Search engine optimisation is multifaceted. So much so that even experienced marketing professionals commit common SEO mistakes that threaten to undermine their SEO campaign performance.
Not needless to say, these mistakes can be corrected to help you get back on track.
Here, we give you a rundown of 15 common SEO issues and provide workable solutions on how to fix them.
Keywords are an integral part of SEO. Failing to conduct proper research on the right keywords relevant to your business and industry is a step in the wrong direction.
It’s no use crafting a well-written blog post or webpage if it doesn’t incorporate the exact keywords and variations your target audience uses to find information online.
There’s a good chance your content will not even be visible in search results, let alone reach your intended users.
You need to know what terms and phrases your potential visitors are using. What questions they’re asking. And what problems they’re trying to solve. This will allow you to tailor your content to precisely match their intents and purposes.
One of the most common mistakes to avoid is unnaturally inserting keywords in one single paragraph, meta description, anchor links, and even URLs.
This spammy SEO tactic actually worked well in the past when search engines like Google were still less developed than it is today.
Now it’s widely considered a dirty, black-hat mistake in SEO to avoid at all costs.
The paragraph below is an example of keyword stuffing, where the main keyword ‘best pizza in Sydney’ was mentioned multiple times in the same paragraph, along with its variations.
Search or user intent is the goal behind every query entered on Google or Bing search. You will NOT rank for a keyword if your content does not correspond to its search intent.
Navigational – users aim to reach a specific website or page. Already know what they’re looking for and want to go directly there (‘gmail login’).
Informational – seeking to gain more knowledge or understanding about a topic (‘meditation benefits’).
Commercial – comparing products or services and seeking information to aid in making a purchase decision (‘best smartphones 2024’).
Transactional – ready to take a specific action, often related to making a purchase (‘buy iPhone 15 pro max online’).
If consumers are wanting to get advice or features to look for in a smartphone’s camera, you can write an informative blog aptly titled ‘How to Choose the Best Smartphone Camera.’
And NOT ‘Top Smartphone Cameras for Stunning Photography,’ which has a commercial intent.
Duplicate contents are two or more articles or web pages that are significantly or entirely alike.
They can be published within the same website. Or one of them is posted in a different digital channel.
Nevertheless, having similar content will hurt your SEO value, as Google will be confused which one to rank on SERPs.
If it can’t determine which type of content is original, neither pages will rank, directly impacting your SEO rankings.
To rectify this, run a site audit to spot duplicate pages on your site.
Another fix is using canonical tags to communicate to search engine bots which content you want them to index and prefer to display on organic search.
Another way is by implementing 301 redirects where, as the term implies, it redirects users from one URL to the preferred one. This is especially suitable if you changed one of your page’s URLs.
This is not to say it’s bad to have many backlinks for your off-page SEO efforts.
However, they must be high-quality and earned ethically from reputable sources and websites within the same industry or niche.
With the latter, Google may be getting the impression that you’re buying links, which is a violation of its spam policies.
Google can detect bought links by looking through its patterns. For example, backlinks with the excessive use of transactional anchor texts (e.g., ‘buy high-quality wireless headphone’) can raise suspicions.
Focus on creating content on your site that will naturally attract links because of its quality and relevancy.
ALSO READ: 4 Pillars of SEO: Everything You Need to Know
These are hyperlinks that connect one page of your website to another. They help search engines understand the structure of your site much better.
Most importantly, they aid your visitors in finding other relevant content from your site that they may be interested in reading further.
Your pages with little to no internal links signal to search bots that they may not be that important after all.
Skipping internal linking is a missed opportunity and yet another SEO mistake to avoid.
BEST PRACTICE: Include relevant links to every new content, ideally 2-4 internal links. Make sure the anchor texts are descriptive and provide context to what the linked page is about.
User experience, which pagespeed falls under, is a key metric Google analyses as one of its SEO ranking factors.
Slow loading pages will have a negative impact on both your search rankings and sales. Users tend to click away if a web page is taking more time than normal to load.
According to an Unbounce report, nearly 70% of digital consumers say that pagespeed is an influencing factor on their willingness to buy from an online store.
Meanwhile, more than 80% of marketers admit that pagespeed does impact their conversion rates.
This makes it very important to prioritise resolving these common technical SEO issues to reduce bounce rates as a result of sluggish pagespeed.
Run Google Pagespeed Insights and improve your UX score with the following technical SEO best practices:
Some people make the mistake of fixating on one aspect of their SEO campaign and forgetting that there are other SEO challenges that need to be equally prioritised.
Local SEO is one of them. If you own and manage a local business, whether it’s a dental clinic in Parramatta or a smash repair shop in the Eastern Suburbs, optimising for local search is crucial to attract nearby customers.
Failing to do so and you’re missing out on buy-ready customers within the community.
Optimise your website for local SEO by nurturing your Google My Business profile.
Which includes getting relevant local citations, soliciting and responding to customer reviews (positive or negative), and posting business updates periodically.
Google implemented a mobile-first indexing approach in 2016. Knowing nearly 96% of online consumers use a mobile device to access the internet (Statistica).
This essentially means the world’s largest search engine primarily uses mobile to index and rank websites. NOT optimising for mobile is almost a surefire way to compromise your ranking potential.
Use Google’s free mobile-usability test to check whether or not your site is responsive for mobile devices.
PRO TIP: Test it on your own mobile device. Put yourself in the shoes of an actual visitor and click on every button, determine if it loads fast enough, and take note of technical issues to fix immediately.
Schema markups or structured data enable your content to show up on organic search in a rich format. It could greatly help in increasing your click-through rates.
However, some misuses this feature by marking up irrelevant, unrelated, and misleading content – aimed at increasing their search engine rankings, in a manipulative way.
Avoid this mistake by using the right schema markup (e.g., if you own an ecommerce site use the Product schema, not the Restaurant or Local Business schema).
Don’t mark up content invisible to your readers. And comply with Google’s spam policies for web searches.
While there is some truth to claims that search engines like Google favour long-form content, this may not be the case for whom your blogs and articles are intended:
Unless it’s an in-depth guide that justifies having a longer piece to cover all [sub]topics, you can safely assume users don’t really like reading long articles.
They simply don’t have the time, interest, or attention span.
Write a longer piece only when necessary. Such as explaining a complex legal process or comparing multiple software solutions.
But for straightforward topics like ‘how to boil an egg,’ it doesn’t make sense writing a 2,000-word essay on it. Your readers just need concise steps.
A short, punchy guide that gets to the point can often satisfy the reader’s needs and rank well in search engines.
PRO TIP: Match the length of your content to the complexity of the topic and the needs of your audience. Sometimes brevity is best. Other times, a deep dive is exactly what’s needed to rank page-1 on Google search and provide real value to your readers.
Your meta title and description are what users first see on the search results.
They need to be clear, compelling, and relevant to what they’re searching for. Using generic titles and descriptions can cost you clicks and visitors.
The most common SEO errors involving these tags are they’re either too short, too long, or empty.
The ideal length for page titles are 60 characters max (520 pixels), and up to 155 characters (920 pixels) for meta descriptions.
But more importantly, both should include the main target keyword and concisely explain what readers can expect when they open the webpage, encouraging a click-through.
Alt (alternative) tags or alt texts describe the content of an image if it fails to load in a webpage.
It’s chiefly a matter of accessibility, as including one benefits visually challenged individuals who rely on screen readers to understand what an image is about.
SEO-wise, including one will help you rank higher on Google image search.
Though missing or skipping alt texts may not be considered a major issue, it’s a sneaky SEO mistake that still needs to be fixed.
Take an extra minute to add a descriptive alt text. It’s a small boost that can make a big difference in your overall SEO performance.
It’s when you craft a strategy that’s primarily programmed to ‘please’ search engines rather than humans.
It happens when you have to resort to some of the abovementioned spammy SEO tactics, such as keyword stuffing and unnecessarily prolonging a blog’s word count.
Always prioritise your human readers first and search engine bots second. Ensure this through the following:
SEO is never a one-and-done, band-aid solution to any online marketing challenges. Rankings can be long-term but not permanent.
One of the biggest SEO mistakes you can make is setting your strategy on autopilot and altogether forgetting about it.
Ignoring the need to make needed adjustments can leave your site stuck and lagging behind your top-performing competitors.
Why the need to make adjustments and further optimisations? Two things mainly:
(1) Search engine algorithms constantly change, and (2) new competitors emerge, keen to knock you out of the SERPs with their fresh digital marketing strategies.
Do not let these common errors cost you hard-earned SEO traffic.
Stay on top by:
Overcome these common technical, content, off-page, and on-page SEO mistakes with professional help from a digital marketing agency. Domain Bird is a results-focused, Sydney-based search advertising company with 10+ years of experience.
Our SEO experts have helped plumbers, electricians, mechanics, accountants, lawyers, ecommerce clients, and more in making online marketing highly profitable for their businesses. We want to help yours next.
Book a consultation today and grab your FREE site audit. Supercharge your search visibility and improve your SEO performance with Domain Bird!
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