If you’re relying on SEO to direct traffic to your website, you’ll want to take steps to ensure you’re engaging in effective practices. Unfortunately, many inexperienced website owners make these 12 common mistakes that can hinder their SEO efforts.
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Improperly Optimized Title Tags – Title tags are a major factor in SEO, as they help search engine bots process the contents of your page. Considering that the title is the first thing many visitors read when they visit a page, it’s useful for more than just SEO. Make sure you research keyphrases related to your content and develop titles that contain them.
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Poorly Written URLs – URLs should be easy to read, descriptive, and should include important keywords. A URL should never contain a symbol or number if it’s not necessary for understanding the page’s content. Take extra care when writing URLs so they’re optimized for search results.
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Not Using Internal Links – Internal links help visitors navigate your pages, while also providing search engine bots something to crawl while they parse your website. Establishing a logical hierarchy and structuring your internal links accordingly help optimize pages without requiring any additional effort
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Failing to Use Backlinks – Link building is one of the essential steps of effective SEO, as backlinks provide extra ranking factors to search engine bots. Spend some time researching backlinks that could be valuable to your website, and reach out to relevant sources to try and obtain them.
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Neglecting Metadata – Metadata isn’t the most important factor for SEO, but it can suggest to search engines what a page’s content is about. If metadata is neglected and isn’t included in a website, then some of its potential ranking factors are lost.
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Incorrect 301 Redirects – A 301 redirect is used to instruct search engine bots to follow a different URL than the one typed into the browser. If the 301 redirect is implemented incorrectly, then it can hurt your SEO and lead visitors to a dead link.
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Using Inconsistent Content Formats – Content should be formatted appropriately and consistently if you don’t want search engine bots to struggle with understanding it. Failing to stay consistent with formats like date formats, time formats, h tags and font sizes will make it difficult for search engines to classify and properly rank pages.
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Not Optimizing Website Images – Big, unoptimized images will slow down your website, damaging user experience and your SEO. Take some time to optimize your images by compressing them, resizing them and saving them in a web-friendly format.
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Too Many Ads – If a page is flooding with ads, search engine bots might decide that the page’s purpose is something other than what you intended. This will lead to poor rankings, as the content might not be properly indexed or receive the proper crediting it deserves.
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Neglecting Alt Text – Alt text greatly helps search engine’s readability and understandability. Neclecting to include alt text on pictures could affect your SEO and make your website inaccessible to the visually impaired.
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Outdated Website Software – Not maintaining your website or using outdated software can cause pages to become unreadable or broken. This can severely dent your SEO efforts, so make sure to keep your website properly maintained and updated with the latest software.
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Slow Loading Time – Slow loading times are possibly the biggest SEO killer, as a website with a loading time higher than three seconds will face massive drops in rankings. Take some time to optimize your website for quicker loading times, as this can make a big difference for SEO.
SEO is an important part of having a successful website and you should be sure to avoid making these 12 mistakes so you don’t sabotage your own SEO efforts. If you have any other questions, feel free to reach out to an experienced SEO specialist.