Top SEO Mistakes You are Making and How to Correct Them

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is critical to a website's success and by extension an organization's profitability. Hence, most businesses or individuals online have some form of SEO strategy to bring relevant traffic to their website. However, there are a few mistakes that could be hampering your efforts.

Here are 10 of them:  

1. Not Creating Engaging Content

You are writing for an audience and if they do not find it useful or interesting, there is a high probability search engines too will rank it lower. An additional benefit of creating engaging content is that it gets shared on social media thereby extending your reach and increasing your traffic further.

 2. Uninteresting Headlines

If engaging content is the key to traffic, then having an engaging headline is the secret to having your engaging content discovered. Try to hook your audience with something important that will make them feel they must click on the link to read your content. You can also use this tool from Hubspot.

3. Not Having a Sitemap

Search engines are logical in nature and like orderly sites. One of the best ways to get the best out of your website is to have a sitemap that details where different content can be found, it definitely helps your rankings and you should get someone to do it for you if you lack the required technical skill.

4. Zero (Or Limited) Social Media Presence

Search engines also check which posts are getting traction and generating buzz on social media. Twitter and Google+ are very useful in this regard while platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, Snapchat, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Reddit and Stumbleupon can get you a lot of direct traffic if you engage with other users effectively.  

5.Not Promoting Your Content Effectively

There is the old saying that 'if you build it, they will come'. This might have been true in the early days of the internet but these days you have to promote your content on social media, to your family and friends,online forums, even on electronic media like TV and radio if you can. Do not hesitate to use any opportunity to promote your content as long as you do not spam or overdo it.

 6. Inconsistent Content Publishing Most bloggers and website owners find it extremely difficult to post quality content every day. However, it is important that you make an effort to update your site consistently be-it weekly, bi-weekly or monthly. I would suggest trying to post weekly or latest bi-weekly, this helps your readers to remain engaged and search engines would also learn to index your new content at the regular interval you have created. Do not abandon your site until it begins to lose followership from people and even search engines.

 7. Ineffective Keyword Research Keywords are pointers to your content as search engines do not use every word in an article for indexing and ranking. Hence, the keywords represent the closest themes of a post. For example this post is about SEO and website traffic. Hence, I should label and tag it as such because they best describe what I am writing about. However, there are times you might want to modify your posts to target less-competitive keywords that can get you the traffic you need. You can use these tools for your keyword research -this is from Google and this is a very popular alternative.
 
8. Poorly Designed Landing Pages There is this saying that goes thus: 'you do not get a second chance to make a first impression'. This is so true for your website,your landing page has to impress and engage a first-time visitor to want more of your website to the point that they feel they have to take action if you are selling something or read more of your content if it is more of blogging you are doing. Make that first opportunity to impress count!

9. Using Boring and Irrelevant Images

 'A picture speaks more than a thousand words', this saying makes it clear why your posts need to have catchy and relevant images to encourage people to view them especially when you are promoting on social media. Do research and use relevant and catchy images for your posts.
 
10. Failing to Track and Analyze Results

This is one of the most important things you can do to improve your SEO and increase traffic to your website. You are making efforts I am sure, it is important to know and improve what works for you and drop what doesn't. This is a continuous process and you should do at least on a monthly basis. This will help you improve and increase your gains which should have a great impact on your results over time.

I hope you find these tips useful, let me know what you think by dropping a comment below and learn more by visiting my super easy guide on making money from blogging. See more SEO mistakes you might be making in the infographic below:

Learn the Anatomy of Internet Memes

Internet memes have become an integral part of communicating on social media. The ability to create or effectively use one could boost your sales and customer engagement.

Learn About the Hidden Value in Long Tail Keywords for Website Traffic

Every serious website owner or manager understands the need for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to drive traffic to their platform. The problem though is that many keywords are difficult to rank for. However, with the use of long tail keywords which reflect how majority of people use search engines, there is a better chance of ranking higher in search results and thereby gaining more traffic to your site or blog.

For example instead of using keywords like 'traffic' 'web traffic' or 'drive traffic' for a post you have written on driving traffic to a website, you could use this long tail keyword: 'How do I drive traffic to my site'. It is easier to rank for the latter keyword than the former short keywords.

Learn more via this infograhic:

Find out Where Your Traffic Coming From

This is a great infographic by Hubspot detailing how most websites get their traffic, it should prove helpful if you are looking to see how you can grow your blog or site.

Jeremy Corbyn Calls for the BBC to Audit Itself over Gender Pay Gap

There is a bit of a controversy at the moment in the United Kingdom after a list of top earners in the BBC showed that men earned more than women across board.

Labour/opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn has added his voice to the discussion. ITV reports:

BBC "needs to look very hard at itself" over the gender pay gap.

The Labour leader said he would join more than 40 leading female stars in signing an open letter calling on the Director General Tony Hall to act.

He told The Andrew Marr Show the treatment of women by the broadcaster was "appalling".

"The BBC needs to look very hard at itself because the levels between the gender pay gap are quite astronomical," he said.

Mr Corbyn said Labour would insist on a gender pay audit of every organisation and would also look at the ratio between the chief executive and the lowest paid staff member of every public sector organisation.

"And the BBC is very much public sector," he added.

JarusHub and HotProForum Raise Standard for Online Debates in Nigeria

Leading career guidance, mentoring and management company JarusHub and its platform for professionals to meet and network Hotproforum.com announced the winners of their inaugural online debating competition on Monday evening.

Posting before the announcement was made, CEO of Jarus & JAN Internet Group, Jarus submitted: "The purpose of this debate is to improve the presentation, articulation and research skills of the debaters, who are from our Career Club. You are a group of young students, graduates and early career professionals. You have done very well. I have always been a fan of debate. At the risk of being immodest, I would say if there is anything like being the father of online debate in Nigeria, I deserve it, for far back 8 years ago, I championed organised debates on Nairaland Politics Section, and today, I still receive kudos for such initiative, which was never sustained when I moved on.

I am happy we have a platform to continue this, although the focus will continue to professionalism - not politics. We are building hot professionals here."

The competition was held between the 4 JarusHub Career Clubs (JCC) hosted on WhatsApp.

In the first semifinal, JarusHub Career Club 2 defeated JarusHub Career Club 4, while JarusHub Career Club 3 defeated JarusHub Career Club 1 in the second semifinal.

This set-up the final between JCC 2 and JCC 3 which held last Sunday with the topic: Agriculture is Fundamental to Nigeria's Emergence as a Global Economic Power: Agree or Disagree?

JCC 2 agreed with the motion while JCC 3 disagreed with it.

Both teams of 3 debaters were at their best but after a 24-hour poll, JCC 2 got 32 votes while JCC 3 30 votes. The winners get a free training slot with JarusHub Academy and a certificate of achievement while all members of their Career Club are eligible for Jarus' widely-acclaimed career guidance book, The Road to Victoria Island. The 2nd team also got consolation prizes.

The organizers have promised new innovations that are in line with their ethos of building young professionals and their capacity to deliver in the work place or as entrepreneurs.

See 100+ Clever Guerrilla Marketing Examples

100+ Guerrilla Marketing examples from Total Identity

These examples are quite creative, businesses need to think of innovative ways to market themselves and their products or services. You are only limited by your imagination or the lack of it.