It’s great if you have a website for your company, but what good is it if it does not rank on search engines? A low ranking site gets very few visitors as internet users don’t look beyond the first search engine results page on any of their searches.
If you have recently checked your website ranking reports and have seen a sharp drop in its rank on search engines, then you need to work on the search engine optimization (SEO) level of your website. Here are 10 SEO mistakes to avoid in order to get your website ranking again.
1. Keyword Stuffing
The most common mistake that every website owner makes is overstuffing their website with keywords. When a website is found using the same keywords repeatedly in their content, then it is known as keyword stuffing. Overusing keywords like this does not help improve a website’s rankings as both internet users and search engines can identify sites that are stuffing their content with unnecessary keywords.
If a search engine recognizes this, the website in question would definitely drop in rankings and may even get penalized. So if you feel that your site is guilty of this, then it’s time make some serious changes to the content.
2. Slow Site Load Speed
Waiting for a website to load is not something that any internet users want to do. So your website load speed would be the next thing that you would need to check if you see a drop in your site’s rankings. Search engines only rank those sites that give their visitor a good user experience.
If they find any site giving them a bad experience, especially because of it’s load time, then that site would be given a low rank until the problem is fixed. It’s easy to check the site speed of your website using the Google Developers tool – PageSpeed Insights.
3. No Linking
The reason for your site not having good SEO may also be due to the lack of internal linking of your web pages. Internal links will definitely help your website get an SEO boost, as when you link your web page to other areas of your website that has relevant content, then search engines are more likely to rank your site more. Your visitors will also spend more time on your site if you provide them with more of the content that they are looking for through internal and external linking.
Your visitors will also spend more time on your site if you provide them with more of the content that they are looking for through internal and external linking.
4. Images are not Optimized
Optimizing the images on your site can help your SEO as well. Normally, search engines are unable to understand what an image represent as they are unable to crawl them. However, optimized images can be crawled if they have the relevant alt text that contains keywords to describe what the picture is about. Check out How to Optimize Images for Google Search for more information.
5. Not Mobile-Friendly
If your site is not mobile-friendly, even it’s a good site, it’s sure to tank in rankings. Don’t believe me? On April 21, 2015, Google Search made mobile-friendliness a ranking signal, since it receives more mobile than desktop searches.
So if you have a good site that doesn’t load properly on mobiles yet, then you need to take action now to upgrade it from a desktop to a mobile-friendly version. This way mobile internet browsers can easily view your website through your website.
6. Plagiarized or Duplicate Content
Another thing that can give your website a bad rank and even a bad reputation is if it is found with plagiarized or duplicated content. Search engines like Google are very particular about originality and quality content. If they find any site that has faulty content of any kind, they will not only tank their rankings but even penalize the website that is found guilty of using some other website’s content.
7. Duplicate Titles and Meta Descriptions
A website that uses another site’s titles and meta descriptions, or duplicates their own titles and meta descriptions, to improve their ranking is also frowned upon by search engines. In fact, search engines might detect this duplication faster than copying content from other sites. Titles of web pages are one of the first things that are crawled by search engines. So if two sites have similar titles or meta tags, or if the tag is repeated on your site, then this would surely get noticed by search engines.
8. Broken Links
Broken links are dangerous for a website’s rankings. Internet users don’t like seeing broken links or 404 error pages, especially when they were expecting a web page full of valuable information that they were looking for. Search engines know what a pain broken links can be to internet users. Hence, they will try and prevent them from facing this bad experience by removing sites that have broken links from their rankings.
9. No Digital Footprint
When a company is active on social media, it becomes easier for search engines to find it’s website. Moreover, the company can also communicate with their audiences much more effectively through the use of social media networks like Twitter, Facebook, Google+ etc. If your company is leaving no digital footprint, then you stand to lose out on rankings.
10. Poor Navigation
Both internet users and search engines favor sites that are easy-to-use. When you have a website which is easy for a visitor to use and navigate on their own, they are likely to spend more time on the site. If it’s so easily navigable or difficult to understand, they might move over to a more user-friendly website. Search engines wouldn’t recommend such kind of sites to their users. Keep your site simple and easy to understand and use, if you want your visitors to stick around for a longer time.
These were just 10 mistakes you should avoid if you want to see improvements in your website’s rank. If you know a few more reasons which cause a website’s rankings to tank, then please tell us in the comments section below.
