Top 3 SEO mistakes small businesses make

I’ve been working with a wide variety of clients over the past few months since I decided to do freelance SEO full-time and basically become a one-woman digital marketing agency.

I’ve worked on websites for small and medium-sized companies across a range of industries including higher education, cabinet manufacture, commercial window cleaning, landscape gardening and more.

Working on these sites, I’ve been surprised by how many are missing out on the same kind of SEO elements. These particular elements are seen as quite basic factors that can help your business rank, improve the user experience, and improve click through rates in SERPs.

Luckily, these issues can be rectified pretty easily and can have a really positive impact on your site’s performance and rankings. So without further ado, here are the top 3 SEO mistakes I keep seeing small businesses make over and over again.

1. Not implementing redirects

Issue: A lot of sites delete old pages or change the URL without adding a redirect. This could mean people can still try to access that old URL but instead of being greeted with any content from you, they see a 404 error page.

Solution: If the page has been permanently deleted or moved, you should add a 301 redirect to the new URL. This will redirect any visitors away from the old broken URL and to the new URL instead. Alternatively, if the page is just down temporarily, you could add a temporary 302 redirect instead.

2. Not using meta descriptions

Issue: While meta descriptions don’t necessarily impact on SEO rankings, they can act as mini adverts for your business in the SERPs and increase the click through rate of your site’s listing – so they are definitely worth using.

Solution: Take the time to write unique meta descriptions for your site. As the name suggests, your meta description should describe the content of the page, include your target keywords, and maybe even a call-to-action if there’s space. They should be around 155 characters long – I always use this SEO tool to check the character length.

3. Not using an SSL certificate

Issue: Security is a top priority for people and search engines alike. Without a valid SSL certificate users will see an unsecure message in the address bar of your site which can reduce user trust. Search engines will also use a HTTPS version as a ranking signal so it can affect your ranking performance.

Solution: The fix for this is quite simple. Buy and install an SSL certificate! A lot of hosting packages now include SSL certificates as standard so you may have one already and just haven’t installed it yet. Once your SSL certificate is installed, make sure that you redirect all HTTP versions to the new HTTPS version to avoid any duplicate content issues.

Some people think SEO is some abstract thing but sometimes you just need to get the basics right and clean up any technical issues to get massive gains!

If you need help with SEO for your North East-based business, get in touch.