Perhaps someone may be surprised, but even the most experienced and literate SEOs sometimes make mistakes while promoting a website. In this article, I will list the basic ones. No matter how well you are versed in SEO services, just try to always keep them in mind. Check out here SEO mistakes to avoid:
1. Reluctance To Optimize The <title> & <description> Tags
<title> and <description> tags are the short description of your HTML-code attached to each page of the site. With their help, search engines get a general idea of the type of content published on your site.
It often happens, that after the optimization of several dozen pages, many webmasters are getting too lazy to continue registering the same tag again and again. Please don’t do this.
You should not neglect these tags because they display on SERP, and, thus, are responsible for the user’s first impression of your site.
At least, it is possible to use certain programs. For example, some SEO-plugins in WordPress, offer its users the option to generate meta tags dynamically. It simplifies the task, even though does not implement it fully.
2. Duplicate Content
Duplicate content issues, as well as duplicate meta tags and title tags, can severely decrease the search engines trust. The problem here is not just about the intentional plagiarism or copying but in the indexing error. Google indexes the HTTP, and HTTPS versions of your pages as separate objects. Webmasters often forget about such things, though they should not.
3. Over-Optimization Of Keywords
Although you might want to generate content optimized for the search engines and digital marketing, please don’t. Always remember, that the main aim is to create a useful and user-friendly website with the valuable content.
Do not put a huge number of keywords on your every page, it only reduces the quality of your content, and trust to your domain.
By the way, long time ago Google integrated semantic features into its search engine, and the number of keywords don’t mean so much for the site optimization anymore.
4. Focus On Quantity Content, Not The Quality Content
If one publication brings you X of subscribers, does it mean that two publications bring you twice more? No! Such attitude ruined many SEO campaigns.
It all depends on the quality of the content. So, better spend more time to create something insightful and trends-corresponding, rather than frequently publish unuseful material.
5. Outdated Sitemap
Yes, Google indexes your website content no matter if you have XML-cards. However, if you have one, Google can do it faster, and determine you as a content creator, so you will never face unpleasant accusations of plagiarism.
Since most of the sites are regularly updated, maintaining the XML-sitemap to date can be the difficult part, but still crucial.
6. Neglecting The Diagnosis Tools
There are various platforms providing all necessary information needed to create and promote a website that is going to love both users and search engine spiders.
Tools like Serpstat are aimed to conduct a quick comprehensive analysis of the website to get the information on the number of errors and see how well the domain is optimized in general.
http://i.imgur.com/xWgBCXT.png
For example, on the image above, there is the errors report of the H&M website, obtained by the Serpstat audit. As we see, most problems are connected with Meta Tags, Headings, and Redirects.
In each section, errors are divided by level of priority.
http://i.imgur.com/l5lTIbR.png
And it is easy to pull a list with them all for the convenience of future work on these bugs. Fixing them is crucial for developing a user- and search engine-friendly site. A regular audit is one of the keys to the technical stability of the site and the growth of organic traffic.
http://i.imgur.com/ERp6I0k.png
Do not neglect such tools. They are here to make webmaster’s life easier.
P.S.
I hasten to say that even fixing of all mentioned errors won’t magically boost your rankings. SEO is a constant work on improvement of yourself and the website you are working on.
My advice is to always operate at full power, constantly keeping in mind the idea that you can make a mistake. Re-examination of your workflow will never be redundant to your strategy. Always strive for excellence.
