Common Website Mistakes That Affect SEO
Do you feel as though you have done everything to improve your SEO but have seen no improvements? You have done your keyword research, added links, optimized content, and boosted site speed, yet your website is still on the second or third search results page.
Sometimes all the SEO tips and tricks will not help if your website has fundamental SEO common mistakes.
For every website, the SEO performance score is determined by the number of critical website SEO errors. That means the lower the score, the greater the number of errors.
There are three types of common website mistakes that lead to SEO errors: critical errors, warnings, and notices.
Critical errors are the mistakes that have the biggest impact on your website’s SEO performance. Warnings are less impactful mistakes that can still negatively affect SEO. Notices are more so recommendations to follow rather than errors – they have little to no impact on SEO, but brands should still make an effort to correct and follow the warnings.
Technical Errors
Technical SEO refers to website updates that companies have direct control over. This includes components like page titles, tags, HTTP, 301 redirects, and metadata.
The most common technical SEO mistakes are status code and canonical tag errors.
Status code errors, or HTTP errors, prevent search engine bots from crawling and indexing your web pages. Without indexed pages, search engines will not view your website as high quality. A low quality website holds no value to the users, which means it holds no value to the search engine, and thus your rankings will be low.
Not only will this negatively impact your website’s SEO, but it will also negatively affect user experience. If a user is unable to successfully access your web address or move from one page to the next, they will become frustrated and exit your website.
The most common status code errors are 4xx Client errors and 5xx Server errors. Client errors occur when users search for a web address that can not be accessed, usually as a result of a bad or broken link. While this error is technically user error, companies can minimize the risk by ensuring no internal links are broken.
Server errors occur when the website server failed to fulfill a valid request. Generally, this means there is a problem with your website’s host.
The second most common technical error is problems with canonical tags. Search engines do not want to include duplicate content in their listings. Canonical tags solve duplicate content issues by telling search engines the specific URL that represents the original content or preferred version of the page.
On-page SEO Errors
On-page SEO involves optimizing web page content in an attempt to rank higher on SERPs. This includes elements on the site, such as images, header tags, links, descriptions, and keywords.
Another component of on-page SEO is meta tags, which can cause a lot of problems for websites if not completed properly.
Meta tags are snippets of text that appear in the web page’s source code to describe the page’s content. They help search engines understand what your web page is about, and ultimately, help ensure it is featured on SERP. The tags also give users insights regarding what to expect when visiting the site.
To avoid common meta tag errors, be sure to keep your copy customer-centric by including keywords, specific details, and call-to-action. Do not duplicate meta descriptions or write boring, vague copy.
Another common on-page SEO error is internal link mistakes. Internal links refer to the links on one page that direct users to different pages within the same domain. Internal link errors occur when websites do not have any active internal links, when a HTTPS page links to a HTTP page or vice versa, or there is a high level of external linking.
Crawlability Errors
Crawlability refers to how easy it is for a search engine to evaluate and process the information on a website. If your website is easy to crawl and understand, then search engines will be able to properly index the site and allow users to search for your company.
To ensure maximum crawlability, websites need to possess a clear layout, easy-to-use sitemap, and accessible internal links. These features make the website easier to navigate and allows search engines to crawl each page with ease. The easier it is for search engines to crawl, the better chances your website has at higher rankings.
But just as there are features that make a website able to crawl, there are even more features that make a site unable to crawl. This includes unclear or confusing sitemaps, 404 page errors, and dead-end web pages with broken or missing internal links.
Getting Help Fixing Common Website Mistakes that Affect SEO
If you would like more information about common website mistakes and errors that affect SEO, need help improving your SEO, or other digital marketing services please contact Pink Dog Digital at (410) 696-3305, email us at info@pinkdogdigital.com, or visit us on the web at www.pinkdogdigital.com.