11 Common SEO Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
SEO professionals with little experience or Professionals who just started their career in SEO (Search Engine Optimization) often do some common mistakes while doing the On – Page SEO or Off – Page SEO. Today, in this article, we are going to discuss some of the Common SEO Mistakes. These mistakes in SEO are common but their impact is very bad on SEO performance.

Common SEO Mistakes : Step by step description & it’s solution

Not using Unique Title and Meta Descriptions on all pages –
For good On-Page SEO, it is very important to use unique Title and Meta descriptions on every page. The title and description should talk about the same keywords which we are focusing on for that particular page. These should be within their length too, i.e., for Title 60 Characters are fixed and for Description 160 Characters are fixed.

Not Using Anchor Text in Internal Linking –
Internal links are hyperlinks that points toward some pages or posts on the same domain. Using it give you a chance to reduce bounce rate and to navigate on site. Using the keywords in anchor text, related to the content on that particular page where the hyperlink is pointing helps Google to index that page with high priority.

Not using Image Optimization –
Image optimization helps in boosting website’s speed and also in image search and normal search. So, we need to optimize the image according to:

(a) Dimension: image should be of the same dimension that we need for the web site. The Bigger image can make your site slow.

(b) Image Size: image should be optimized to file size. They need to be saved for web version with best possible quality. It helps them to load faster.

(c) Alt attribute: Image alt attribute should talk about the content in the image. It should be related to content on that particular web page.

(d) Image Name: Need to use proper Image name for getting the best result in search engine result page (SERP).

(e) Image Sitemap: image sitemap created and submitted on Google/Bing search engine gives the image better look to appear in SERP.

Not using canonicalization –
At certain time on multiple pages we have similar content. If the duplicate content gets indexed our search engine authority gets negatively affected by this. To prevent duplicate content to get indexed we need to use the rel-canonical tag in the HTML head of duplicate page/post.

No or outdated XML sitemap –
XML sitemap is very important for indexing of WebPages in the search engine. So, submitting a sitemap to a search engine is very important. Also, you have to regularly add pages and post them on your site. So you need to update sitemap too. CMS websites do the sitemap update automatically but for the static website, you need do it manually on regular basis.

Not using proper HTML Tags for Subheading –
Using H1 tag for subheading is wrong. Actually H1 tags should be use for heading. Some Digital Marketers also use H3 tag for subheading without using H2 tag anywhere on that web page. Whenever you are creating subheading preference should be given to H2 tag.

Some web designers also uses bold text for subheading and don’t use heading tags which is also wrong. If you reduce this common mistakes your site’s SEO performance will become better and better.

No Robots.txt –
Just like a site map tells search engines what pages they should index, a robots.txt file tells them what not to. This is critical, especially if you host internal data on your domain name and would not want it to be visible to the average users on the web.

Typically, a “disallow” command used with the right syntax is enough to block Google bots from indexing a specific URL. However, if there are other sites that are linked to the URL which have not been blocked from Google, there’s a small chance that the page might still surface. In such a case, follow Google’s instructions.

Not Using 301 Redirects – A 301 (permanent) redirect is what you see when you type an old URL, and your browser automatically takes you to a brand new, updated URL for the same website. “301” is actually the HTTP response returned by the server. This is a standard option adopted by websites when they are in the process of rebranding themselves, but don’t want to lose out on their existing clients and site authority.
The 301 redirect tells search engines that the searched site has been moved to a new URL and that you should pass on all the link authority to the new URL. However, it’s not necessary for you to rebrand your site to a 301 redirect. In case where the content of a page has changed drastically or removed altogether, you are advised to use a 301 redirect.

Using Keyword Stuffing –
You might be thinking that using your targeted keywords in every sentence of your content would boost your ratings. That strategy couldn’t be more wrong. In fact, going overboard using keywords will be registered as spammy by search engines, which means it actually hurts your SEO performance.

That’s why keyword ‘stuffing,’ or overusing your intended keywords, is not much crucial to your SEO success. Even such an approach would make your content unnatural and useless for its intended audience. In fact, Google is employing a special semantic search called Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI). This program can recognize your content’s topic without the need for stuffing your content with repetitions of your target keywords.

NOT OPTIMIZED FOR MOBILE –
Since Google counts mobile-friendliness of a website as a ranking factor, not optimizing your site for mobile devices such as tablets and smart – phones, can drastically affect your ranking.

Also, by not optimizing your site for mobile users, you are turning potential customers away and may be losing precious clicks to your competitors. Hence, if you want to double your search traffic and boost your conversion rate, then it is important to make your site responsive.

Best part, to check if your website is responsive or not, you can use free tools like the Google Mobile-Friendly Test or the Testmysite tool.

NOT REPLACING BROKEN LINKS –
Broken links can have a negative impact on your website’s ranking. By not replacing them you are restricting the flow of link equity throughout your site, which affects your SEO as it limits the search engine robots from indexing your website.

Moreover, broken links lead to poor user experience, as clicking on a link and landing on a 404 error page can be frustrating. Thus, finding and fixing broken links are important, if you want to reduce bounce rate on your website.

To know more about Digital Marketing visit our Blog section

Know about SEO and Check our other Articles also on SEO:

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

E-commerce-SEO Techniques

Our Digital marketing online course is designed by experts. With the increase in the use of technology in our day to day lives, we have also designed an online course which caters all your needs in Digital marketing. You can watch our videos anywhere at any time taught by our best-experienced faculty. To know more about our Digital Marketing Online Course, Online Seo Course or Online Seo training, visit us at – www.takshilalearning.com or contact us at 8800999280/83/84.

Author's Bio: 

kishore