The internet is like a jungle. It’s vast, dense and only partially understood even by its experts. The last thing you want to do is get lost in the jungle.
That’s where an SEO strategy is essential. Think of search engine optimization like a series of survivalist tactics. It’s your flare gun to find other people. It’s your navigational tool to reach the highest peak. It’s your means of extracting resources from the untamed wilderness. It is your lifeline out there in the jungle.
In short, SEO is the process of optimizing your website to rank higher in search engine results – making it easier for people to find you online, easier to convert leads into sales, easier to extract every last drop of potential profits from an internet presence.
Without it, you’re another lost soul wandering the jungle and hoping to find signs of life.
In this blog article, we run through the 15 most common SEO mistakes website owners make. From sluggish site speeds to weak content, non-existent keyword research to overzealous keyword stuffing – these are a few traps to avoid as you cut your way through the digital vines.
Sluggish Site Speed
Websites that are slow to load offer several disadvantages. For one, they frustrate your users, leading to high bounce rates and dismal conversion rates.
Secondly, and just as importantly, slow site speeds anger the Google gods. Relatively recently, Google rolled out its Core Web Vitals, metrics that assess user experience based on loading speed, interactivity, and visual stability. Sites that score poorly on these metrics are penalized in search rankings. To put it bluntly: slow speeds = dissatisfied users = low search rankings.
Basically, Google has no interest in directing traffic to websites that take long to load because they don’t interest users.
You have to optimize your pages and your overall site for faster load times by reviewing/implementing your sitemap as well as your URL structure, tags and meta-descriptions. Remove Java-script and flash players from pages that are visited frequently (home page, contact, about) to avoid losing out on potential leads.
Google’s PageSpeed Insights Tool will provide you with a comprehensive assessment of your site’s performance for free. Likewise, visit our page on boosting your website’s speed to leverage our speed optimization process.
A Lazy (Albeit Pretty) Landing Page
Market research by SEO experts at Search Engine Land suggests that 80 per cent of traffic is dominated by only 10 per cent of landing pages. Are you in the top ten percent? Are you converting more than 2 per cent of visitors into sales?
An attractive landing page is not the same as an effective one. You can have high-resolution images, colourful fonts, and flashy design. However, at the end of the day, a landing page needs compelling marketing copy, a great offer and a call to action to be effective. Is your offer compelling? How does it compare to offers by your competitors? Do customers see value in your offer? Review these objectively and take a look at other successful landing pages for ideas.
Poor User Experience
Remember what we just said about Google’s Core Web Vitals dinging sites that present a lacklustre user experience? That doesn’t just apply to site speeds. It applies to your entire UX/UI strategy.
Let’s say that you’ve noticed a decent amount of traffic to your website, but you’re still witnessing a high bounce rate. This is a strong indication that users are leaving your site shortly after visiting it. And reasons for this behaviour are generally due to poor user experience.
Websites that are inappropriately labeled with irrelevant, poorly organized content drive users away. The same goes for sites with garish interstitial ads, messy wayfinding and navigation, visual inconsistency, and a lack of interactivity.
Experiment with the layout, design and fonts of your website with a focus on clarity. Put yourself in the user’s shoes. Guide them to the solutions you offer with a simple, practical, and holistic site experience that clearly points them in the right direction.
Mobile-Friendliness
The vast majority of online users are accessing content from a mobile device. Whether it’s a smartphone, tablet or gaming system, chances are users will discover you online through their mobile device first. Search engines have recognized the trend and prioritize websites that are mobile friendly in response to overwhelming demand by users. WordPress and Google offer mobile -friendly tools to help you streamline your layout and load time for display on mobile screens.
If you’re not yet mobilized, it’s time to get moving.
“404: Page Not Found”
Are there four words that strike more fear in the hearts of website owners? Are there four words that turn a user off faster, forcing them to hightail it for a competitor’s site? If your website is a raucous party, then “404: Page Not Found” is the ultimate party foul.
Broken or dead links on a website will reduce your ranking with search results and make your content irrelevant. If you are making changes to your website, make sure to deploy the appropriate redirects to keep clients informed of the temporary status and anticipating the new changes. Review your URL mapping regularly to avoid this costly mistake which reflects poorly on your business.
Disorganized or Non-Existent Keyword Planning
Those last five SEO mistakes are the more “birds-eye level” stuff for your site. Now, we move on to the granular work of keyword planning, keyword structuring, link structuring, and content building.
First on the docket: bad keyword planning.
There are two main purposes to developing a keyword list. The first is about accuracy: your site should be populated with keywords and phrases that directly relate to the purpose of the business. Keywords are, after all, the bridge between your business and your customers. The second purpose is about notoriety: keywords and phrases that people already search for should be included in a list.
That does not mean going with whatever is most popular – a common mistake in blog content creation. It means honing in on specific keywords that will bring customers who are already interested to your site.
When done correctly, these two purposes support each other in generating traffic and sales to your site. A blog post is usually the place to incorporate keywords and phrases that you want to rank for – but it only matters if you’ve done sufficient research.
Not sure how to do keyword research correctly? Fortunately, keyword planning so far in our wheelhouse that we practically live and breathe it. Visit the link above, and contact us if you get lost!
Keyword Structure Issues
Once you’ve narrowed down a keyword list, it’s time to think about using them effectively.
One of the most common SEO mistakes with keywords is to drop them in a blog or website copy without context or explanation. This makes it seem like they’re not really part of their semantic surroundings – they’re just stuck in there for keyword notoriety. Users dislike this (it’s jarring and can come off as scheme-y), and Google doesn’t care for it either.
Another oversight is the failure to use keywords in meta descriptions, title tags, and headers. Ignoring these important facets of on site optimization is just leaving great SEO on the plate – it greatly reduces the potential ranking of the page.
Poor Internal Link Structure
Internal linking is the practice of linking one page of a website to another page on the same site to improve navigation, user experience, and SEO. And unfortunately, internal linking is often overlooked or misunderstood.
For example, it’s not ideal to link back only to the homepage. Nor is it ideal to include only one internal link per 500-word post, linking back to the homepage with a drop-down menu where the visitor began in the first place.
To start, audit your website to see which pages have the most authority on your site. Then, hyperlink from high-authority pages to less-authoritative pages to even the playing field. There’s more to learn about internal linking than we have time for on this list-focused blog post. But that’s certainly an important facet of it!
An Age-Old SEO Mistake: Weak Content
Search engines rank refreshed, up-to-date content that connects with popular online trends in your field. Moreover, since 2024’s Google Core update, the search engine is more fastidious than ever about promoting genuinely helpful content – and punishing spammy, hastily-churned-out content.
Does your content inform potential clients about your business and your industry? Instead of focusing exclusively on deals and offers, turn your website into a resource for information and expertise on your industry and you’ll quickly establish yourself as a local authority. Establish a content strategy that includes a comprehensive schedule for releasing relevant information regarding your services as well as your industry.
A lot of the time blogs can fall flat because of poor content. At the end of the day, without strong content that resonates with your customers, it will be very hard to generate growth.
Forgetting About Images or Video
To date, there’s no scientific study on whether a picture is, in fact, worth a thousand words. But going by Google’s standards, it’s worth a hell of a lot.
Part of the blog content question involves multimedia like images and video. Images play an important role for readability and SEO score since they improve dwell time and generally keep eyeballs interested in your site.
Google bots will also register the image file, and if it has a keyword-optimized alt tag then it contributes to the overall SEO strategy.
Spammy Backlinks and Keyword Stuffing
A common mistake with blogs is to overuse external backlinks. An average of 3-5 external backlinks per 500-word post is in the optimal range, increasing commensurate with the word count. Any more than that and it verges on spam.
Trying to attach your blog to high-authority sites in your niche can be done many different ways than backlinking to it in every blog article. Furthermore, the days when Google preferred volume of backlinks over quality are long gone. Today what matters is building backlinks of quality in a digestible way throughout the text.
Likewise, website copy that is repetitive, poorly organized and stuffed with descriptive keywords will reduce your ranking with search engines. Google’s algorithms review the frequency of keywords on a page, and if your usage appears suspiciously excessive, your web page will be penalized, making it less visible in search results.
Placing the appropriate keywords prominently in the page title, anchor text and URL can do a lot more for you strategically than indiscriminately peppering your pages with keywords
Poorly constructed URL’s
You’re nearly ready to hit “publish” and unleash this fantastic content into the world. Hold on just a second longer. You wouldn’t mail a letter using a wrong address, right?
A uniform resource locator, or URL, is used by search engines to locate a website or page. Any website address online is considered a URL, but if it’s poorly constructed, search engines will have difficulty finding your content. The same way a postal worker will fail to find an address that is incorrectly marked.
Avoid using alpha-numeric URL’s and choose descriptive ones that can be read easily by a web crawler or a person. Websites and blog platforms like WordPress provide users with an option for customizing their URL’s and permalinks to archived content, which will increase your chances of being found by search engines.
A Lax Approach to Promotion
A blog needs to be promoted and shared wherever possible. Yet, far too often, they sit at the back of a site to gather digital dust The fact is that a piece of great writing is not going to generate a following all on its own.
Obviously, promotion starts with relevant keywords, compelling meta titles and descriptions, and use internal and external links (see above). Additionally, you can share the post across social media platforms, engage with online communities and forums related to your topic, and reach out to influencers for potential backlinks. Also, update the post regularly with fresh content and monitor its performance using analytics tools to refine your strategy.
Duplicate Content
Websites that featured slightly altered content on multiple pages are a search engine’s headache.
If you sell used cars, for instance, including 10 pages of the same model in different colours with slightly different marketing copy will hurt your website traffic. A web crawler won’t know which page to prioritize and your website will be overlooked.
Consolidate this information on a single page. If you sell dresses in different colours, create a single page or subdomain dedicated to each style with a comprehensive list of the colours along with images, rather than repeating the same information across multiple pages, which only confuses a web crawler.
Missing Business Contact information
Search engines rely on your business contact information or NAP (Name, Address, Phone number) to determine the authenticity of your business and distinguish it from others that may be similar in name. And NAPs are a powerful tool in your local SEO strategy, building out local citations that help you get found in your particular geographical region.
Websites that provide a geo-physical address which can be mapped are highly favoured by search engines seeking to provide users with the nearest option. Register your physical business address consistently with as many relevant, local search indexes as you can find, along with online directories and industry associations.
Review and update any existing citations of your business by conducting a thorough search of your address and business name.
Make A Checklist
The most efficient way to ensure SEO quality is to make a checklist of all the focus areas. Like all SEO work, the key to a successful blog is to remain consistent with search engine optimization techniques and track the impact of your keyword selections over 4-6 weeks.
For more SEO tips and strategies on how to manage your blog, contact one of the best SEO consultants today. Also please add Paul Teitelman on LinkedIn when you get a chance for even more updates!
