Here are some of the most common SEO mistakes that could undermine your online presence and how to avoid them in simple steps.
It is easy to make mistakes when doing SEO for a website . I’ve even caught myself making silly mistakes here and there. That said, it is important for webmasters to know what some of the bad things to do are when it comes to SEO.
Sites without errors have a better chance against the big guys. Sites that have a lot of backlinks, but have some markup issues, can climb search results quickly when SEO problems are fixed. Fortunately for webmasters, most of these errors are extremely easy to fix and can be completely eliminated in a matter of minutes.
For those with search engines that regularly crawl their sites, the changes can be made almost instantly from the search engine’s side. Those with slightly slower crawl speeds will naturally have to wait longer, but the changes will have their benefits over time. I want to also add that this article will reflect changes in SEO over the last few years as meta keywords, for example, are definitely not as important as they once were.
Here are the most common SEO mistakes and how to fix them:
The Problem
You have filled an entire page with nothing but images OR you are using development methods that are not crawler-friendly, such as a site that uses nothing but Flash. The search engine has no text (or otherwise) to read.
You could have a well-written, keyword-rich article that can be beautifully displayed in flash or images, but the search engines may not be able to read it. Hence, you will not rank very well for your keyword-rich article.
The Solution
According to Google’s Official Webmaster Guidelines,Â
” Try to use text instead of images to display important names, content, or links. Google’s crawler does not recognize text contained in images. If you must use images for textual content, consider using the ALT attribute to include some descriptive text words .”
Also, I would recommend that you opt for more and more plain text on your website. And just because it is called plain text does not mean that it has to look plain. There are some very beautifully designed sites that are easily readable by search engines. You do not have to sacrifice beauty so that search engines can crawl your site.
The Problem
You could have a great web page on your website with a keyword-rich description about say strawberry cheesecake. You go into detail about how wonderful and deliciously moist your cheesecake recipe is. Your URL, however, only says www.somesortofsite.com/node61. Search engines give weight not only to the URL, which should somehow describe your site, but also to the slug, which in this case, I have called node61.
The Solution
Get a URL that describes your site. If you have a website about affiliate marketing, for example, try to get something like https://affiliatemarketing.com. If you write an article about affiliate marketing tips, insights, or anything else, make sure that the slug somehow represents it. There is a lot of ways to do this depending on the content management system you are using. You can set up WordPress to automatically give you a descriptive slug based on your article title or you can also manually input your own slug.
The Problem
You are spending too much time researching and looking for the BEST keywords to use in your meta tags.
The Solution
Don’t spend too much time on it.
According to Neil Patel, co-founder of Crazy Egg and Hello Bar:
“Meta keywords are no longer relevant in today’s SEO. Google might decide to change the rules in the future, but for now, you shouldn’t waste time on it.. If you are a WordPress user, you don’t need to add any other tags you feel are relevant to your content“.
While there are still many webmasters who think otherwise, they are definitely not as important as they once were. Now, however, meta keywords hold much less meaning than they used to. I have to confess that I still put information into those neat little metadata fields, but I don’t spend nearly as much time on them as I once did. You shouldn’t either. Grab a few quick tags and a cute little description and call it a day. Basically, just set it and forget it.
The Problem
No “alt tags” on your images.
The Solution
Add alt tags to each of your images. This way, you provide search engines with information on what the photo is about. You don’t have to describe the entire image, but at least put something descriptive there!
According to Google:
“…If you must use images for text content, consider using the ALT attribute to include few words of descriptive text“
Everyone likes to know what’s in a picture, even if they can’t see it. Many people don’t have the time to put alt tags on every single little icon or bit of design. You don’t really need alt tags on ALL images, just the important ones. The topic of alt tags is becoming more and more controversial, but it doesn’t hurt to add them and personally, I’ve noticed a difference since adding them.
The Problem
Everything on your site is HTML. You love HTML and can’t get enough of it.
The Solution
If your site’s design is in HTML, you’re committing a major development sin. Your site’s design should be written in CSS. Why is this a problem? Search engines can have a hard time differentiating what is design and what is content if your site is written strictly in HTML.
Another difficulty faced by those whose sites are not in CSS is the meticulous process of making changes to a layout.
The Problem
Your site has no backlinks.
The Solution
A site’s on-page SEO really helps, but it’s the off-page SEO that will bring it to the top. Websites need backlinks and quality backlinks.
According to Patel:
“When deciding how to rank your website, Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search engines look at how many links point to your site (and the quality of those links)“.
“The more high-quality, trusted, and authoritative sites that link to you, the higher your blog posts and sales pages will appear in search engine results pages“, he added.
In fact, one of the most important parts of SEO is backlinks. It is important to also insert keywords into your backlinks. It is important for backlinks to seem natural or at least appear natural, so webmasters must be careful not to build too many backlinks at once.
Too many backlinks in a short amount of time look suspicious, and sites have actually been penalized for it. Take it slow.Add a new backlink here and there. Going slow gives you plenty of room to dabble a bit – to see what works and what does not without a huge time or money investment.
The Problem
You picked a great keyword, but you have 50,387 backlinks and still aren’t ranking for the keyword.
The Solution
You picked the wrong keywords. If you already have a lot of backlinks, and you want to stay in your niche, you will likely bring in much more traffic with keywords that are slightly less competitive.
Every niche has those extremely competitive keywords, but with those with a bit of creativity and research, you canfind some good keywords – ones that people search frequently, but is something your website can actually rank for.
Source Search Engine Watch
Pubblicato in Digital Marketing, SEO
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