7 common online marketing mistakes you should stop making right now!

Here’s some really common online marketing & SEO mistakes that business owners make all the time and is why you should use professionals where you can afford it. Mistakes like these cost your business customers! How many of these mistakes are you making?

1. Spending too much time looking at competitor websites and no time on your own site.

Many business owners I speak to spend hours each week looking at what competitors are up to but do nothing proactive to improve their own web presence. Spend time improving your own website instead. You can’t control what competitors are doing so stop worrying about it. You can however, control where you focus your time and attention. Resolve today to spend at least twice as much time on your own web presence as your do looking at competitor websites.

2. Fail to dedicate time every week to marketing your business.

I always advise new clients that they need to set aside dedicated time each week to spend on marketing their business and their online marketing efforts in general. New customers don’t just happen (well sometimes they do) – a planned, strategic approach to marketing your business online will really give you the edge over the competition.

3. Think that setting up your website and online marketing is a one-off project.

Sorry, but online marketing is a process not a project. If you’re going to succeed online, it’s going to take more than just a website. Once you actually have a website, you then need to focus on generating traffic, getting conversions and establishing trust and relationships online.

4.  Too much focus on one strategy

News flash, there’s no magic bullet that will make your website successful. There will however be one or two dominant strategies that will well for your business or market. If you’re only focussed on one “magic bullet” then you make miss out on the rest.

5. Keyword stuffing

Stuffing your website full of keywords because that’s how you showed up in search engines back in 1998 doesn’t work any more so stop doing it!

6. “Flash” or animated website intro pages

Having a flash intro page on your website is a big no-no. Flash doesn’t work on a lot of mobile devices, it doesn’t work on any computer without flash plugins installed and its one more roadblock before visitors actually get to your site and search engines hate flash. Flash intros may have been cool in 2001 but not in 2010. If you have a flash intro on your website, get rid of it ASAP!

7. Making a website that reads like a brochure

Your website isn’t a brochure. You don’t simply hand a prospect a brochure in a sales meeting and they jump on board. Your website needs to appeal to your target market. It needs to speak their language. It needs to solve real world problems that your customers have and needs to sell the benefits of your business and your products.