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23 Common Mistakes To Avoid During Website SEO

by Alok K. Web Desginer, Digital marketer

The undisputed ‘boss’-Google has delegated supreme powers to the ‘content and its quality’ as per its latest incarnations (updates). And as this happened, it is no surprise to see a whopping amount of content coming up in no time.

Again, with a great deal of content being produced, published and marketed online every second, and the consumers finding it easy to get befitting results for their queries, you could yourself imagine the kind of competition being created in terms of grabbing your audience’s attention.

Is it the scenario which demands ‘strategic and quality SEO’?

I bet you got it right. The quoted terms could be the keys to help your audience find the most suitable answers to whatever the audiences have been searching.

And SEO too is not what it was during its birth. Marketing masters are aware of the fact that it has gone through a remarkable progress since its early days when keywords were the ultimate bosses. But with evolution and about 2 trillion searches on Google coming up every year, SEO of the current times is all about user-friendly content and convincing the customers for your content’s perfectness.

But is there something known as a ‘perfect content’? How do you judge the content to be perfect for both the human users and search engines?

It is, when your content contains fewer mistakes than others. Of course it is common to make mistakes, but the good news is, mistakes are avoidable.

Here is a list of few SEO mistakes that you could avoid in your course for a better outcome to your labor.

Not Having A Proper Sitemap:

Websites demand both HTML and XML sitemap, and there are various reasons for such an action. Some of these are as listed below:

· The clear the goal or purpose of a website

· Speak for the website’s hierarchy and architecture etc.

· Forbid duplicity of data

· Minimize the number of steps that entailed to get to one page from another

Inadequate Or Nil Social Media Presence:

Good content, but for whom? Audience for sure!

How do you get an audience free of cost? Simple! Through social media. And mind you! If you fail to get a pertinent presence on social networking sites, you could be wasting a very useful opportunity that works marvelously well at almost no cost.

Content Development Around A Single Keyword:

They were ‘prehistoric’ days of SEO when you optimized webpages around a single keyword, for which you wished to obtain ranks. However, if you think of such an act in present, you not only mar the user’s experience on your website but also make it ineffective for search engines.

Be cautious. Never optimize pages for a single keyword. Instead, content that is distantly related to the keyword could also serve your purpose.

Disregarding The Past Content:

So what if you created quality content in the past. If you haven’t touched it even once after its first publish, you have already wasted an opportunity.

However, there is still room for improvement. Unfold you analytics. Find the best and worst delivering pages (blog posts), which could possess some evergreen topics. Follow it up with a thorough keyword research and discover ways to update the existing content for a better outcome in rankings.

Mobile Users Are Perfect Players:

In this era of smartphones, if your content isn’t mobile-friendly, I am sorry! You have delivered a negative impact for the users.

Ensure your site and content to be mobile friendly; something which could work well even with the small (but very effective) mobile devices.

Site-Speed Un-Optimization:

Faster sites enjoy better traffics and there is no second thought to this. Get hands-on tools such as Google PageSpeed Insights or WebPageTestto access your site speed score.

You may come up with solutions such as minifying JavaScripts, optimizing images and controlling browser cache, if you have a snail-speed website.

Forgetting Inclusion Of Helpful And Relevant Links:

Good! The job to attract the audience with quality content is achieved. How about moving a step further and including internal links to keep up the engagement of the people?

You could cash on this opportunity to redirect people on other parts of your website. Additionally, anchor texts could be enhanced to expand visibility through keyword variations.

Forgetting The Imperative External Links:

Similar to internal links, external links could always do their bit to provide some appropriate and helpful content to the users. Ensure that external links redirect them to new windows, so that it is easy for them to even pose interest to your posted content too.

Posting Content That Is Too Hard To Absorb:

There are two situations:

· One, the content is easy to understand and keeps the reader bound to it

· Two, you do too much to mar its effect

Keeping this in mind, your content with bigger blocks and paragraphs, with too flowery a language etc. is most likely to get ignored, unless you offer it some heavenly appeal.

Overlooking Image Optimization:

Among the visual elements on your website, images are an imperative aspect to impact the experience of your users. To make sure that your page loads in speed, optimize the size of the image for each screen size.

Lack Of Uniqueness For Content:

No wonder you could get an astonishing response from a fresh, crisp content, but using it twice could mar its effect to a great extent. Mind you! You would never be able to fool the search engines and could even be penalized for the duplicity of content.

As a precaution, keep changing the title tags and meta descriptions for pages. Also, for the whole-page content, repurposing your matter could also offer it a completely distinct outlook.

URLs or Site’s Structure Going Un-Optimized:

Never leave the title of the page or post as the URL. This lengthens the URL, making it ineffective for the search rankings.

You could also avoid this by keeping the URLs short, simple and optimized through keywords. Also, ensure to keep your URL consistent throughout your site for a better experience.

Disregarding Redirecting Or Broken Links:

You might possess broken or redirecting links that redirect users, instead of directly linking them to the target page. Neglecting these links could be costly enough.

Identify the broken or internal links through a technical audit and update these for a better user experience for your site.

Forgetting To Inspect The Redirect Rules For A Site:

For websites that have numerous redirect rules, there’s always a chance to improve the user experience through the removal of redirect chains and errors. Inspect the redirect regulations to ensure proper usage of 301 and 302 redirects.

Offering Too Much Attention To Meta Keywords:

Google does not use meta keywords and these are a mark of spam on Bing. Therefore no need to add meta keywords to your site. Even if it is necessary, restrict them to less than 5.

Overlooking Analytics Or Mishandling Metrics:

With data, you could not only measure your marketing efforts but also inform these. Neglecting or not using the analytics report properly could be costly offence for your business.

As a caution, use appropriate metrics to inform the content and SEO strategy. You could also use tools such as Google Search Console or Bing Webmaster Tool to know better of what people actually search for.

Forbidding Crawling Of Your Site:

As simple as you would have understood. If your site blocks search engines, be prepared to miss your content in the search results.

Solution? Simple! Never block your site from search engines, for robots.txt file or even a ‘no-index’ meta tag.

Disregarding Local SEO:

Almost all the businesses could catch advantage of the local SEO and visibility. In any case, your business should maintain and optimize the Google My Business listing.

Not Paying Attention To Other Search Engines:

As already mentioned, the boss is Google; no doubt. But would you neglect other search engines- at least those which are within the social media channels? You should never!

Measure your actions and optimize the content for other search engines such as Bing and Yahoo etc.

Not Ticking The ‘Quality Backlinks’ Column:

It could be true if you know the link building and back linking process to earn bad reputation to your site. However, if you have quality Backlinks, this could be an important factor to bring rank to your content in the search engines.

Possessing Lots Of Tags Or Blog Categories:

With a tag category or blog, in comes a page that could be listed by the crawl bots. If these tags or categories do not have a considerable content backing their name, be prepared to experience disappointment in terms of search rankings.

Do not keep tags or categories that have ‘slight’ content. Also, if necessary, re-categorize or re-tag the existing ineffective content to a more robust and effective content.

Misspellings And Content Errors:

Sometimes, it is not the technical errors that mar your credibility. Keep track of the content to avoid these grammatical errors etc. and get better results in SEO.

Targeting The Audience Inappropriately:

When you create content or perform SEO for a site, it could be for a specific set of audience. And when you go wrong in terms of targeting your audience, it could cost a great deal to affect your site’s rankings.

These are a few common mistakes that are prominently seen. Needless to mention, these mistakes could be costly for your website’s ranking, no wonder how good your services tend to be. And you never need any extra effort or time for this.

Get acquainted with the points well and keep track of these when you perform SEO. You never know, a single erroneous step and you find huge discrepancies between your anticipated and actual outcomes.

You can contact Rankon Technologies, a digital marketing company, for the best SEO Services in India.

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