SEO is extremely competitive
Don’t think that SEO is something that you can bother with only once a year.
SEO [Search Engine Optimisation] is an ongoing job that needs to be looked into every month. And if you are surprised to see your website on the lower end of the SERPs [Search Engine Result Pages], it is because of minor or major SEO mistakes that are causing the damage!
Also, having a lot of tasks to do, a webmaster can easily overlook some SEO errors on the website, leading to undesirable consequences. And Ironically most of these errors are quite easy to fix.
But in order to know that you need to know what the issues are all about.
So let’s get to the bottom of those factors in this post.
Website User-Experience [UX]
Not Optimized For Mobile Device
Mobile searches have already surpassed desktop ones and Google has started to penalize websites that are not optimized for mobile devices and rewarding websites that are optimized.
Having Slow Page Loading Speed
If you know the importance of bounce rate, then you would relate to this.
The page loading speed is an important factor both for search robots and for visitors. And more the page load time, the lower the SERPs. Some of the low site speed reasons could be oversized images, poor Java script implementation, poor hosting, etc.
Not setting clear content structure
Writing good content is one thing and making it readable and appealing is another thing. Use HTML headings that break your single content asset into sections and subsections allowing for easy reading, more ranking opportunities, and overall better readability. Not using H1/H3 sub-heads properly not only results in a poor experience but also confuses search robots.
Not fixing broken links
Having a large number of pages that lead to non-existent pages will affect your rankings negatively. Hence if you have some non-existing products or error / broken pages, do remove that to avoid Google bots crawling on those pages.
Not building Site Structure
Not providing directions in your robots.txt as to which website pages to crawl, having a complicated URL structure, and not having a sitemap – all these mistakes prevent search robots from crawling your site efficiently.
Missing User-Friendly URL Structure
Creating URL structure is an extremely important aspect of a business in the online space. And if you have a URL similar to the one I have mentioned below, then you might understand what we mean.
https://chapters.indigo.ca/en-ca/books/product/9780771057717-item.html?s_campaign=Google_BookSearch_organic.
Hence, create URLs that can be deciphered both by humans and search engines which should be similar to the one below:
https://10xgrowth.com.au/5-website-tips-to-build-a-high-converting-website/
Streamline Your Menus
Have you have visited a website and got so frustrated and confused with the interface of the website menu and page structure that you bounced off from the site?
Design your menus in a simpler way. And make sure your audience can find what they are looking for in categories and sub-categories so that the menu bar looks less cluttered and one can navigate through the pages easily.
Website Search Experience
Wrong Search Intent
It’s always necessary to structure your website content based on what a user might search. If the content is matching the user’s search intent, then your website pages have a greater chance to rank.
Choose informational, navigational, commercial investigation, and transactional keywords to structure your website content.
High-Competition Keywords
It’s almost senseless to only opt for high-volume keywords for your website to rank. At the start, if your site has not had much of domain authority, it is better to focus on less competitive but more specific keywords.
Hence while performing a keyword search, it is always necessary to take into consideration the paid difficulty score and search difficulty score, before embedding the keyword onto your website content.
Duplicating Content
This is more and more common in the case of a landing page design or a specific e-commerce website where different product pages and their descriptions seem to be much similar. And this ideally shouldn’t be the case!
In case of the duplicate website content, search robots can’t choose which pages to index and may decide not to show them on Google. In order to avoid this, try creating unique body content, meta tags, and descriptions for each URL.
Missing Brand Queries
Instead of optimizing your website for the generic keyword ‘running shoes’ you can target ABC running shoes for men. In this way you would be opting for a long-term keyword strategy with which you are ranking for ABC [brand name], running shoes [keyword] for men [search query or target audience].
In this way, you can make ranking for target keywords easier among those audiences who may or may not know your brand.
Evolving Nature Of SEO
SEO rules are not set in stone. The rules change all the time.
But of course, there are some fundamental principles that will stick around and be the same for years.
Crawlability
Allow search engines to find your site’s content
Backlink Profile
Build quality links because your content should come from high-quality & authoritative sources.
Site Structure
Your website should be organized and easy to navigate.
As you can see there are so many technical nitty-gritty to look into while doing SEO. Ignoring any of these would cost a toll on your rankings and even more, the major mistake would be to think you can do SEO on your own.
Definitely, you can do it on your own, but timely analysis and auditing are needed.
