Search engine optimization (SEO) is vital for all blogs. SEO methods are changing due to updates and customers’ changing perspectives. To get a high ranking for your site in SERP, there are some very important SEO mistakes to avoid. Let us see the Top 20 SEO Mistakes to avoid getting a high ranking on search engines.
- Top 20 SEO Mistakes To Avoid
- No Keyword Strategy
- No Long Tail Keywords
- Incorrect Keywords
- Excessive Keyword Or Keyword Stuffing
- No Quality Backlinks
- No Image Optimization
- Purchasing Links
- Duplicate Content
- No Title Tags & Meta Descriptions
- Grammar Mistakes
- Low-quality Content
- No Anchor Text for Internal Links
- Same Anchor Text for Every Link
- Using Free Hosting
- Plagiarised Content
- Slow Page Speed
- No Outbound Links
- No 301 Redirects
- Neglecting Broken Links
- No Mobile-Friendly Experience
Top 20 SEO Mistakes To Avoid
SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is so important for online success.
To get a high ranking for your site in SERP, there are some very important SEO mistakes to avoid.
The following are some of the most common SEO WordPress mistakes and how to avoid them.
No Keyword Strategy
SEO is about making the website easier for users to find what they are looking for.
Without a keyword strategy, it is impossible to have a successful SEO strategy.
Therefore, It is necessary to have a good keyword strategy to create the articles which rank on the search engine.
No Long Tail Keywords
Long-tail keywords are less competitive.
They are easier to rank on the search engines.
For example, it is tough to rank for the keyword “Build backlinks“.
However, “How to build high-quality backlinks” is not that tough to rank.
Most people ignore this fact and that is why this is among common SEO mistakes.
Incorrect Keywords
Keywords play an important role in the ranking of your site. But are you choosing the right one?
In some cases, you might consider the keyword as the perfect one. But it may appear as a completely different one for the user.
Choosing Incorrect Keywords is one of the common SEO mistakes you need to avoid.
A good Keyword helps in bringing you traffic and increasing your organic reach. This, in turn, increases engagement and conversion for you.
You can use Google Keyword Planner or the KWFinder to find you the best Keywords.
Excessive Keyword Or Keyword Stuffing
Keyword Strategy is important to do SEO efficiently. However, Excessive use of keywords or Keyword Stuffing is a big no.
This will affect your SEO negatively and will tank your site in the search engines.
Example of Keyword Stuffing
We sell custom cigar humidors. Our custom cigar humidors are handmade. If you are thinking of buying custom cigar humidors, please contact our custom cigar humidors specialists are [email protected]
Trying to manipulate a search engine like Google is a big no-no.
No Quality Backlinks
When you have a high-quality link pointing to your site, your website will gain authority. This can be easily done by writing quality content.
Link Building which is the backbone of SEO helps to rank your site easily. Instead of having 1000 low-quality backlinks, it is better to have 10 quality.
Check: 30 ways to build quality backlinks to your site
No Image Optimization
Image Optimization increases traffic to your site through Google’s Image search. Therefore, it is important to optimize the images on your website.
Images are optimized to reduce their size as much as possible. However, it doesn’t mean to compromise on their quality.
You can optimize the current images uploaded on your site by changing the file type. It doesn’t mean you have to re-enter all the text on the new version of the image manually.
You can visit https://searchenginereports.net/image-to-text-converter to extract all the text on your image. Anyone can use this utility countless times as it is available for free
Purchasing Links
You can get a short-term boost by buying links if your site is popular. But, it is still taking a risk here.
Paid links are sometimes marked by experts from the search engine Google. You may wonder how they ever catch me? Remember Google bots are intelligent.
I recommend the old-fashioned method of blog commenting. You will be able to build authority and backlinks.
If you are not sure about building links to your site, then check this simple guide to build backlinks.
If you still prefer to buy links, do not use the same anchor text for all of them. Mix a little.
Duplicate Content
I know many bloggers are promoting the same subject with a range of keywords essentially very similar.
For example, “How to make money on Facebook” and “make money with your Facebook” are very similar and the creation of an entirely different page for each keyword does not add much value to your site.
How much can you play with keywords that are essentially identical?
If you can not, then you will probably end up writing the same content for both keywords, which means a risk of a penalty for search engines.
No Title Tags & Meta Descriptions
Leaving the title tags and meta description is a common mistake done by people.
Most people click on a link only by reading its meta description. Also, the title tag is the first one that prompts them to read the meta description.
Always use the attractive meta description.
Grammar Mistakes
No doubt, grammar is a very important part of any SEO effort. It is the Top SEO Mistake to avoid. In grammar, there are many parts to watch.
- Use transition words or phrases as many as possible.
- Use simple English words in your post.
Low-quality Content
Low-quality content is another worst SEO mistake to avoid.
Thin content can be marked as low-quality pages.
They add no value to the readers.
Examples of Low-quality content include duplicate pages, automatically generated content, or doorway pages.
Low-quality content is against Google’s algorithm.
No Anchor Text for Internal Links
When a visitor visits your website and leaves immediately, then it is considered a bounce.
A higher bounce rate affects the ranking of your site. So, you need to use the anchor text for your links.
Anchor text provides the right information about the content of the link’s destination to both the search engine and the user.
Same Anchor Text for Every Link
Anchor Text is also a very important part of your SEO. People usually use the same anchor text for every link and this is not a good SEO practice.
You should use proper anchor text for your links.
Using Free Hosting
Services that offer free blog hosting like Blogger, TypePad, and many others, can offer a decent platform and excellent value.
They are not flexible enough to be able to install the plugins, themes, and other extensions that you really want to top SEO results.
All you need is to register your own domain and buy a cheap hosting plan. If you do enough shopping around, you can get decent hosting for your website for under $100/year.
Self-hosting for your website will have full control over your website.
Check Out: Best Cheap Hosting Providers
Plagiarised Content
You should never copy the contents from other websites. Google hates Plagiarised Content and will penalize those websites.
To avoid this, you can use the free tools available to check your content for plagiarism, whether it was done on purpose or by chance.
Slow Page Speed
If your site loads slowly, it will hurt in two different ways.
One, it will receive a lower rank on Google.
Second, people will never visit your website. They will close the page and open another site that loads faster.
Therefore, you need to check the speed of the website. Follow these simple steps to boost the loading speed of your website.
If needed, you can change your Hosting provider to someone who offers High-Speed Hosting.
I would recommend A2Hosting.
No Outbound Links
Outbound links are links that point to some other domain from within your site.
Your site should contain outbound links.
If you don’t have any outbound links, it might affect your ranking negatively.
No 301 Redirects
When you change the permalink of your post or delete it, you need to redirect it to the new one.
301 redirects can help the SEO value and provide an association between pages and content.
Neglecting Broken Links
Neglecting broken links is one of the worst SEO mistakes you need to avoid.
Some of the articles or websites which you have linked may no longer be active. Else, they may have been moved to a different domain.
Do you know what happens when a visitor encounters a broken link?
It creates a poor experience.
Once Google picks up that, it will affect the ranking of your website.
You can take care of this problem manually by doing periodical checks or you can use the broken link finder tools to find those links and fix them.
Check out: Top broken link finder tools
No Mobile-Friendly Experience
Mobile-friendly has become a ranking factor in Google. So, the more mobile-friendly your site is and the better its rank on Google.
Check out Mythemeshop which offers SEO Optimized Mobile-Friendly Themes.
Conclusion
In this post, you saw the top 20 SEO Mistakes to avoid.
These SEO mistakes may seem basic to some but not to be overlooked or ignored.
Stick to the points on this post and avoid these simple SEO Mistakes to rank high in search engine results.
This is very timely. I was wondering if what I was doing recently with my recent posts are considered duplicate contents. What I do is after the headline I would add lists of Free blogging resources, I copy paste the same paragraph into my other blog post. Do you think that would hurt my SEO?
Hi Sarah,
It will not hurt your site’s SEO
Thank you for sharing this! 🙂 I already knew few of the things you mentioned but I learned a lot of new ones, too. Now I have a huge to do list of things I could do to improve my blog. 🙂