This article is a re-post from the elegantmarketplace.com Blog
Why is SEO THAT important for your online marketing campaign?
Without properly SEO-optimized pages, your websites won’t be ranked in search engines in a way that it will be easily accessed by your target audience. SEO is a separate form of art that is not quite as difficult as some would have you believe and it is also very possible to master.
Like everything in the web world, SEO is constantly evolving. Just like in web design, new trends appear, new algorithms are launched. and, In order to keep you updated on the techniques that should NOT be implemented into your website, we have decided to come up with this guide.
When it comes to SEO, the techniques that worked half a year ago are trendy no more. In SEO, the approaches that worked yesterday may become outdated today. This is one of the most speedily evolving industries that we have ever come across. While the difference between yesterday and today is tiny, it can make huge changes to the way your website is ranked.
So, let’s not waste time any longer and get straight to the business.
(1) Non-responsive Web Pages
This is the first and most important mistake that we should avoid. In one of its most recent updates, Google started ranking responsive websites higher than the ones that are not optimized for mobile devices. Moreover, more than half of all searches run on handheld devices, so websites need to make sure that their layouts can perform smoothly across a variety of screens that they are browsed from.
Responsivity means better UX. If you want to make all content of your site easy to access for your visitors, then go ahead and update your site with a responsive design. If you want to run all coding tasks on your own, it can take you quite a while. Still, it’s worth it. On the other hand, you can save your time and opt for a ready-made responsive design.
(2) Low Speed
Will you stay on a page that takes more than 3 seconds to load? We doubt it.
A slow performing website is the second worst thing that can happen to you. In today’s fast-moving world, every second counts. So, you need to do your best in order to make all content of your site load lightning-fast no matter what device it is accessed from. It’s generally accepted that a website should take 2 seconds to load maximum. 3 more seconds wait will get people frustrated, which increases the possibility of them abandoning your page and leaving for a competitor’s site.
Google indicates speed as one of the variables in their algorithm. This is the first criteria of higher page ranking in the search results. If a site takes too long to load, then it risks being punished by the search giant.
(3) Duplication
Google doesn’t love duplicated data. This deals with both content and web pages competing for the same keywords. Some SEO “specialists” do this on purpose, thinking that this will make their resources look more authoritative in the eyes of the web users and search engines. Others may not even know that they have two pages on the same resources optimized for similar keywords.
Let’s see how it works from the inside.
SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) are just listed. Google is a machine, though it “understands” quite a lot of things. So, web pages are ranked on SERPs as one, two, three, etc. with one site coming right after another. Two sites cannot rank in the same row. While searching the web, Google picks the results that are the most accurate and match a user’s search intention better than others (based on ranking).
Whenever Google comes across two web pages with similar ranking, the machine has to pick just one with higher position. But how is that possible if both pages are optimized equally? That’s when a problem occurs. With two or more pages with duplicated content, Google will not understand which one to rank higher, so, it may rank just one or worst case scenario – it won’t rank any.
(4) Broken Links
Properly created links are crucial for building trust with the audience. These give web users necessary information required for a seamless web browsing. A broken link can do nothing. It won’t take a user to the destination point.
Sites change over time, as well as the data that you share on your pages. So, broken links are just a natural part of your site’s “history”. Broken links won’t affect your ranking tremendously. However, when a person clicks a link and it doesn’t take him anywhere except a 404 page, he will hardly appreciate such an experience. Broken links result in user frustration and a poor online experience, which Google cares about and will penalize even the most diligent of webmasters.
Solution? Broken Link Checker will help you discover broken links on your site.
(5) Wrong Tags and Meta Descriptions
This is one of the most wide-spread mistakes that websites keep on repeating over and over again. Lots of SEO experts and Google emphasize that all pages of your web resource should be unique and feature descriptive titles. This is an important aspect of the proper optimization of your site. Basically, a title is a crucial SEO aspect that influences your site’s rankings. It cannot and should not, be overlooked. The title should be a reflection of the data provided on the page. It should be unique and different from the titles of other pages that you run.
Meta Descriptions also need to be 100% unique.
What is a meta description?
This is a piece of content that people will see in search results. It is placed below the title of your page. A cleverly written (well optimized) meta description can help to increase your CTR (Click Through Rate). Limited to 160 characters only, meta descriptions should contain a focus keyword, and tell web surfers what you provide on your site’s pages, and how that content relates to them.
A meta Description needs to be informative yet intriguing. It should sound persuasive and unique. It should be written in a way that after looking through the text people can’t resist the temptation to click a link.
These are the 5 most common SEO mistakes that we should avoid when working on the optimization of our online resources. We hope that you found them useful and all of them will help you attract loads of loyal fans to your site.
