Common SEO Mistakes to Avoid

Common SEO Mistakes to Avoid

Most users never go beyond the first page of the search results, with the top three results getting the maximum clicks at around 60%. Optimisation mistakes hurt rankings and conversion rates. Therefore, it is crucial that your site is SEO compliant.

SEO compliance is all about showing search engines a website that is built to the same standards that they have identified as “best practice”. If we can present a technical compliant website, we are making it easier for search engines to navigate and interpret our site.

SEO compliance is an ongoing and continuously changing process. Read on to find the most common SEO mistakes to avoid on your site.

13 Common SEO Mistakes to Avoid

1. Keyword Stuffing

Keyword stuffing is the indiscriminate use of keywords, so that the content looks unnatural. Take a look at this example –

The Computing Australia Group provides coding services in perth. If you are looking for coding services, contact our coding services department. A coding services specialist will speak to you.

Keyword stuffing can have the opposite effect to what you intend. Search engines will penalise your site for keyword stuffing as it lowers content quality. Search engines consider keyword stuffing as spammy content and can cause your site not to rank at all.

2. Broken Links

Broken links will increase your bounce rate, as visitors will leave your site within seconds. Broken links also prevent search engines from indexing your page or website. Both these will lead to low rankings.

3. Inferior Content

Google has time and again mentioned that content is king and has content quality guidelines in place. Inferior and irrelevant content can cause your site to get downgraded in the SERPs. A common mistake many content writers make is writing for Google rather than writing for users.

Misleading headlines are another distasteful tactic-cum-mistake. If your article title says “How to change your life with this secret tip” and the content is about the importance of drinking water, readers will bounce off your page within the first few lines.

In the long run, if users don’t find your site useful, Google will know and push your site down in the search rankings.

4. Duplicate Content

Content that is copied from other sources will be penalised for plagiarism. You need to research your topic thoroughly, but form your own conclusions and use your own words.

Another common mistake is duplicate content on multiple pages of the same site. Duplicate content and pages lead to low user experience and low rankings.

5. Issues with Title Tags and Meta Tags

Title Tags and Meta Tags allow you to create unique and tailored links to attract visitors. This is a much-ignored art as meta tags are not considered as a direct ranking factor. However, missing tags can prompt Google to create one for you automatically. This can lead to a mismatch of your content and search terms.

CMS like WordPress also create default tags, leading to duplicate tags for multiple pages.

6. Linking not optimised

A weak linking structure causes poor user experience and will affect site rankings.

Linking to sites with low authority, broken links, page crawl depth more than three clicks, and nofollow attributes are the most common mistakes that happen with links.

In general terms, a site is considered high-authority when it has a large number of high-quality external links. A high authority site is trusted by users and search engines. Examples – Wikipedia or Google. Websites with few inbound links are considered as low- authority.

Ensure that these common errors are kept in check through continuous monitoring and maintenance of your site.

7. Not optimising for the right keywords and search intent

A common mistake that happens with selecting keywords is selecting the wrong keywords. This is especially true for long-tail keywords. Long-tail keywords can get you a high conversion rate if you are using the right combination of words. Keyword research is essential to ensure that you are using keywords optimised for search intent too.

If the search query was “Web development company in Perth”, the user is mostly searching for web developers around Perth with an intent to hire. To answer the search intent of this query, you must provide details about the services offered and the USP of the web development company.

8. Not investing in mobile-friendly websites

Mobile phones have already taken over desktops as the preferred device for internet browsing. If your website isn’t responsive and mobile-friendly, you could lose a lot of potential leads. A site that takes more than 3 seconds to load can increase the bounce rate. Google has now implemented a mobile-first indexing algorithm as well.  So, not meeting the criteria for a smooth mobile experience will make your site rankings go down.

9. Unformatted blog posts

A long blog post without paragraph breaks and subheadings can make the readers feel overwhelmed. Formatting the text is a crucial aspect of enhancing the user experience. For example, using bold for headings, using italics for quotes, using different heading tags depending on the significance, etc., will help users read and interact easily.

10. Images are not optimised

A website packed with big images takes a long time to load. When you don’t add alt texts to the images, the users will be confused and might skip past them. Avoid using images unless they add to your content value.

If you are a clothing and fashion business, for example, you will need to display images. Using thumbnails will be helpful to show smaller versions of the images. If the users want to see the bigger version, they can click on the thumbnail and view it in high quality. Ensure the images have descriptive alt texts before uploading them.

11. Not using social media to promote blog posts

Social media is one of the best ways to solidify an online presence. They are a powerful tool to drive traffic and create links. Though it is not necessary to have an active account on all the popular social media sites, make sure you are active on a platform that’s best suited for your target audience. Promoting and linking your sites on social media platforms will gain the attention and trust of a wider audience.

12. Not publishing blog posts regularly

Consistency is vital to bring in more traffic. You don’t have to publish a new post daily or weekly. As long as you publish at regular intervals, your customers will keep coming back to read new posts. And when Google comes around again to crawl your site, finding a new page means your website is active and kicking!

13. Ignoring Site Performance Issues

Any page that takes longer than 3 seconds to load is going to cost you visitors. That is the average time a user expects for a page to load. Page speed is crucial for SEO and user experience.

Not optimising your pages for mobiles is another mistake as the future of internet becomes increasingly mobile dependent. Our web designers in Perth can help you with it.

Optimising your site is a continuous process. But you can start with fixing these most common 13 SEO Mistakes to Avoid and move on to the more complicated ones. Ensure that you are following the right methods to fix errors and be SEO compliant at all times. The Computing Australia Group’s SEO Perth team can help you with creating a strong Search Engine Optimisation strategy. Talk to our specialists to know more.

Jargon Buster

Nofollow Attributes – a value assigned to metatag instructing search engines not to follow an outbound link.
Long-tail Keyword – three or four keywords or a key phrase that is more specific than a single keyword.
Page Crawl Depth – the number of clicks to reach a specific page.
CMS – stands for Content Management System. It is a software application for creating and managing enterprise and web content.

Updated on 09/07/2021
Updated new points for 13 Common SEO Mistakes to Avoid section