No doubt you’re running to keep up with a new Google search algorithm every couple of months. Business owners and marketers all across the board love getting frustrated, confused, and even panicky when their seemingly overnight plunges in rankings make them so. So, why is it so darned hard to keep up?

• Lack of transparency: Google only occasionally shares the details involved in its algorithm updates. Even big updates, such as Penguin and Hummingbird, were disclosed with vague statements that SEO professionals had to speculate upon for what actually changed. This takes some time as the SEO community decides which factors to alter and which ones not to change based on the changes that occurred.

• Fast updates: It is changing at a pace that has never been witnessed before. Google reports it issues thousands of updates in the span of just one year. Some are utterly inconsequential; others quietly changed how Google’s core search algorithm functions, so ranking websites accordingly.

• The competition is going to be keen: With the large companies trying to rank top in Google, failing to know or miss one or two updates may make it leave the competitors’ way ahead of you. You will require strict monitoring with regards to Google’s update to stay ahead of the competitors in the market.

If the keywords you are using are inappropriate, then the content gets lost there. That is kind of like writing a great book and then putting it on the shelf.

It does not matter whether you have the best blog posts, videos, or social media content; without proper keywords, you are invisible, and all efforts then lead to failure.

Probably the most frequent mistakes are targeting a whole lot of short-tail keywords that appear super competitive. They do bring a lot of traffic, but usually they are very general terms and those conversion rates are much lower.

On the other hand, trying to target extremely niche keywords can bring you search volumes that are just extremely low and in turn extremely limited audience reach.

The wrong keyword choice can bring along lots of disadvantages in the process of SEO:

• Wasting valuable time and money: You may have spent months ranking for a long-tail keyword but end up making little from it since you are competing with brands that have huge SEO budgets. It is part of the reason why most small businesses fail to reap returns from their investment in SEO.

• Lack of proper Targeting: Ironically, the short-tail keywords are very broad. Thus, though they can also become good traffic drivers, the traffic which is going to arrive at your website is not the one which you wish for. Low conversion rates along with high bounce rates-all damage your SEO in the longer run.

• Frustration: Most of my clients come to my desk after months with a failure to rank for short-tail keywords. It becomes understandable the frustration that follows. It becomes easy to give up when SEO makes no difference.

But don’t worry-that won’t be you. Now that we’ve covered the pitfalls, let’s take a look at how to approach this strategically.

• Accuracy: Because it is a product from Google, the data is very accurate and right from the most used search engine.

• All the detailed info: in it, Google Keyword Planner provides keyword recommendations and search volume along with the competition for each keyword.

• Ad Bonus: In case you are going to run Google Ads, then it comes with the bonus to directly start shifting from research to creating an ad campaign.

Without optimizing the title tags, you are leaving behind hidden treasures. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you haven’t provided relevant content on the pages since search engines will avoid viewing pages if title tags are not according to best practices of SEO. Fewer clicks mean lower traffic and ultimately do not convert visitors into desired actions. Think of how much time and efforts you spent on a blog post, but it still didn’t hit the bull’s eye with no first glance at a glance.

A poor meta description can be really a disaster. Here are three looses:

• Poor CTR: A vague or uninteresting description does not encourage users to click on your link. That may lead to lower CTR. It directly affects your relevance because of which the search engines make an estimate of relevance regarding your content.

• Low Organic Traffic: Missed potential traffic and the potential subsequent conversions every time a visitor avoids your site because the description is weak.

• Brand becomes invisible: If visitors are constantly ignoring your posts, then your brand fades out of mind, and you find it difficult to become authoritative and eventually trustworthy in your niche.