20 SEO mistakes you certainly want to avoid

Are you doing your SEO wrong?

I know that maybe some of you are beginning to make your website or has one for quite some time and surely has heard about this SEO thing. And you may think, well, one day I’ll do my homework and research about it or take a course. If that is your case, keep reading, because maybe, you will be amaze on the mistakes you are still making.

When one of my customer asked me about SEO, I decided to make a check list for him, so he could check it very easily whenever he wanted. While doing this SEO list, I found pretty amazing mistakes many websites were still doing and didn’t know about it. Want to check yours? Maybe you are driving away your visitors and you don’t know it, or maybe your page is not showing properly in an Internet Search.

What is SEO anyway? SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It’s all about making your site best searchable and getting the right information when a visitor is looking for your, so in that way, you can get more readers, more visitors and get the chance to advertise your products and services in your own website.

Muy importante: knowing about SEO is really very good for your business, but all of this improvement on getting more visitors to your website, would be lost if we don’t offer good quality products and services.

The ones marked with three stars are the most important ones. The first thing I want you to make, is google search your own website name and see what you get. With that in mind, let’s begin to check the list. Remember: this is a list of errors, so try to avoid them.

Error 1. Hosting your blog in free services like wordpress.com, Blogger or similar

It is good to have Blog services that offer free resources for blogging, but that is not a professional way to build a brand business nor is good for SEO. For example www.wordpress.com/yourcompanyname/  it is not the same as www.yourcompanyname.com

SEO Tip: Wherever there is a long name before the name of your business, there is no way you can get best  SEO  results as if you had your own domain name and hosting. There are many offers online. Just pick up one and if you don’t like it, change it to another one next year.

Error 2. Leaving Permalinks settings by default in WordPress

The default value for the Permalink settings is “Plain”, that takes you to:

http://www.thenameofyourweb.com/?p=123

SEO Tip: You should change it to “Post name”. That takes you to:

www.thenameofyourweb.com/nameofapage

When your website’s link matches the keyword a person is looking for, it’s easier for the search engine to find it. This has to be done when you fresh install wordpress o really have few posts, otherwise, it can cause some problems if you have too many posts. Always make a backup before this changes. Check with your webmaster.

Error 3. Writing Headlines without checking them

Choosing a headline is something you should not take so lightly. Filling up your headline with a bunch of keywords in not an option, it would make it incoherent. A keyword is a word or series of words that a user enters into a search engine. Headlines that are long, rambling and incoherent won’t get many chances of a click. A headline is the first catching sentence of your article, so, be sure to choose the right words and structure, if you want your audience to read your post. The objective of a blog post is to be read and shared, so, the better you catch your visitors attention with your headline, the higher the chance to be shared and to increase your social network value, as well to increase your visibility on Internet.

SEO Tips: Plan a brainstorming session, write down several headlines that point to the same idea, in a way you feel it is more connected with your customer o visitors. Include one or two keywords related with your content, preferably at the beginning of the headline. Short, typically 8 -5 words or less, information-rich, understandable and matching reader expectations. Optimize the length for twitter, no more than 69 characters to fit the 140 twitter max, including space for the link, a mention and a hashtag. The search engine displays 69 characters before cutting it in the search results.

Write captivating headlines. One that makes your visitor wanted to read your post. Recent title trends include numeric lists (which draw people in with a promise of a concise, authoritative presentation), formulas that have proven their efficiency over time (it gives the reader the feeling that is going to get the privileged to learn something important), how to recipe (offers a guidelines step by step and is a useful tool to learn something new more easily) and using compelling adjectives to bring more engagement. Google “writing headlines” to get more ideas.

Use Google keyword planner and search for words or phrases you are going to use. Select the words or phrases that have low competition and high search hits all over the world or wherever you are. And check out the headline analyzer tool to analyze the emotional marketing value of a headline.

Error 4. Using long URLs in your links

When you write a post or a page for your website in wordpress, you have a text box to enter the title or headline. When you save the page/post, you can see the permalink with your title added to the root of your website name, separated by hyphens. You can also see an Edit button besides it. This website link that you are creating, will be the link that appears in Internet, like I show you in the image below.

So, what’s the problem here?

The problem here is that when you use shorter URLs instead of long ones, you can concentrate in the keywords and your link would be more search friendly. Your link does not have to be the same as the title on your post. Try to check the popularity of the keywords with Google keyword planner tool for optimizing them and getting more visitors.

SEO Tip: You can change the words in the URL to find a way to look shorter and use few relevant words (keywords) to the content and preferable in lower case. URL is an acronym for Uniform Resource Locator and is a reference (an address) to a resource on the Internet.

Error 5. Letting WordPress in charge of your Title Tag and Meta Description tag ***

When you search for any term or word in Google or any other search engine, you are going to get a list of websites related with that term. That is called an organic search, it is the search that is not paid.  For example, if you look at what I get when I type my website name, you can see that there is a title and a description. The first one is called a Tag Title and the second one is called a Meta description. WordPress automatically take the title from your post or page title and the description is taken from the first 160 words of your post or page.

The mistake here is to let wordpress to do it automatically, while you can do it by yourself and write a better title tag and a better meta description tag. See an example where I edited the Title tag and the meta description according to my business idea.

SEO Tips: Create unique title tags for each page, don’t use the same title for several pages or general names like “page 1”. And certainly don’t leave the page title blank!  A title tag has to communicate what the page is about in no more than 60 words, it can be different from the real title of your page. You can use keywords related to your page in your title tag.

For the meta description tag, summarize the content of the page or post in a way that match its content in a way that a visitor can understand. Don’t use “this is a page about..” or “Page about my…”. Don’t copy and paste a large amount of content in this meta description tag. Don’t stuff keywords in it, it will look unnatural and it won’t help you with the SEO. What’s better? One or two keywords mainly. WordPress does not allow to change this, so an easy way I do this, is by using a SEO plugin. The one I use is called All in One SEO plugin and is free.

Error 6. Having a generic Home Page Title Tag ***

Sometimes in the hurry of building a website, we forget to complete the name for the Title tag of our home page. Even though it is called Home page as the name of the page, it does not mean we cannot give it a different Title Tag. Is the main page for your business so use the words wisely to promote you and your business with this Title tag. It is the link that visitors are going to see when they search for it.

SEO Tip. Use a Home  title that reflects your business and your brand. I use All in One SEO plugin to do this because is the one I like and very simple to use and FREE, as you can see in the picture above. It even tells you the max. words to type.

Error 7. Not having a content plan ***

When you are planning to have a blog in your website, or creating a new section on your website, it is very important you make a plan for the sort of content you are going to have. Why? To concentrate your time and efforts to publish content your visitor want to read and share it with their community, so you can increase the changes to hit your target customer to sell your products.

SEO Tips: Insert a brainstorming keyword session in your business plan activities, and you will find out in what way are the trends going… and your customers. When you are doing this activity, you are gaining more insight into what’s going on out there, and use it as your advantage. It is lateral thinking, when you are solving the problem of getting ideas for content by an indirect and creative approach. Use Google Suggest (which autocompletes as you type and is built into Google.com) or Soovle (which autocompletes simultaneously from Google, Bing, Yahoo, YouTube, Wikipedia, Amazon, and Answers.com), to get ideas for content and keywords.

Of course, this would give you the most popular keywords, but it is also true that the top ones are mission impossible due to the competition. Take that into account when deciding which way to take. Sometimes going to the less competitive ones takes you to a niche market. Use Google keyword planner and search for words or phrases. Select the phrases that have low competition and high search hits.

So, plan a brainstorm keyword session, use the google keyword planner, ask your customer what they want, collect this questions and also include a Q&A section (Questions and Answer) in your plan. Create your ideal customer avatar and write for he/she, so there will be real persons wanting to read you.

Error 8. Writing little content ***

Here comes your part of the fiesta. What is your blog for? It is to give your visitor an idea of what you are and what you know about? If is that so, prepare your plan content and write your post, so visitors will come back looking for more and then, they will follow you because you are an expert in your field.

SEO Tips: When it comes to SEO, writing post under 400 words are considered short. Make a good research and find examples of what you want to communicate. You can make a video or a podcast to communicate even better. In that way, your post would be useful for many people.

Error 9. Writing low quality content ***

Avoid above all, to copy content or to use automatically generated content. It is really bad for your SEO. Google algorithms can detect this. Don’t write just to make ad revenue. Pay attention to the images and media you use in your posts and pages, always check that they look all right, not misplaced, too big or too small, and check for broken links in your website. Don’t write two post that are almost the same just to get more visitors about a trending topic.

SEO Tip: write content that is useful for your visitors, that reflects your expertise and mainly, that is created by you. Research, give examples, post reviews on your own words, write about topics related with your business. As I said before, brainstorm about the keywords in your business and include those topics in your blog. In this way, you are providing what the people is looking for and that’s the way to do content marketing. It’s about creating high quality articles that provide value for your customers, being their satisfaction your priority.

I recommend to write your post in a word processor. There are free ones by Open Office or Libre Office. Activate the automatic orthographic check for your language, so you can check any typos in the text.  Use clear language that everybody can understand.

Don’t forget your home page, you can provide a small section with some of your articles. You can do this with some themes, as with the DIVI theme, is the one that I am using now. Having useful information in the Home page is essential to attract visitors. More visitors may increase your revenue.

Error 10. Writing posts once in a while

If you write posts once a month or once every two months, it is not as good as if you write every week. Having fresh content several times a month, exposes you to potentially more search-generated traffic and increases the site’s perceived value for your visitors, that are returning for more, and hence, increasing the traffic to your website. More traffic, more chances to get more revenue.

SEO Tip. Plan your posts in advance. Have a content plan (see error 7). Brainstorm 20-30 trending topics on your business area and select 15 topics to plan your posts ahead. Create a calendar to write and publish your content. Remember: good quality content, no typos, about trending topics, frequently update content and more than 400 words.

Now ask yourself, can you increase the frequency of your posts? Can you find more ways to get good quality content? Maybe inviting qualified blog guests?

Error 11. Getting crazy about stuffing keywords everywhere

I remember that for a long time, the way to get on top of the list in Google Search, was to have a lot of keywords in your content that matches the words you were targeting with the webpage. Because of that, many bloggers, webmasters and writers, stuffed their pages and posts with a lot, I mean, A LOT of the same keywords or phrases. They even stuffed the html document with the keywords, so Google boots could “see” them, but you didn’t. It was insane this practice, as many people didn’t care about the visitor’s experience. They only wanted you to get there so you could click on the advertising and make money out of nothing. There are many people that rely on this technique to get visitors. Don’t. You just get into problem with Google algorithms and probably in the future get banned.

SEO Tip: use keywords in a natural way, so you when you read the text, if feels natural and congruent. Use keywords in strategic places. Use one or two keywords (in a natural way) in the headline, title tag, meta description and the first and last paragraphs of your content

Error 12. Use of non-descriptive Anchor Text

What is an anchor text? It is a text that’s pointing to a link. It’s when you want somebody to click on a link. For example:

—  For more information, click here  —- or  — For more information, please go to our Contact page —

It’s different, isn’t it? When pointing to a link, give it a name. Avoid using «Click here» or «Download this». Instead, say what it is. It would be easier for the visitor to know what’s the link about before clicking on it. Links on  your  page  maybe  internal—pointing  to other  pages  on  your  site—or  external—leading  to  content  on  other sites. In either of these cases, the better your anchor text is, the easier it is for users to navigate and for Google to understand what are you linking to.

SEO Tip: Write posts and pages with great design, unique title, good quality content and descriptive anchor text. Add the «nofollow» html attribute to external links, to tell search engines «Don’t follow links on this page» or «Don’t follow this specific link.» For example, I included a link for Open Office and added a «nofollow».

<a href=»https://www.openoffice.org/» target=»_blank» rel=»nofollow»>Open Office</a>

Error 13. Building unnatural links

Unnatural links are links that some other website is linking to your website with no relation to your business, for example, from spam websites, from sites with irrelevant content to your site, or sites that are built with the only purpose of getting more traffic. They are called low quality or low value backlinks. The best links come from people reading your high quality content and promoting it naturally. Natural links are really useful for indexing your site and the new Google algorithms can distinguish natural links from unnatural links. I applause those changes, because in that way, many companies that were buying thousands of links to get on top of the list in the search list, are now regarded as companies with search engine spam or abuse and do not rank high anymore. So, Don’t buy or exchange links with other bloggers.

SEO Tips: Do you want more links to your website? Publish good content and share it in social networks. Ask current clients for referrals.  Guest post on blogs. Do interviews on radio, TV or on webinars. Speak live. Send email promotions with straight up, irresistible offers.

Now ask yourself, can you increase the frequency of these events? Can you find more places to roll these strategies out?

Error 14. Not sharing on Social Networks

Using social network like Facebook, twitter, Instagram or Youtube, can increase your website traffic. Go ahead and after publishing your excellent post, promote it in social networks.

So why are shares so important for SEO? Because when people share your content, you are going to be more visible in the social networks and get more visitors. Every time somebody share your content in social media networks, Google search ranking algorithms are going to assign more importance to the linked content, thus ranking it higher. But even more important than getting higher ranking is to have an effective social media presence.

SEO Tip:  You can complement your content with genuine, personal engagements, via social media on a regular basis, eventually you’ll build a loyal audience of followers on your social platforms. The end result is a new channel for communicating with your potential customers, deeper relationships, and greater brand loyalty.

Just one thing, as you promote your website, you can also promote other people’s websites that are related to your business. Or maybe you find something interesting in Facebook and promote it with your friends. You give, you receive.

Error 15. Not editing your 404 page

A what 4ahhhh? What’s that? A 404 error page is the way servers tell us what is wrong with accessing our website by using http status code. In this case, 404 page indicates a page that is not found. If a visitor does not find what is looking for, most of them will surf away from your site. Do you want to see yours? Just type your website name and add any word, like:

http://www.yourwebsitename.com/miumiau (asuming you don’t have a page called “miumiau”).

SEO Tip: Whatever the reason your visitors are not finding the page, you should create a useful 404 error page, by writing an explanation about the error and redirect visitors to your home page or to some interesting articles you have written. The good news is that wordpress and most of templates come with one, you just have to edit it, but in Php!

Error 16. Using Flash animations, Javascript and not optimizing images

It is common for some websites to base their design using Flash animations, making the Search engines to struggle to digest the information stored in these Flash animations. It is better to use textual content pages so it’s easier for the spider program to index them. The use of flash animations to design the content of the page represents a significant weak spot for many sites. If the search engines’ spiders can’t index your site accurately, you can’t attract the right kind of traffic from searches.

SEO Tips: If you don’t have a media related website, don’t use Flash for making websites. When using Javascript and other code elements, format your site’s robot.txt file, to display an alternate, text-based version (instead of your Javascript or code elements) to avoid having indexing problems.

Search engines can’t read the text that’s inside the image, so ensure every single image on your website is optimized to be searched and indexed by search spiders by including ALT tags on each image. It would be great if also you can add an image description combined with a caption that goes under the image, to help the search bots know what’s the information you have in your website. When using a lot of images, optimize them for the web, so it takes less time to load then. That means, inserting images with low kb. the lower, the quicker is going to load. Excess of loading time can impact on your SEO (see error 20). Example of inserting image tag in wordpress: 

Error 17. Not optimizing for mobiles

Using a mobile or a tablet is a common activity right now. As Andy (from Seonick.net) says, no matter what device a website is displayed on, responsive design automatically adjusts a page in a way that webmasters can retain their content on the same URL. Responsive design could also be viewed as an answer to modern day browsing and optimal sharing experience on the Internet via differing devices. Websites not translating well on other devices is a reason for users to leave. Responsive design does work in the favor of SEO as there is only one URL, making it easy to maintain page authority as Google bots index just one version of a page content.

Think with Google also explain that the experience mobile consumers expect when they turn to a device to find, do, or buy something, is to be immediate, relevant and frictionless. To win, marketers have to be there to meet them in these micro-moments. They recommend to establish a series of guided brainstorms, to get ideas about the specific moments when consumers turn to their devices, especially mobile. They suggest to start with the four primary types of micro-moments—I-want-to-know, I-want-to-go, I-want-to-do, and I-want-to-buy—and brainstorm the more nuanced consumer scenarios that fall within those categories.

SEO Tips: Use the guide  from Think with Google to building your micro-moments strategy to start full of insights and success stories. Start making your website mobile friendly and responsive design NOW. I use Divi theme from Elegant Theme, for all the wordpress installations I manage, and I love the fact that they are all automatically responsive design.

Error 18. Having and endless stream of videos

Video elements are a good way to connect with viewers, so avoid having a page with an endless stream of videos on a single page. You better create a standalone landing page for each video, so search engines can gather information and index each video individually. Make the experience for users as easy as possible, to find and play the videos on each landing page.

SEO Tips: Provide descriptive titles and subtitles for each video. The presence of a prominent, embedded video player using widely supported video formats can make your videos more attractive to users and easier for Google to index.

For example, if the video is a long interview, maybe it would be a good idea to provide a transcript text, so your visitors can read it, and video subtitles as well. For every video someone watches, there is an opportunity to call that person to action or guide them to the next logical step and enable you to intercept your viewers at key moments and drive action.

Error 19. Not considering Google Analytics

Google provide free tools to help webmaster to review online campaigns by tracking landing page quality and conversions (goals). Goals might include sales, lead generation, viewing a specific page, or downloading a particular file. Google Analytics’ approach is to show high-level, dashboard-type data for the casual user, and more in-depth data further into the report set. Google Analytics analysis can identify poorly performing pages with techniques such as funnel visualization, where visitors came from (referrers), how long they stayed and their geographical position. It also provides more advanced features, including custom visitor segmentation.

SEO Tips: Register to Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools, so you can follow all the details for your website statistics and analyze it.

Error 20. Slow Web Performance and Page Load time

Web performance refers to the speed in which web pages are downloaded and displayed on the user’s web browser, that means, the average time it takes to see webpages in a website in your computer, laptop or mobile. Faster website download speeds increases visitor retention, loyalty and user satisfaction, especially for users with slow internet connections and those on mobile devices. Why? The less time it takes, the bigger are the probabilities your visitor would keep reading or buying in your website and not going to another. A positive user experience often leads to better conversions.

For example, if you sell a product, having fast pages will help your visitors quickly understand what you have to offer and complete your order forms. If you generate revenues thanks to advertising on your content, a fast website will ease your visitors to navigate from page to page and will increase your total of page views per user.

SEO Tips. If using wordpress, use a plugin to optimize the time page load. For a normal website the recommendation is less than 3 seconds, and for ecommerce sites should be less than 2 seconds. There are many factors affecting the speed that your website loads. There are tools to test the speed of your website. Just google “Sites speed tools”.

Wrapping up

If you have been brave enough to get here, now is time to put my tips in action. At the end, if you have good quality products and services, publish content that really matters to your customers, share it in your social Networks, and follow these steps, you certainly going to be much better with your SEO.

Let me say that covering SEO in just one article is not possible. So, begin at least checking these 20 mistakes, so you are going on the right track. You can always research for more, but at least, the basic is already covered here.

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Thanks for reading,

Gaby

Very important note: Some of the links that I provide in this article are «affiliate links» and this means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission, but you will pay the same.

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Article thumbnail image by Bruno Gomiero/ Unplash