Continuing on with our DMSS series where we discuss a fantastic presentation that we attended at the Digital Marketing Skill Share (DMSS) 2018 conference in Bali: ‘11 SEO mistakes you are making right now’ by Brie Moreau.
Who is Brie Moreau?
Brie is an SEO specialist who has over 10 years’ experience in all areas of digital marketing. Brie is the co-founder of the DMSS conference.
The Workshop Details
Titled ’11 SEO Mistakes You Are Making Right Now’, the DMSS conference explained that the presentation would cover what a good SEO strategy looks like and how you can implement it efficiently. The presentation covered the following topics:
- Google Search Console
- Indexing
- Redesign
- Ranking
- Keyword Research
- Website Structure
- Keyword Mapping
- Content
- Onpage SEO
- Internal Links
- Anchor Text
- CTR
Organic Searches in Google Search Results
Brie started the presentation by identifying what signals Google uses to determine the relevance of a web page for the search query that was entered. This included elements such as: content, on-page SEO, backlinks, web speed, social signals and user engagement. He then presented the statistic that approximately 90% of web pages do not receive any organic traffic from Google – most commonly due to a number of common SEO mistakes.
Jumping into the SEO mistakes
SEO Mistake #1: Lack of Keyword Research
He explained that keyword research is a critical component for SEO when it comes to developing content and performing onpage optimisation. Conducting SEO optimisations without doing any keyword research may temporarily drive traffic to the website, creating a spike of hope in your organic traffic that only drops off with time.
He explained that SEO is the missing ingredient to make your content marketing successful. He then listed two different tools where keyword research can be conducted: Google AdWords Keyword Planner and Ahrefs Keyword Explorer. He identified 3 things to look out for when conducting your keyword research:
- Good search volume
- Low difficulty
- High commercial intent
In doing so he recommended analysing our competitors, using them as references to identify potential keyword opportunities.
SEO Mistake #2: Low-Quality Content
He elaborated the correlation between keywords and developing content and dived into a method that could assist this process. He introduced a search query data visualisation tool called ‘Answer The Public’, which maps keywords suggestions/predictions when performing a Google search. The queries that pop up provide us with subjects for content creation.
SEO Mistake #3: Incorrect Website Structure
The next SEO mistake he highlighted was the organisation of web pages within our websites. He ran through the hierarchy of a website for better search engine visibility and suggested that a website’s content should be separated into silos.
SEO Mistake #4: Keyword Cannibalisation
Here, he linked the association of website structure and the issue of keyword cannibalisation.
He explained that keyword cannibalization is a term referring to having multiple keyword topics on a singular webpage that essentially reduces the relevancy of the page based on user’s searches.
He suggested incorporating keyword mapping, the process of assigning relevant keywords to the different pages on the website that enables Google to find the best and most appropriate page in the search results.
SEO Mistake #5: Short content
He explained that Google loves content and the more content on a page the better. He suggested providing longer form content than your competitor’s websites by providing 50% more information surrounding a search topic, for instance if competitors are writing 500 words you should write 750 words or more on your website.
SEO Mistake #6: Disregarding in-depth on-page SEO
He explained there are 4 groups to consider when conducting on-page optimisation and 95% of websites fall under Group A which entails optimising Title tags, H1 tags, body content and URLs, however he noted that there are additional on page components that require attention and should be optimised in order to gain that competitive advantage over your competitors.
He suggested utilising a software tool known as pageoptimiser.pro, a tool which essentially collates all of the top ranking competitor’s data and indicates whether our websites are over optimised or under optimised for a specific keyword term, providing on page optimisation recommendations. The tool also provides guidelines for content writing. By presenting a content brief based on the recommendations of this tool to your content writers you will be gain a further competitive advantage over competitors.
SEO Mistake #7: Disregarding the Importance of Internal Links
He briefly explained the impact that internal links have on ranking pages in in the SERPS. He also elaborated on the potential damage of incorrectly implementing internal links within a website, which would hinder Google’s ability to crawl and index websites due to the inability to reach important pages on the site.
SEO Mistake #8: Low-Quality backlinks
He outlined the necessity of developing quality backlinks and stressed the importance of contextual backlinks. He continued by using an example of one of his clients creating a linkable asset with long form content using a skyscraper article. He stated that this approach in developing content has led to enhanced user engagement therefore users are spending more time on the web page and has allow links to be generated by users organically.
SEO Mistake #9: Neglect the effectiveness of Google Ad’s snippet
He explained how Google Ads can be replicated to our advantage to increase our click-through rates (CTR). He suggested that by replicating the format of the Google ads in the search results page2 things could happen:
- Your website could steal the traffic from our competitors who are paying for Google Ads.
- Your website could naturally increase in the rankings as Google recognises your high CTR.
SEO Mistake #10: Redesigning without SEO
He outlined that the process of redesigning a website may drastically reduce traffic to the website if no SEO efforts are considered. He announced that 30% to 40% of his services at White Light Digital Marketing agency is retrieving client’s lost traffic after website redesigns. He stressed how important this consideration is and provided us with 4 do nots listed below:
- Do not do any website redesign BEFORE talking to an experienced SEO specialist
- Do not replace content based pages with picture based pages, there is a compromise between design and SEO
- Do not delete pages without checking if they are generating organic traffic
- Do not do a URL migration without assessing the consequences
SEO Mistakes #11: Bonus
Unfortunately He did not provided us with a 11th SEO mistake but did ran through a bonus section that highlight that SEO is fundamental and is not a difficult process. He further explained that everything is hidden in plain sight and can all be implemented with the right tools. He suggested studying your competition, make data driven decisions and keep testing it.
What can we take from this Presentation?
Essentially, from this presentation we can takeaway a checklist on how to rank effectively in Google search results. SEO professionals and SEO newbies from around the globe can take away and utilise this checklist to re-evaluate their current SEO efforts. Brie clearly identified the elements of high-ranking websites and ran through the value of incorporating these components into your current website to ensure greater search visibility.
