10 Common SEO Mistakes You Should Avoid

There is an array of SEO mistakes that make many websites face poor show in search ranks. We suggest here remedies of 10 common SEO mistakes.

If you just cannot make out the reasons for the rank of your website experiencing a steady deep in the search ranks or if you feel hopeless in finding your site to maintain a stagnancy in search ranks or traffic flow for months on end, this is time to look for a few things that are responsible for this. To figure out the common SEO mistakes and addressing them systematically for gaining in traffic volume needs a positive understanding of your web business. Remember, in the post Google Penguin 2.0 era it is sheer uniqueness, relevance and optimized user experience that are in the driving seat for search engine results and so you may need to remove those elements from your site that made your site unfavorable to search engines for these reasons. Here we discuss on 10 common SEO mistakes you should avoid.

1. Duplicate or churned content

There is no mercy for duplicate or copied content in the post Google Penguin 2.0 era and duplicate content will invariably lead your site to demotion in the search engine ranks or getting indexed altogether. A website penalized for duplicate content can find itself altogether vanishes from the search engine and the crude fact is you need months or even years to get back to your previous position. If you still have copied, identical or duplicate content just remove them altogether from your site for saving yourself before it affects you. Churned or partially copied content also come under the rage of Google scanner but to a lesser degree. A content similar to another content on the web except in phrasing or few aspects is a churned content and such content though is not penalized straightforwardly but is not at all liked by Google and so is detrimental to your SEO campaign.

2. Keyword stuffing

One of the most common SEO mistakes that most new web business do is stuffing their published content with unnatural sounding keywords. This obviously results in poor readability or user experience and Google is very committed to remove such practices from its search ranks. There are some basic rules when using keywords in the web content. First of all, the keyword must be sounding natural to the reader while reading the content and secondly, it must not exceed a density of 2% to 3% in content. The bigger the size of the content this density should be further lower. In any respect the keywords should not undermine the user experience or readability and it should not look like unnaturally stuffed for SEO benefits. Without a unique and quality content stuffing of keywords will prove futile and attract only penalties.

3. Poor link scheme

No other mistake in the SEO practice is penalized as heavily as the poor link scheme referring to irrelevant, depreciating and misguiding pool of links in a site provided only for the petty benefits of the promoters of the websites without any thought for the user experience. For instance, a link in a website lands you to a page which has no relation to the searched content except for promoting a product or service. Such links are often paid links that are exchanged for business interests of the involved parties but after the latest Google algorithm they are not only just ineffective to fetch higher search ranks but elements that would invariably penalize your site with demotion in search ranks or being indexed.

4. Sloth page speed

Latest Google algorithm even included page speed as one of the criteria to determine the search ranks of a website or web page. This shows how far Google is committed to provide a better user experience on the web. If your web pages take too longer to upload it can severely affect your search ranks. There are many websites with great content, huge number of image and multimedia files but often fails to upload quickly resulting expulsion of web traffic. Try to make all heavy multimedia and image files optimized for uploading, remove spam comments from the pages and optimize other technical aspects for increasing faster upload speed.

5. Not having unique title tag and meta description

While uploading content on the web page unique title tag and meta-description is a must for number of reasons. Wouldn't you think it crazy when finding website with all contents having the same title? Going with the same logic Google or other search engines also do not consider these contents to be noteworthy for search engine ranks. Not only that, meta-description which is nothing but a descriptive pitch on your content to make the web users interested in your content cannot be left missing because without such description the content will have no voice to back it on the search ranks. Content without title tag or meta-description is more like an orphan content and Google also pushes these orphan pages way below the search rank list.

6. 404 errors

There are examples of websites with great content, good number of quality links and overall compliance with important SEO guidelines, yet resulting sometimes in 404 error when users get directed to these sites. This is one of the common SEO mistakes that make many websites actually drain down their links and SEO effort. A product, category or content that no longer exists but is listed on the server can be the reason for this. Non optimized page URL is also another detrimental element resulting in this. To avoid this mistake optimize the page URLs and update every page on regular basis.

7. No promotional activity

Without content marketing, social networking feeds and posts and posts on community forum you cannot expect people to automatically land on your web page in galore. Being proactive is no longer just another useful and effective thing for seeing your web content higher up the search ranks but it is now a criteria. Particularly in hugely competitive niches where the difference of content quality is not very big, this proactive social media marketing, tons of tweets can influence the search ranks. So if you are still inactive in this front it is time to frame a content marketing strategy.

8. Targeting wrong keywords

Often targeting wrong keywords one needs to give good price with low search engine ranks. Keyword research is one of the standard practices across the SEO campaigns and as the popular keywords are increasingly becoming competitive it is time to go for relatively untapped yet frequently searched keywords. If you go for frequently searched topics and keywords that need expertise for producing unique content yet there are relatively fewer search results with that search tag, it can be a good idea to produce content on them. In any case without doing an extensive keyword research you cannot expect to find such keywords just on your own.

9. No guest blogging

Guest blogging is not just a common SEO practice for getting some links. With guest blogging you incorporate different content style, quality and variety among the pool of your contents which is most important to influence the search engine ranks. Secondly, with guest blogging from reputed bloggers from authoritative or other content rich sites you have the opportunity to develop a good link scheme and rub shoulders with pioneers and stalwarts. Having no regular focus on guest blogging is a big mistake that ultimately affects your search ranks.

10. Not optimizing local search

If your web presence has something to do with finding local clients for your service or product, marketing your local identity using the web is a must. But, there are websites who just continues without listing themselves locally with web search engines. Providing your address, service and products detail, contact information and precise direction and road map on the search engine local listings (like Google Local) is a good way to come higher up the search ranks on the local category and if you still did not do it, probably without your knowing you have lost a truck load of business in all these times.