Search Engine Optimization (SEO) comprises of a lot of tools and techniques; however, there are no set rules which one can follow to get the best results. There are many misconceptions which are prevalent and can hurt optimization effort. Many marketing professionals make one big mistake. They learn a few basics techniques and start doing SEO themselves. They fail to recognize that SEO requires advanced knowledge of the latest trends, technologies, strategies, and algorithm changes.
There are no fixed manuals to follow in SEO. SEO champions stay on top of all the latest search trends and know from experience what works and what doesn’t. Good agencies always hire SEO experts and stay away from experiments. They are aware that potential problems will take more time and money to fix. Every client would love to get an affordable SEO package that includes trained professionals in the team.
We now know the first common mistake around SEO, let us take a look at few most common errors and ways to avoid them.
Low-Quality Content –
The ultimate goal of search engines is to provide high quality and relevant information to their users. Search engines like Google try to provide the best possible content to users on its SERPs. There is no way that poor content will find its place there. A common mistake is to put low-quality content. Remember, SEO starts with great content. Without it, there is no SEO.
If you want excellent website ranking, you better invest time, money, and effort to produce high-quality content that answers the user’s search intent. The right amount of research and analysis should go into content creation. Following pointers can be helpful in content optimization:
- Meta tags – Although Meta tags are not visible to users, they are critical for SEO. The search engine looks at the Meta tags to understand what your page contains and uses it for snipped creation on SERPs. Hence, they play a vital role in ranking. Studies have shown that the length of the title and description is crucial.
- Internal links, markups, and headings – SEO experts tend to forget internal links and focus only on external ones. Internal links also play an essential role. Markups and headings contain details about page structure, that helps search engine crawling. Any mistake here means the search engine is not able to read your page. Admittedly, that is not what you want.
- Indexing – Indexing is needed for search engines to find out about your site’s intent. If the site doesn’t allow indexing, users can’t find it in the search result pages. Canonical tags and iframe tags are areas that are prone to errors.
- Redirects and Hreflang- The purpose of Redirects is to direct users from the requested URL to another. As per research findings, you should avoid the most fundamental error with them: a multilingual interface. It’s necessary to apply the Hreflang attribute for the same content in different languages. It’s essential to understand the user’s preference. Hreflang helps search engines to do that.
User Experience Matters –
User experience (UX) is a top priority for search engines. Google always keeps stressing on the fact of how it values excellent user experience. Your site will never rank on Google if it is not giving its user a pleasant experience. Below are some common factors, if missed in SEO, that can impact the user experience.
- Page Load Speed – One of the key UX and ranking factors and should not be left out. Google measures the speed with which websites load, and if yours is slow to load, it may adversely affect your rankings. There may be many factors like wrong indexing, large images, unnecessary scripts running on pages that may slow down the page load. Make sure you check the page speed and avoid errors.
- Mobile-Friendly Content – Mobile usage has grown a lot in the past few years. Google is giving importance to mobile-friendly content. Your website has to be mobile-friendly if you want it to rank. Make sure you use standard resolutions, recommended design methodologies, and test the site performance on multiple devices. It would be best if you used AMP (accelerated pages optimized for mobiles) technology to enhance site load time on mobile devices.
- HTTPS Certificate – User experience can never be satisfactory in an unsafe environment. If your site is still on HTTP, make sure you have SSL applied and move it to HTTPS else Google may block it or display a warning to users. So even if somehow users find the site, they will not enter it. HTTPS certificates assure users that the connection is secure and their personal information is safe.
There are a lot of potential SEO errors that can be detrimental to your website’s performance. However, you can quickly discover and fix them using SEO audit tools and techniques.
