SEO ERRORS That Take Away The Search Rankings Of Your Site (SEO Mistakes to Avoid)

There are several SEO mistakes to avoid if you want to maintain your ranking up with Google's adjustments. Keywords are being stuffed. If you want to create additional content, avoid stuffing keywords into your writing by coming up with different methods to say the same thing. This will never help you with your rankings.

The good news is that we've all been there before. SEO is one of those tactics that you can put in place in a matter of weeks, but it takes time to master so that you can compete for high-traffic words and phrases. You're still learning, and with a few tweaks, you should be able to obtain that top page ranking.

In many cases, all you need to do is rectify a few easy errors to begin seeing benefits. To rank your website higher and increase your return on investment, avoid the following SEO mistakes:

1. Site Speed Issues

Slow site speed can dissuade visitors from accessing content on your page. Slow site speed will inevitably cost you valuable SEO traffic. Investing time and effort to get traffic from SERPs is essentially pointless if the page takes too long to load.

Page Load Time The time it takes between when the browser submits the request to the server and when your page fully loads and renders.

2. Analytics are not being used to determine what converts.

It's easy to get caught up in tracking which terms generate you the most traffic, only to be disappointed when you can't rank for those highly competitive, high-traffic keywords. But traffic isn't everything. Lower-traffic terms sometimes convert better since they are more specialized, and obtaining first page rankings for numerous of them might result in a large number of sales.

Tracking it is the only way to find out. Set up conversion tracking for your keyword phrases in an analytics package, then compare them to discover which is giving the best results.

Related: Use Google Search Console to Improve Your Site

3. Your Content Is Too Short

While you don't have to make every SEO-oriented page extremely long, studies show that bloggers who spend more time on content get higher results (the sweet spot is 4–6 hours of labor time, which tends to provide 25% better results).

Experts recommend providing Google and other search engines at least 300 words to work with, though lengthier is usually preferred. According to a recent SERPIQ survey, the first SERP result typically comprises 2,416 words, while the tenth has 2,032.

How to repair it: 

Return to previous content and see if there is anything you can improve to make it at least 300 words. Look for any material or gas and flesh it out, then look at what your competitors have written on the issue to see how you can improve your work. Prioritize longer content on a regular basis in the future. If you can't fit the task into a staff member's day, consider contracting it out (after all, experience, authority, and trustworthiness are three of Google's go-to standards).

4. Google Negative Reviews

When it comes to product or service reviews, one may expect both favorable and bad ones. The overall quantity of reviews, on the other hand, increases social proof for your business and contributes to localized search ranking considerations. While favorable evaluations boost your website's trustworthiness, having solely positive ratings makes it appear suspicious. Simultaneously, multiple clients expressing discontent with your website may drive away traffic.

Possible Fix

You can use negative reviews to build relationships with your customers, which will help you understand your audience and gain a new audience. Posting on social media about the kind of issues encountered and the solutions utilized to address them will boost the credibility of your website.

You can also encourage consumers to publish reviews about your services on industry-specific review sites and social media, and openly acknowledge their inquiries to appear sincere.

5. Duplicate Content Is Involved

Copying information and distributing it elsewhere can harm your rating depending on how you reproduce it.

Although there is no evidence that republishing a blog on a Medium account and linking back to the original post harms SEO, using duplicate meta descriptions, titles, and content on guest blogs can send the wrong message to search engines.

6. Your internal links are not properly anchored.

On the other end of the spectrum, you must also pay attention to your internal links.

When linking to other pages on your website, utilize non-generic anchor text that is relevant. This includes avoiding text-based links like "click here."

How to fix it: When internally linking, utilize the term from the other page as anchor text on the new page. Consider utilizing the anchor text "contact us" when linking to a contact page.

7. Failure to Optimize for Local Search

If you own a business that caters to customers in a certain city or region, you should learn more about local search. Most search engines, including Google, treat it differently than more general keywords.

Begin by including regional keywords into your page titles and meta descriptions. You should also put an address and local phone number on your pages, such as in the header or footer, so that you appear in local search results.

Keep in mind that in order to create trust with main search engines, one must promote its content pages on social networking sites. If you disregard social media, your website may take a step back and cause issues with frequent indexing. So, strive to stay active on social media and distribute your site's content on a regular basis.