Search engine optimization (SEO) is rated as the most effective tactic for lead generation. In fact, approximately 34% of marketers have deemed it “very effective” as a tactic.

Despite all of the positive feedback on SEO services as a whole, there’s definitely still room for mistakes in there. Some mistakes are more common than others, and it’s usually those that end up hurting an otherwise successful local SEO campaign. To help you avoid those same mistakes, here’s a short list of the most common SEO mistakes that people make.

Not Using Your Customers’ Vocabulary

To the people who don’t work in SEO, it sounds like a foreign language. If you’re working with a client who’s just getting started with SEO, you need to make sure you’re speaking in terms that they understand. Failing to speak with your customers in a way that makes all of the information accessible to them is going to end up hurting both of your businesses.

Glossing Over Keyword Brainstorming

Keywords are one of the most important tools that SEO services offers, and it isn’t utilized nearly enough. Brainstorming for keywords is as simple as looking through a customer’s website and using Google Suggest to come up with phrases that will help generate traffic and quality content. In addition, coming up with keywords without your customer is a huge mistake that you should avoid. After all, you’re helping them generate leads for a business that they run, not you.

Setting up a Sub-Domain Blog

If the focus of your SEO services is providing great content, then your customers should have their own blog either on their actual website or with its own domain name. Hosting blogs through WordPress can be helpful, but there are so many blogs there that it can be difficult to sort through everything and stiff generate the kind of traffic your customer wants. Not only that, but a WordPress blog won’t lead people to your customer’s site, it will only keep them on the blog.

These are just a few of the many common SEO mistakes people make. Don’t let them get in the way of a successful campaign!