The biggest SEO mistake business owners make

If you have a business website, you may have tried to do some SEO on your own. And if you didn’t see much results, you may have come to the conclusion that SEO doesn’t work. But I can tell you that what the biggest SEO mistake business owners make when trying to do their own SEO is, and it can lead you to frustration and no results.

The biggest SEO mistake is not knowing what keywords people are searching for.

There are a number of reasons this happens. Often times, business owners try to optimize for keywords they use when talking about their business, like industry jargon, which is often very different from what people looking for their business use. If you do that, you may end up getting traffic from your competitions instead of your customers. The average person looking for your business is more than likely using different keywords than you would use, because you are an expert at your business and they aren’t. (Or else they wouldn’t need you.)

Why does this happen? Because people are guessing at keywords, they aren’t doing keyword research OR they aren’t interpreting the data correctly in their keyword research.

What is keyword research?

Keyword research is the process of identifying the actual words and phrases (keywords) that people use when they search for information, products, or services in search engines.

It goes beyond simply guessing what your customers might search for. Keyword research is digging into the data to know what people who want to hire you or buy from you are really looking for.

• What their target audience is looking for: This includes the specific questions they have, the problems they’re trying to solve, and the solutions they’re seeking.
• The language their audience uses: This helps bridge the gap between internal jargon and the natural language of potential customers.
• The popularity of certain search terms: How many times a specific keyword is searched for per month (search volume).
• The competitiveness of those terms: How difficult it might be to rank highly in search results for a particular keyword, considering who else is trying to rank for it.
• The intent behind a search: What the user really wants when they type a keyword (e.g., are they looking for information, trying to buy something, or navigating to a specific website?).

Let me share an example of when I, a person trained in SEO, made one of these exact mistakes. One of our biggest segments we work with in our web design services is authors and writers. We’ve done tons of author website design. So because I’m so confident about what I thought writers were searching for, I optimized a page on this website for “websites for writers” and sat back and waited for the results. And none came. Because I didn’t do any research, what I didn’t know is that while the keyword “websites for writers” has around 2500 keyword searches each month, and has a low keyword difficulty (which is a good combination for SEO), I didn’t consider search intent when optimizing. What are searchers actually looking for when using that keyword? Well, according to the search results, they aren’t looking for web design. The results of that search phrase are websites that are FOR writers, like Writer’s Digest and websites that help writers write. I was never going to break into the search results for that, because my website material doesn’t match the searcher intent that the search engines believe that keyphrase means.

How do you do keyword research?

To avoid making the biggest mistake in SEO, you have to do research, but how? Here are the three basic steps to keyword research.

1. Brainstorming “seed” keywords: Sit down and come up with a list of as many keywors as you THINK people would be using. This is not your actual keyword list, just ideas for keywords.
2. Using keyword research tools: Next, you MUST use a keyword tool to find out data on these keywords. Tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, Moz, KWFinder, and Ubersuggest help you:
   • Generate new keyword ideas.
   • See search volume data.
   • Assess keyword difficulty/competition.
   • Identify related keywords and questions.
   • Analyze competitor rankings.
3. Analyzing search intent: Understanding why someone is searching for a particular term. If your website is not a good match for the searcher’s actual intent, your site is unlikely to be returned for that search query.

How to evaluate keywords

Things you need to know when evaluating keywords include search volume, keyword difficulty, and searcher intent.

Search Volume: This is simply how many searches are being performed each month for that keyword. But this can’t be your only metric. If I sell personalized baby rattles, and I do keyword research and type in “baby”, guess how many searches are done for baby every month? Over 2 million. So it has a high search volume. However, it’s also very competitive, making it unlikely that I could break into those results AND it has a low searcher intent for that industry. If someone types in “baby” they probably aren’t looking for personalized baby rattles.

On the flip side, if you don’t research, you may choose a keyword that people aren’t looking for at all. I once had someone come to me wanting a redesigned website, and went on about how they’d worked so hard to get the #1 spots for several keywords and wanted to make sure I’d maintain that SEO. And they had, indeed they were #1 for all the keywords they choose. The problem: those keywords had no search volume. Nobody was actually searching for those keywords. It’s fairly easy to rank for keywords that people aren’t using, but it won’t gain you any results. Being #1 doesn’t help you if nobody is using that keyword in their searches. If you get to #1 in the search results, but don’t see an increase in traffic, then you can guess that most people aren’t typing that keyword into their search bar.

Keyword Difficulty: How hard is it to break into the results for that keyword. When using keyword research tools, the keywords you research will be given a score based on how difficult it may be to break into those results. The higher the score, the harder it would be to break in. For example, “baby” scores a 65, which would be very difficult. However, “personalized baby rattles” scores an 18, which is fairly low and gives you the opportunity to break into those results.

So your first two jobs are to evaluate are search volume and keyword difficulty. A higher search volume and a lower keyword difficulty are ideal. However, as with my example before about “websites for writers,” those can’t be your only metrics. You must consider searcher intent.

Searcher Intent: This is what people are actually looking for when they use that search term. How do you find this out? Look at the search results for that keyword. Do the top ten or twenty results show business that are like yours? Does it show services or products like what you offer? Do you see your competitors? If the answer is no, then the search engine doesn’t think that people using that keyword are looking for what you offer, and that means you should start over.

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The truth is, you can’t guess at keywords. If you do, you may end up optimizing your site for keywords people aren’t using, keywords that aren’t relevant, or keywords that are too hard. Keyword research is INTEGRAL to making SEO work for you.

Once you’ve learned how to do your keyword research and you know what keywords you want to optimize for, it’s time to learn how to optimize web pages for those keywords, so check out our handy guide on how to do that.

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