SEO is becoming the key factor in the survival and success of businesses in South Africa. A business without a presence on Google will miss out on valuable leads and sales. Many company websites fail to meet Google guidelines without knowing why. This article will discuss the most common SEO mistakes made by business websites in South Africa.

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Keywords are the backbone of SEO. It’s the first step in search engine optimization, and finding the most popular keywords is essential for your SEO Success. Keywords have different search traffic amounts.

EXAMPLE: The keyword “SEO” receives 4400 searches per month in South Africa

Many businesses build their website without considering important keywords to incorporate into their web pages. This makes it difficult for Google to decide which keywords to rank your website on Page 1.

Businesses should use Keyword Research Tools to find valuable keywords in their industry. Google provides a Free Keyword Tool known as the Google Keyword Planner, but there are great paid versions such as UberSuggest. Use the Keyword Research Tools to find targeted and high-traffic keywords in your industry.

Keywords must appear naturally in your website information as well as appear in specific sections of your site. Keywords should be implemented in the following manner:

The primary keyword should appear once in the URL of your web page. Older and more established websites should not change their URL. The URL may contain a lot of link juice. In this scenario, implement a 301 Redirect to keep your link juice.

The primary keyword should appear once in the Meta Title. The secondary keywords should appear in the Meta Description to encourage users to click on your website. It will also promote your click-through rate.

The primary keyword should appear once in your <H1> tag. Secondary keywords should appear in your <H2> <H3><H4><H5> and <H6> headings naturally.

SSL certificates protect information exchanged by the website and the user. SSL certificates prevent sensitive user information from being intercepted, such as credit card details.

70% of websites in South Africa with a co.za domain do not have an SSL certificate installed. Google does not rank websites that are missing an SSL certificate, especially for E-Commerce websites.

• If your website starts with an https://, then it’s secure.

• If your website starts with an http://, then it’s not secure.

You can use this free website tool to test whether your website has an SSL certificate or not: https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/

Ask the web designer or the hosting provider to install an SSL certificate on the website. Hosting companies usually provide a Free SSL certificate for each domain listed on their server.

• Thin content refers to little or no content presented on your website.

• Duplicate content refers to copying information (word-for-word) from another website source.

Thin content sites are websites that do not provide enough written information. Thin content sites contain 50-100 words per page and do not rank high on Google.

Duplicate content sites are seen as spam websites by Google. Google indexes all website information. Copying information from another website source discredits your website. Duplicate content is a setup for failure.

Always use unique and high-quality information on your website and web pages. The more information you add, the better your web page will perform. You can write the information yourself, or you can hire a professional writer to do the work for you. If you decide to use a professional writer, here are 3 programs to check the quality of the work.

Copyscape is a paid service that allows you to check the uniqueness of an article. Sign up and complete a transaction of $10 to check thousands of words. Simply copy and paste your article and select “Premier Search”. Copyscape will scan the Internet and tell you IF and WHERE your article appears. If your article is unique, Copyscape will inform you that the article is unique.

Copyleaks checks the percentage of AI that created the article. Copy and paste your article into Copyleaks, select scan, and it will return the percentage of the content that has been AI-generated. Customers should only accept 0% AI-generated.

Web designers should follow traditional methods when building a website. People respond well to common practices, and user navigation plays a huge role in search engine optimization.

Websites with poor navigation provide a poor user experience. Users who struggle to navigate a website get frustrated and leave. Google examines each interaction between users and websites, and it will not rank websites that annoy users.

Build a simple, traditional website that contains a horizontal menu, a footer menu, and internal text links. Websites follow a newspaper-style layout.

Avoid building a one-page website, as you will limit the number of keywords you can target in your campaigns. Google prefers websites with lots of web pages. Each web page may have to be marketed separately (EG, Product Pages) for SEO and Google Ads.

All websites should contain:

1. Home Page

2. Services/Product Pages

3. About Us Page

4. Contact Us Page

5. Privacy Policy Page

6. Terms and Conditions Page.

You should have a separate page for each service or product you will market.

70% of Internet searches are by mobile phones. It means that most people browse Google using a mobile phone. Websites need to be responsive and adapt to all types of devices such as Laptops, PC, Tablets, and Mobile devices.

Users will struggle to navigate a website that is not mobile-friendly. It will waste the website’s marketing budget and will result in low organic rankings on Google.

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https://mobirise.com/