Aren’t we all too familiar with how good SEO practices can organically improve your search engine rankings?

Despite that, SEO is not given as much attention as it deserves.

If you want to keep your rankings up in 2017 and beyond, you need to steer clear of the following SEO blunders.

1. Lack of Content Strategy and Optimization

Wondering, why aren’t you seeing any result despite producing excellent content?

Chances are that lack of optimization or a content strategy is probably the reason behind it.

In the absence of a well-thought strategy, your content is likely to sit unread, gathering few likes or shares.

2. Ineffective Keyword Research

Still think keyword research is all about finding popular, low-competition words or phrases?

That simply isn’t the case.

Keyword research in 2017 implies identifying highly-relevant keywords and phrases to help you figure out which topics and sub-topics to cover on your site. Moreover, you need to check your keyword volumes consistently and stay aligned with the phrases your potential customers are typing into Google.

3. Poor URL Structure

f there’s one mistake that can hurt your SEO like no other, then it’s having broken links. They make it arduous for the users to locate appropriate pages, thereby irking them to no end.

Make your site relevant by having as many URLs as necessary. More importantly, make them short and concise with optimized keywords, it will make a lot more sense to the search engines. Jumbled and messy URLs will only lead to inappropriate search results.

4. Neglecting Internal Link Building

The most popular link building strategies included content promotion,creating content thats likely to attract links, digital PR and getting local citations, according to the 2016 State of Link Building Survey.

Ignoring internal link building will result in 90% of your content sitting stagnant on your site.

5. Irrelevant or Duplicate Content

Strong and unique content is still one of the best ways of driving maximum traffic and that s a no-brainer. SEO and good content are inseparable. Moreover, its important to ensure that your content has proper formatting, optimized images, and even video embeds.

Ripping off some other sites original content and copy-pasting on your website will only result in a penalty from Google and you, of course, don’t want that. Throwing up random hashtags in your content won’t do any good either to your search engine rankings.

Final Thoughts

The aforementioned dreaded SEO mistakes can get in the way of achieving your traffic goals. To stay on top of the SEO game, make sure you avoid these mistakes. Doing so will not only aid in driving traffic to your site but will also benefit your bottom line immensely.