SEO is powerful when it comes to ranking your website higher in search engine result. It’s important when optimising your website, that you do everything right so you don’t jeopardize your website ranking or gain a penalty from Google. Unfortunately, some people still are unaware of the common mistakes that you need to avoid in order to take your SEO efforts to the next level. For those who are looking to get it right the first time, here are the top SEO mistakes that you need to avoid at all costs if you want to improve your website ranking and SEO efforts.

What To Avoid When Developing Your SEO Strategy

While there are many mistakes one can commit while performing search engine optimization, there are more important ones and less important ones. For instance, forgetting to write a custom meta description is bad but it is nothing compared to stuffing the same keywords in your content over and over again.

Keyword Stuffing

While keywords are important, keyword stuffing isn’t. Keyword stuffing can jeopardise your efforts greatly. Keyword stuffing is where you use a great number of keywords throughout your content in order for it to be picked up in search engine results. This can lead to Google penalties and other consequences. Instead use keywords sparingly throughout the content as this will not only look better in the eyes of Google, but it will also look natural as well. Some general tips when using keywords include:

• Use keywords once every 150 – 200 words.
• Use long-tail keywords over generic keywords as these tend to be more direct.
• Check Google Keyword Planner to make sure you are using the right keywords for your industry niche and website.
• Place the keywords naturally within the text. Placed unnaturally and it will affect the readers experience on your website.

Keyword stuffing should be avoided at all cost if you want to really improve your website rankings for the better and long term.

Buying Poor Backlinks

Backlinks are crucial to the success of your SEO, however buying backlinks for the sake of backlinks isn’t a good plan. Buying backlinks means that you run the risk of buying poor quality backlinks which can jeopardize your rankings. Poor quality backlinks can come in many forms which include:

• Low grade Domain Authority (DA) – under DA 20+.
• Spam score of over 3+.
• Unprofessional websites that are only used for the purpose of link building.
• Websites that don’t have any social media reach.

Instead opt for a professional outreach service that provides quality backlinks naturally back to your website. Here’s an example of good backlinking without being too intrusive because the link is located in the Author bio and not in the article content itself.

Using Duplicate Content

Duplicate content is a big no no when it comes to SEO best practices. Duplicate content comes in many forms which include, but aren’t limited to:

• Product descriptions
• Blogs
• Website content
• Meta descriptions

Duplicate content is bad for your website ranking because Google has to work out which website offers the most value to searchers. When duplicate content is found, generally you’ll find that both websites will drop in search engine results. Instead it’s a good idea to work on creating original content. When creating original content there’s some things that you need to keep in mind. These include:

• Make sure there’s no grammar or spelling mistakes.
• Make sure the content passes Copyscape or other plagiarism checkers.
• Make sure the content is relevant to your industry.
• If you have 10,000 product descriptions you need to write 10,000 new product descriptions. Don’t use the manufacturer’s description.
• Write naturally and as if you’re talking to your friend or family member.

Duplicate content is a key killer when it comes to SEO and should be avoided.

Not Optimising Your Meta Details

Your meta details are at the forefront when people search for your website on popular search engines. The meta details are the title and the description that shows up in search results. It’s important that these are optimised with the keyword you want to rank for and be under the character limit. Generally, the title needs to be 55 characters or less and the description needs to be 155 characters. While you may be able to go over this by a few characters which is acceptable, try to avoid making them too long as this looks unprofessional and can hurt your SEO efforts.

Not Using Analytics

Last, but not least, it’s crucial to use analytic tools to help you track your progress. Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools allow you to analyse your data directly to see what is working and what isn’t. It gives you inside knowledge into what you can improve on or completely stop in order to save money.

Without the ability of measuring your website data you can’t move forward in making your site better. By setting up weekly reports and conversion goals you’ll be able to see what is driving the most traffic back to your website. Many people don’t utilise analytics which is damaging to your SEO efforts.

Conclusion

When it comes to improving your SEO efforts, it’s a good idea to avoid these common mistakes that many people make when trying to improve their SEO efforts. As you can see above, these are just some of the examples that you can use to help improve your website rankings for the better. Are you ready to avoid these mistakes? Good.