11 Common SEO Mistakes you Should Avoid

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Sometimes you can forget to fix the crucial things that ensure the success of your SEO strategy while you were busy doing other things or overlooking them. The return of a properly optimized website is ranking and organic traffic from search engines.

Below are the common SEO mistakes you should avoid in order to ensure maximum SEO success.

 

Also read: The Significance of Mobile Optimization in SEO

 

1. Slow Website 

You will lose the majority of your visitors if your site is slow. Google recommended that the page load time for websites on both mobile and desktop devices should be less than 3 seconds. A slow website is an SEO mistake you should avoid in order to keep your audience.

 

The following elements affect how the content of your website is rendered to visitors;

a. First Contentful Paint (FCP)

Google Chrome Lighthouse's performance section tracks FCP. It evaluates the time (in seconds) your browser takes to render the first piece of DOM content once a visitor visits your site.

 

b. Time to Interactive (TTI)

TTI uses HTTP archive data and it measures page load speed. TTI evaluates when a page becomes fully interactive.

 

Also read: Ultimate SEO Guides for Ranking in 2023

 

c. Time to First Byte (TTFB)

The interval of time between sending a request to a server and having the first byte of data delivered to the browser.

 

To improve your website load time, first, use the Google page speed Insights tool to check your website performance. It will generate the analyzed result with suggestions on what you should fix.

 

To fix your site load time, run your website through Google PageSpeed Insights tool to evaluate its performance and learn more about how quickly your site loads and possible ways to increase your website speed.

 

 

Also read: Best Guide for Keywords Usage in SEO

 

2. No or Poorly Installed Robots.txt

Robot.txt is an important file on your website you should never ignore. A robot.txt is a text file used by websites to communicate with web crawlers and other web robots. Robots are often used by search engines to categorize websites.

 

This text file is used to allow or disallow what the webmaster wants web crawlers to have access to. If the robot.txt file is poorly written or by mistake disallow what you are not supposed to disallow, this will affect your website ranking on search engine. Since SEO success is what you are after, learn how to use robot.txt file to allow search engines from indexing your website and not otherwise.

 

It is better to allow web crawlers to have access to your website, and then use the "noindex" or "nofollow" HTML tags within your content to tell google which link is important and which is not.

 

Suggested: Free Robot.txt Generator 

 

3. Not Submitting Sitemap to Webmastertools

Not submitting your website to webmaster tools is an SEO mistake you should avoid. In our previous article, we talked about SEO guides for ranking which also highlights the importance of using webmaster tools.

 

Google already provided these free analytical tools (search console and google analytics) to help you monitor your websites. So, avoid this mistake and ensure to submit your website to webmaster tools.

 

It is one thing to submit your website to webmaster tools it is another thing to monitor the data for possible improvement. The data from this tool will help you understand how to improve your website. So, do not overlook it.

 

Suggested: Free Sitemap Generator

 

Also read: What is SEO Analyzer?

 

4. Poorly Design Websites and Site Navigation

This is a common SEO mistake upcoming bloggers make. They mostly choose to use free themes or templates which are not fully optimized for SEO.

If you realize this mistake very early, then it is better to use a premium theme if you are using CMS like WordPress, BlogSpot, or Wix.

It is also necessary that you organized your site navigations in order of relevance as this will help web crawlers to learn and understand your website.

 

5.  Not Fixing Broken links or 404 Errors

Not fixing broken links and 404 errors is an SEO mistake you should avoid. If you submit your website to webmaster tools as described above, it will let you know when a link is broken then you can fix this link or redirect it.

Every time a visitor hits a broken link or 404 error on your website, you tend to lose a such visitor as the visitor would look for the information somewhere else.

 

Also read: The Role of Backlinks in SEO and How to Acquire Them

6. Building Negative Backlinks

Building negative backlinks is an SEO mistake you should avoid.

Yes, Backlinks are important for SEO because they let Google understand that other websites/content linking to your content finds them informative. Do not buy backlinks but let your backlinks grow organically. Gets backlinks from quality websites and it will help your domain authority and ranking.

 

7. Duplicate Homepages with incorrect Redirects

A duplicate homepage with incorrect redirects can badly affect your website ranking. An example of this situation is a case where a website has two versions of homepage e.g domain.com and domain.com/index.html. In this case one of the url must redirect to the other, otherwise, search engines will read the URL as different websites and it will affect your ranking

Always ensure that other versions of your web URL redirect to your target URL.

 

Also read: 7 Steps To Grow your Domain Authority

8. No Schema Structured Data

It is a semantic vocabulary of tags (or microdata) that you can add to your HTML to improve the way search engines read and represent your page in SERPs. Schema tag is an SEO enhancement tag that helps to inform search engines of your website structure. This should not be overlooked you should create one for your website.

Websites that are built on CMS can use plugins like Rank Math or Yoast SEO to create the schema tag or you can also do it manually.

 

Suggested: Free Schema Markup Generator

 

How to Use Schema Markup for SEO

To use schema for SEO,

1. Go to Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper
2. Select the Type of Data
3. Paste the URL You Want to Markup
4. Select the Elements to Mark Up
5. Continue Adding Markup Items
6. Create the HTML
7. Then add the Schema Markup tag to your Site HTML body
8. Test Your Schema by using Google Structured Data Testing Tool

 

9. Duplicate Meta Title

Duplicate meta title is bad for SEO and it is an On-page SEO issue that requires proper attention. An example of this is a case where a website post or products have duplicate content, This kind of SEO mistake should be fixed in order to avoid losing traffic and ranking position on search engines.

 

10. No redirects from WWW/NON-WWW and HTTP

This is a Technical SEO Mistake that must be avoided. This is a case where you have two versions of a URL, one with www and the other without www. In this situation, google search crawlers will read the URLs as two different URLs. Google can sometimes deal with a website without proper redirect by picking the canonical links correctly. However, it is important that you implement a redirect to solve the problem.

 

11. Outdated Plugins

Websites running on CMS mostly use plugins and it is important to frequently update the plugins as soon as they become stable just to ensure that your website is running smoothly. Also, try to reduce the number of plugins you use on your website as it affects your site speed. Only use necessary plugins.

 

Bonus

- Using AI-generated content is a bad SEO practice. Write engaging and informative content. 

- Update old content regularly 

- Avoid keyword stuffing

 

What's Next –

Start SEO Optimization. Analyze your website with Free SEO Optimizer

Audit your website for Free - SEO audit free 

 

 

Suggested reads:

Also read: SEO for Beginners – Ultimate Guide

Also read: RoadMap to Becoming An SEO Expert

Also read: 15 Top SEO Experts and Specialists

Also read: AI SEO – The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on SEO Strategies

Also read: Google Indexing and How Web Crawler Works