Search Engine Optimisation, or SEO, is a fast-changing and often misunderstood enterprise, so it’s unsurprising that there are many common mistakes and pitfalls associated with SEO.

We reached out to some of Australia’s leading SEO experts and asked the question:

What is the most common mistake you see in SEO?

In the quotes below you’ll find details on why some of the most common SEO mistakes are:

• Not understanding your target market
• Not optimising for mobile content
• Using outdated SEO practices
• Not implementing SEO strategies

Site owners need to be more mindful and aware of what the purpose of their content is and the type of audience who will be consuming that content, as well as where they need to place it within the site for maximum reach.

The most common mistakes are not understanding the market you are competing in. SEO is changing every day and the vertical aspect of any business plays an important role in determining what side of the equation you should focus your resources on.

I see a huge shift in building content on a scale in recent years which can be beneficial in some categories but doesn’t always work with others. I think having a deeper understanding of what you or your clients offer and how your services, products and content fit together is going to become much more important in the coming years.

It’s still so common for the desktop experience to be prioritised above mobile. In 2018 SEOs, developers and clients have to be relentless about putting the mobile experience first.

Everyone knows the stats about visitation from mobile outpacing desktop and it’s only growing. Yet we still come across sites where the mobile experience is second rate compared to desktop.

One of the most common mistakes I see is digital marketers and content developers not optimising content for mobile. No matter what kind of content we create, we need to ensure people can access and engage with the content from their mobile.

Optimised images, article formatting and a mobile-first approach will help you keep your mobile traffic on your site, and they’ll be more likely to convert.

It’s 2018, and even though Google has warned people, I’m still seeing websites that have all of these really poor SEO practices that might have worked 10 years ago, but people are often suckers for these ‘reach the top of Google for this very cheap price’. They buy into these snake oil things, like link farming, copying content from really obvious external sources and over-optimising keywords so the actual sentence doesn’t even make sense anymore.

The biggest mistake I see is that people still try and retrofit SEO into live content instead of having their content be informed by SEO insights.

People need to look at content as an asset because of the value it drives to the site over time, especially when it comes to evergreen content.

If you have a piece of content crafted using SEO insights, trends data, content amplification trends and solid persona information, the quality and reach of that content will be far more lucrative for your business than if you write something you “happen to think” will work with your audience.

The way that content is placed into the site is also only too often overlooked. Information architecture is very important for SEO visibility and growth. Burying valuable and informative content deep inside your site structure will do no favours for your site visibility and traffic goals.

The most common mistake is lack of implementation! Strategy and planning are great, however it’s execution that gets results.

Two of the main reasons for lack of implementation are:

1. Lack of dedicated resource to implement – Dedicated developer / editorial is not assigned to the project.
2. SEO is not seen as a priority – Tasks get added to the development list but constantly get de-prioritised due to other business development tasks getting priority.