Can Ruin Your B2B Lead Generation Efforts

In my previous blog post, I have discussed about the definition of SEO and the ways you can use them to help generate leads for your company. In this post, I would touch more on the common SEO mistakes that people make and how to avoid them. This is crucial when so as not to reduce the likelihood of your effective digital marketing efforts to be gone to waste.

To most people, SEO can be challenging to understand. Even SEO experts admit they need constant refreshers due to rapid changes occurring in the digital landscape. However, it is necessary to maintain a robust and updated strategy. This is especially important for B2B marketers for they need to bring visitors to your site and direct them towards your sales funnel. Below are the 8 Google SEO mistakes to avoid:

1.Selecting the Wrong Keywords

SEO is more complicated than it looks, especially when it comes to choosing keywords and placing them within your content. Many digital marketers select the wrong keyword(s) only to find that results are not as what they expected. Fortunately, there are several tools that you can use to eliminate this problem. Google’s Keyword Planner is a free and simple tool that provides an overview of search volumes and trends. You can use it to gauge how keywords rank within the search and adjust your use of them based on that information. Check out this article by Backlinko to learn how to get started.

2. Not Gathering Customer  Feedback
Another mistake that marketers make is that they don’t gather regular & constant feedback from their customers. Businesses are eager to get feedback from its customers and the same rule applies to the Internet as well. Having more reviews online can boost your SEO. Google My Business listings dominate search results when looking up local businesses, distracting from organic results. The following is a step by step guide to add your company on Google Business listings. 

These reviews are basically a collection of users vouching for your business’s credibility through use experience. This helps search engines understand that your company has a positive reputation. Therefore, their job is made easier by ‘recommending’ businesses with a consistent rating.

3. Not Knowing What Quick Answers Are

Lack of understanding of Quick Answers is the next painful mistake that digital marketers make. More and more customers are referring to Google’s Quick Answers as a way to find answers on Google quickly and efficiently. It is as simple as typing a query into the search engine to find out. For example, by typing “What is a Google Quick Answer?”, the first result is a box rather than a usual listing. The answer that appears is an excerpt from an article from Brightedge:

In September 2014 Google introduced a new method of presenting content relevant to “how to…” or “what is…” queries, where Google takes snippets of content from specific web pages and features it in the “Quick Answers” box just above the 1st organic result in SERP and just below paid listings.

A quick answer is meant to quickly answer the question entered in the search bar. To produce the quick answer result, its good to stop & think about your user’s experience on the page. Would they understand exactly what your business does, the moment they access your homepage? Would they understand the connection between all content posted on your site and your company’s purpose? The key is to simplistically yet effectively answer a question, so if you can answer “yes” to both questions, then you’re on your way to having a quick answer-worthy site.

4. Creating Content for the sake of Generating Content

Another common mistake made is creating content for the sake of generating content. Low quality , duplicated content or content that do not contain specific keywords can harm your SEO ranking. You can remedy this by only posting relevant, original content.

Non-original content is a common mistake, but thankfully, it’s also an easy fix. Instead of copying content from others, it’s really worth investing in your own, meaningful copy. This would prevent your ranking from being pushed further down in search results.

5. Skipping Title Tags & Meta Descriptions

Yet another common mistake is skipping title tags & meta descriptions. The essential parts of your website also includes title tags & meta descriptions. Keywords are included to allow search engines to have better understanding of your webpage and index your web pages accordingly for relevant keywords.

The title tag defines the title of the web page. Title tags are shown on search results pages as the clickable headline for a given result and are important for usability, SEO, and social networks.

Below is an example:

<head>

<title>SEO Services</title>

</head>

Its crucial to not have a title that is too long. If your title is lengthy, Google may cut it short and end up omitting important words. Remember that certain letters take up more or less space. You should also avoid titles that repeat variations of the same keyword.  The HTML suggestions page in Google Webmaster Tools lists missing or potentially problematic title tags.

Meta descriptions provide concise summaries of websites beneath the title tags and URL of a search result. For example, Abstrakt’s meta description here reads, “Abstrakt is an award-winning, St. Louis-based…”

A page’s meta description should be written in an active voice and encourage the searcher to want to click it. It should be directly relevant to the page it describes and unique from the descriptions of other pages. Meta descriptions can impact a page’s click-through-rate on Google which can impact a page’s rank, so it’s important to put effort into creating them.

6. Emphasis on Link Quantity Over Link Quality

Similar to the content quality mistake, digital marketers should not overlook the quality of links. While there are lots of easy ways to get a high volume of links, you should place a higher emphasis on quality.

One link from a popular blog could boost your website’s search engine rankings than countless low-quality directory links. Admittedly, its more difficult to get, but that’s precisely the reason why search engines place such trust in them as they are a reliable measure of the quality of your website.

7. Incorporating too many PDFs

One mistake made regarding PDFs in terms of SEO is that marketers tend to integrate too many PDFs into their website. Don’t get me wrong. PDFs are a great way to provide users with easily downloadable information. But unfortunately, websites don’t track PDF views in Google Analytics. This means that PDFs are usually on a separate URL. Anyone who visits the PDF doesn’t end up clicking on the menu bar or visiting the homepage. The lack of crawling increases the difficulty of seeing whether that content is having an impact on users.

However, hope is around the corner – PDFs just takes a bit more effort. For starters, including keywords in the file name is important to make the content user-friendly and search-friendly. Text-based PDFs are easier for search engines to understand than image-based ones, and this is especially important when it comes to headings. Lastly, keep the file size low and loading time short in order to make the user experience as pleasant as possible.

8. Not Keeping Up to Date with Search Engine Updates

The last but equally crucial mistake that marketers make is lagging behind when it comes to Search Engine Updates. Like most things nowadays, SEO is constantly changing. Sometimes it can seem difficult to keep up, especially if you don’t realize changes are even happening. Google Webmaster Youtube Channel is a great tool to stay up to date.

Another free and useful tool is Google’s Search Console, which can be easily installed on your website. It provides data on your website’s existing presence with Google and highlights any significant issues that could prevent your site from ranking well.