Several SEO mistakes exist on the World Wide Web and you should avoid being a victim of these mistakes. The search engine optimization (SEO) mistakes that you must avoid are as follows:
1. Poor Quality Content: You should get rid of poorly written content and hire a trustworthy copywriter for content creation of your web pages. You would not get penalized by search engines if you avoid poor quality content.
2. No Keywords Research: Not looking out for keywords opportunities before implementing an SEO strategy is a bad management practice. Google Keyword Planner is one of the powerful SEO tools and you can use it to get ideas for new keywords. Choosing the right keywords might drive relevant traffic to your website and reduce the bounce rate.
3. Duplicate Meta Tags: Never include the same content in Meta Tags (Meta Description, Meta Titles and Meta Keywords) of different web pages. Google search engine prefers uniqueness and thus we suggest you avoid content duplication in Meta Tags.
4. No Optimization of Relevant Tags: If you do not optimize Meta Descriptions and Title Tags then your website can lose traffic and ranking. Write these tags properly to improve CTR and drive more traffic to your web pages.
5. No ALT Tag in Images: Missing ALT tags in images can decrease the opportunity of driving traffic from Google Image Search. Using ALT tags help search engines to know about the images. Images are always attractive for searchers and could gain higher visibility than the content if they are optimized properly. Refer to SEO Glossary for information about the ALT tag.
6. Considering only Short Tail Keywords: You should always optimize for short tail as well as long tail keywords during your SEO implementation. You can use Google Keyword Planner to receive keyword ideas for your type of content.
7. Ignoring Google My Business: You can lose some customers if you do not have local SEO in place for your business. Sign up for Google My Business account and enter all the required details.
8. Short Content: Create long form content to provide a feeling of trust to readers. The most important thing is that you should keep your audience entertained by providing them everything you know about the topic.
9. No Keywords in Heading Tags: H1 tag should be used just once on each web page. Include relevant keywords in your H1 tags. This practice helps you to optimize your website efficiently.
10. Stopping Website Crawling: This is the case when you experienced an error in robots.txt and search engines stopped crawling your website. There are cases such as adding No Index Meta tag in the HTML code of web page and Google is not allowed to crawl the same. Digital Marketing Boy suggests you make sure that your files such as robots.txt and sitemap.xml are correct.
11. No 301 Redirects during Migration: Big problems for a website can be easily solved if 301 redirection is implemented successfully. This mistake of not using 301 redirections during the migration of your website will result in losing your visitors and all the link juice.
12. Not using Canonical Tag: Not utilizing this tag might result in content duplication for your website. Avoid duplication by including 'rel=canonical' tag in your web pages.
13. No Proper Implementation of CDN: The content delivery network (CDN) improves the speed of the website. You will lose visitors to your website if the content on CDN is blocked.
14. Having Slow Website: You will observe traffic loss and decrease in conversions if you have a slow website. The reasons for high page load time could be using a lot of plugins, not minimizing CSS and JS files, not optimizing images or not reducing server response time. Analyze the speed of your website with the powerful SEO tool 'Google Page Speed Insights'. This tool provides you recommendations on how to improve the speed and user experience of the website on mobile and desktop.
15. No Customized 404 Page: Consider that the user clicks on the website link that shows a 404 error. Here it is important to create a customized 404 page to provide a pleasant appearance to the visitor. This will also help you to minimize the bounce rate.
16. No Content: There are websites with great design but no content. You can attract more visitors if your web pages include long form content. Always collaborate with your designer and leave space for content on a web page.
17. Poor Sitelinks Management: Optimize each web page of your website in such a way that your organic sitelinks appearing on SERP are interesting.
18. Not Mobile Responsive: This is a must to consider in your SEO strategy otherwise your website could lead to a high bounce rate or traffic loss. Digital Marketing Boy suggests you use designs that are mobile friendly and these you can find on WordPress or Blogger platform.
19. Mismanagement of Outbound Links: Avoid passing link juice by placing rel=nofollow tag for the external links from your web pages.
20. Broken Links: A website with multiple broken links can lose traffic and Google might not rank you higher in search results.
21. Underscores in URLs: This is considered as a bad SEO practice and should be avoided. It is difficult for search engine crawlers to understand URLs containing underscores.
22. Query Parameters in URLs: Always keep URL structure simple and it is considered as a bad practice if you include query parameters in URLs. It is very hard for Googlebot and users to understand such URLs.
23. Quick Results Expectation: It is not possible to expect immediate results in search engine optimization (SEO). Google updates its algorithm regularly and thus SEO experts modify their SEO strategies. SEO is an ongoing process and be patient with your techniques.
24. No Tracking: Working on SEO without tracking your data is a big mistake. Sign up at Google Analytics and start getting insights about the traffic to your website. You can also set Goals to analyze conversions from different campaigns. Digital Marketing Boy recommends you use Google Tag Manager where you can manage all tags used for website tracking.
25. No Hreflang Tags: This tag is placed in the head element of your code and having the Hreflang tag helps you to increase the time spent by visitors on your web pages. Tag is used for websites that are translated into multiple languages.
26. No HTTPs: Website with HTTPs is protected by key layers and Google encourages you to use the same. You need to install a security certificate on your server for the implementation of HTTPs. Lastly, redirect all your HTTP URLs to HTTPs.
27. No Social Media Elements: If you ignore Social Media elements on web pages then you will reduce the scope of visibility, recognition and reputation of your brand. As per the structure of your website, place the social media icons to make the content shareable on various platforms.
28. Not using Webmaster Tools: Analyze the keywords rankings and improve the visibility of your website by signing up for Google Search Console. Add a property in this platform and the easiest way for verification is to add an HTML tag.
29. Not Considering Bing and Yahoo: You might lose opportunities for engaging new customers if you do not consider Bing and Yahoo for SEO optimization. Register your website in Bing Webmaster tool and start optimizing.
30. Neglecting Guidelines: Do listen to an SEO expert who is handling your website optimization. This will help you to follow the search engine guidelines and make your website rank higher in the competitive market.
31. No Blog in Website: Complete your SEO strategy by including a blog on your website. This will assist you to gain trust in your business.
Be sure that you use white hat SEO techniques and refer the above points to correct all your mistakes.