The 6 Time Wasters of SEO – STOP Doing These Activities

– If you've had a website for a while you know that SEO takes some time and I'm not talking 30 minutes a day, I'm talking dozens anddozens of hours per week for a really long period of time.

I know it's not what you want to hear but hey, I've got somegood news for you today and I'm going to save you some time.

Hey everyone, I'm Neil Patel and todayI'm going to write down the six time wasters of SEO.

In other words, you need tostop doing these activities.

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Time waster number one.

Checking your rankings dailyor even multiple times a day.

Do you know how often I check my rankings or even my Google Analytics stats? If you're guessing multiple times a day you're wrong.

I check them once a week and that's it, you don't need to know yourrankings more than once a week.

Now my Google Analyticstraffic I do try to check it roughly once a day, sometimesonce every two or three days.

The reason being is I want to be notified if something happens withthe Google algorithm update or I get a hit or my traffic tanks.

Because let's face it, ifyou check your rankings multiple times in a day, it's not really going to do anything.

If you log into GoogleAnalytics multiple times a day it's not going to really do anything, you need to focus on executionand stop wasting your time continually looking at reports.

Here's a easy thing to do.

Sign up for Ubersuggest.

Ubersuggest has free rank tracking.

Go to the dashboard, sign up, add your site, add your keywords, it willnotify you once a week automatically over email, your average rankings for allthe most important keywords that you're tracking, ifthey're moving up or down or how much your improvingand it will even tell you new site errors that it'sfinding from a SEO perspective.

That way you don't need to obsess about it on a daily basis and it willjust do the hard work for you.

Best of all, for free.

Time waster number two, being obsessive about keyword density.

Look, people write content all the time, I hear them always saying like, “Oh I need to put thiskeyword into this H1 tag, “this keyword into title tag, “this keyword into this meta description.

” When I write content Idon't do any of this, I just write content for the user.

I try to create the most appealing title that I want people to click through, read and get hooked.

Just like an author would dowhen they're writing a book or just like a journalistwould do when they're writing a news article.

It's not about keywords, it's about quality content.

Sure if I'm writing about dog food naturally the keyword dog food and other keywords related to dog food will show up in there but it's not like I'mactually manually shoving these keywords in.

Think about the person, do what's best for them and naturally you may put thesekeywords in your title tag, meta description, H1tag, your introduction, and even conclusion paragraphs.

But don't obsesses about itwhere you have to put them in each and every single area.

If it doesn't flow and sound right people aren't going towant to read your content, they're going to go back, right when they're searchingon Google, hit the back button, that's going to send baduser metrics to Google and it's going to hurt your rankings.

The third mistake, building an excessive amount of back links to increase domain authority.

You know I have a ad agencycalled Neil Patel Digital and we get so many people saying, “I want more links “and I want to increasemy domain authority.

” I've outranked sites thathave domain authorities of 80 and 90 with a site that only has a domainauthority of 40 or 50.

I know Moz has created theword, domain authority, in Ubersuggest we usethe word, domain score, everyone has their own version of it.

Google doesn't use domainauthority, domain score, or any of these other metrics.

Sure directionally thehigher the authority the better off you are, but that's not goingto guarantee rankings.

If someone has amazing domain authority and I've seen this time and time again like with the entrepreneurs, the Forbes, the Huffington Post, theyhave all these guest posters creating shit content, you think that stuff's ranking everywhere? No, why? Because the quality sucksversus a small mom and pop writing an amazing articlethat everyone wants to read and share that's going to do way better.

Don't obsess about domain authority, focus on the end experience for the user.

The fourth issue, only focusing on highlycompetitive keywords.

Yes, you know going after these head terms can drive a lot of trafficbut they don't drive sales compared to long tail phrases.

Go to the Keyword ideasreport within Ubersuggest, look at the prepositionsand comparison words as well as the suggests, that will give you keywordsthat are more likely to convert.

Yeah, they won't driveyou as much traffic, but who cares? At least you're generating sales.

You know I was talking toone of my buddies, Mike, at Dr.

Axe, and he runs marketing there.

And everyone knows that, atleast in the SEO industry, Dr.

Axe has lost sometraffic when it comes to SEO and they've got hit here and there for some Google algorithms, but you know what? A lot of that Google traffic hasn't really crushed their revenue, why? Because when someone'ssearching for an article on nutrition of a banana, it doesn't necessarily mean that they're going to convertinto a paying customer when it comes to supplements.

So it's not all about quantity, go after quality based keywords.

The fifth time waster, you're focusing more on desktop devices versus mobile devices.

Did you know that over50% of the searches done on Google are now from mobile devices? It's a huge ranking factor.

So much so that theyhave a mobile-first index and you can see this withthe recent BERT update that Google's putting a ton of focus on content and web design, especially for mobile devices.

So make sure your addingstructured mark up to your site and you're using mobile optimized themes because this will help you doreally well in the long run.

The sixth issue, trying to meetingunreasonable SEO expectations.

Look, if you're justcranking and hammering, putting so many hours in because you're trying tohit a specific time frame, it's just not going to happen.

You don't control when Google reallywants to shift rankings, that's not up to you, it's up to them.

So by you spending doubleor triple the time, it's not always going tohelp you get higher rankings, that's why I don't obsess about Google.

But you know what you should obsess about and I got this from Jeff Bezos from watching an interview of him online, he obsesses about his customer.

He doesn't obsess about Google, he doesn't obsess about his competition, he obsesses about hisclient, his customers.

If you do that and youdo what's best for them, in the long run Google shouldplace you where you belong.

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So don't try to hitunrealistic expectations by obsessing about Google, obsess about your customers because when you do what's best for them, that's when you grow.

Now if you need help withyour rankings, your traffic, check out my ad agency, Neil Patel Digital.

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