Search engine optimization (SEO) is key to ranking in the search results where you want your site to appear. It involves optimizing your web content to align with Google’s search algorithms. But despite giving it their best effort, many businesses still fall short on their SEO and find their rankings suffering.
If you’re worried that might be you, we’re here to help. On this page, we’ll explore eight of the top SEO mistakes to avoid, including:
- Keyword stuffing
- Search intent neglect
- Poor site speed optimization
- Lack of mobile-friendliness
- Bad internal linking practices
- Duplicate website content
- Local SEO neglect
- Lack of website multimedia
We’ll cover each of those poor SEO practices in more detail below.
1. Keyword stuffing
One of the most frequent SEO mistakes is keyword stuffing. That’s where you try to cram keywords into a page as many times as you can.
Don’t misunderstand — including keywords in your content is crucial. It helps communicate to Google which searches your content should appear in, giving you a better shot at ranking in those searches. But you don’t want to overdo it, or you could end up with something that reads like this:
At the end of the day, Google prioritizes content that’s helpful and user-friendly. When you stuff so many keywords into a page that it’s practically unreadable, it’s not user-friendly at all. Yes, you should include your target keywords several times on a page — but limit it to a reasonable amount.
2. Search intent neglect
Another common SEO mistake is search intent neglect. Search intent refers to the reason a user searches for a particular term in Google. For example, if someone searches “pest control tips,” they probably want to find a list of steps they can take to prevent or remove pests in their home.
Unfortunately, many businesses fail to consider search intent when they create their content. They target specific keywords, but they don’t address the search intent behind those keywords. In the pest control example above, some businesses might include that keyword on a page advertising their pest control services, with no tips at all. That doesn’t match the search intent.
Why’s that bad? Well, aside from the fact that it offers no benefit to users, it also won’t rank. If you want to make it onto page one, you need to consider the search intent of each keyword you target, and then optimize your content to match that search intent.
3. Poor site speed optimization
Ranking in Google isn’t all about targeting keywords. You also have to optimize the technical aspects of your site. One of those technical aspects is page load speeds.
If your site takes too long to load, users won’t have the patience to stick around. To keep them engaged long enough for any kind of conversion to happen, you need your pages to load quickly — ideally, within a couple of seconds. There are a few different ways you can improve your page load times, including:
- Caching web pages
- Limiting redirects
- Minifying code
- Compressing images
Be aware that if your site speed is poor, you won’t rank in Google search results. Google puts a pretty big emphasis on page load times.
4. Lack of mobile-friendliness
Another important aspect of technical SEO is mobile-friendliness. Unfortunately, businesses tend to make frequent SEO mistakes in this area. Many businesses undervalue the importance of optimizing their site for mobile, so they either do it poorly or don’t do it at all.
This is a huge problem. Google actually uses mobile-first indexing, which means it ranks sites based on their mobile versions. If your site doesn’t have a mobile version, then — you guessed it — it won’t rank.
To make your site mobile-friendly, the best approach is to use responsive design. That’s where your site restructures itself to fit whatever screen it’s displayed on. A given page will have the same elements, but those elements will be arranged a little differently on mobile than on desktop, as you can see below:
And here’s how it looks on mobile:
5. Bad internal linking practices
Next on our list of top SEO mistakes to avoid is poor internal linking. If you’re not familiar with it, internal linking is where you add links to your content, leading to other pages on your website.
By creating a web of links interconnecting all the pages across your site, you tie your site more tightly together and keep users there longer. When a user finishes reading a piece of content, they might click on a link to visit another page instead of simply leaving your site. That leads to more conversions.
However, many businesses either fail to use enough (or any) internal links, or they structure those links poorly. One important thing to consider when creating links is anchor text, which refers to the text containing the link. Your anchor text should accurately reflect the content of the page it links to.
So, if you want to link to a page about types of manufacturing, your anchor text should be something that indicates that, like “manufacturing types” or “kinds of manufacturing.” It shouldn’t be something unrelated or only loosely connected, like “cost of manufacturing” or “manufacturing company.”
6. Duplicate website content
Duplicate website content is another common SEO mistake, one that flies under the radar for many businesses. Duplicate content refers to two or more pieces of content that are either identical or extremely similar.
That means if you publish a blog post that copies all the text from another page on your site, word for word, it’s duplicate content. But even if it’s not identical, it can still count as duplicate content if it’s too similar. If you write a blog post called “Best tax tools,” and another page called “Top tax tools,” and they feature pretty much all the same information, that’s still duplicate content.
So, what’s the issue with duplicate content? In short, when Google encounters duplicate content, it doesn’t know which page to rank, given that they’re so similar. Consequently, it will usually end up ranking neither. For that reason, every page on your site should be original.
7. Local SEO neglect
Another SEO myth is that you can neglect local SEO. Local SEO involves optimizing your site for search results in your local area. Ways you can improve your local SEO include:
- Optimizing your Google Business Profile
- Targeting keywords that include the name of your city or state
- Targeting keywords that include the phrase “near me”
- Building pages specifically targeted to your local area
Unfortunately, many businesses neglect all these things, contributing to their overall poor SEO practices. But with a solid local SEO strategy, you can appear in local search results, allowing you to reach your target audience more effectively right where you live.
8. Lack of website multimedia
One final common SEO mistake to avoid is the absence of multimedia content on your site. When you create content for SEO, it’s easy to forget that not all of it has to be written content. Of course, it’s fine if most of your content is written. But it’s a good idea to include some variety.
In addition to written content, consider creating infographics and videos to appeal to users who may not want to read through whole blog posts or articles. Even in your written content, you should try to include some screenshots and graphics (where relevant) to break up the text in some places.
Doing this will increase the user-friendliness of your site and give it a better shot at generating the traffic and conversions you’re looking for.
Upgrade the quality of your SEO with consulting services from SEO.com
Avoiding all the poor SEO practices on this page is simple enough in theory, but in practice, it can be challenging to figure out exactly which changes to make to your SEO strategy. Plus, there are more SEO tactics out there than just the ones listed here.
If you’re looking to upgrade your SEO, but you feel you lack the expertise needed to do so, don’t worry — SEO.com can help. Our team of SEO specialists has over 25+ years of experience improving site rankings and driving revenue, and with our SEO consulting services, we can help you identify exactly which changes to make for maximum results.
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