A Beginners Guide To SEO: The Most Common Mistake To Avoid And How To Fix Them

SEO is the most commonly used strategy that brands use to increase their search visibility result on search engines. SEO generates 53.3% traffic on all websites from organic search. Websites on search engines are competing with one another to be on the top in search rankings.

Though effective, the SEO techniques are not fully damage proof. There are certain common SEO mistakes that brands commonly make. This blog is a detailed discussion on how to identify common SEO mistakes and to fix them easily

What is Search Engine Optimization?

Search engine optimization is the tool that helps you to increase the visibility of your website page and improve the ranking of your website in search engine result pages. It helps you to connect with your right audience. 

But before we dive into the detailed analysis on the common mistakes in SEO and how to fix them we must understand what search engine optimization is. Search engines like google, Yahoo are the most commonly used sources of information that people use to gather knowledge about something specific or find something. Now What is the role SEO plays here?

Suppose you are a broker on airbnb and you want to improve the search market of your rooms so that more guests choose your place to stay. How would you do it ? This is exactly where SEO comes in handy. The guests always choose their stay based on reviews and ratings. To attract more guests what you need to do is improve your airbnb with the help of SEO. It will help your web page to increase visibility.

Categories of SEO

SEO is a massive combination of methods that brands use to keep their web pages on top of search results. Primarily SEO can be categorized into three parts :

• On-page SEO – This includes the improvement in the content quality of your webpage. You can do it by improving the meta description, meta title, content etc. You can also highlight positive user feedback to promote your site which is capable enough to get your website a higher ranking.
• Off-page SEO – It is when you go outside of your website to draw people to your website. The most simple way to do it is by earning backlinks from other popular websites. This helps your website to earn credibility and authority. 
• Technical SEO – Its primary focus is to increase the site speed, mobile friendliness of your website, develop the overall infrastructure of your website so that the crawlability and indexability improves.

Note – Other important SEO include, Local SEO, Content SEO, Mobile SEO

Below is the table enlisting the category of on-page SEO, off-page SEO and technical SEO mistakes

On-Page SEO	Off-Page SEO	Technical SEO
Compromising with the content quality	Buying links	Underestimating the importance of meta tags
Keyword stuffing	Ignoring the online reputation/online mention	Ignoring the importance of images
Using Duplicate content	Not monitoring backlinks	Poor Crawlability
Slow loading speed		Mobile friendliness
Ignoring Structured Data (Schema Markup)		Missing alt text
Lack of Internal Linking		Broken Links and 404 Errors
Not Monitoring SEO Performance		No XML Sitemap or Robots.txt Errors
Optimizing alt text

Reason behind SEO mistakes

There is no doubt the SEO strategies are beneficial for the development of your business. Many people have faced their SEO methods failing and their business facing loss because of it. This can make you doubt the reliability of SEO methods. There are many reasons why SEO mistakes happen they are

• Content with outdated information -Keeping the content on your website up to date is very essential yet some website owners fail to realise the importance of it. By keeping the content fresh on your website you can witness many benefits like,it boosts ranking because the search engines prefer fresh and updated content. It brings organic traffic to your website, enhances user experience as people are more eager to gather new and fresh information about the relevant topic
• Not adapting to new tactics – Relying on this age old tactics will not only cost your company its credibility it also have several negative outcomes like loss of user trust, lower google rankings, and to make this even worse this can lead you to pay penalties or get de indexed from the search result pages
• Neglecting the technical aspects – This is another mistake that affects the website. Technical oversight or negligence towards it can lead to damaged search engine crawlability, lower ranking, indexing, poor user experience, lower visibility, decrease in genuine traffic. It is very important for the owner of the webpage to maintain the quality of the webpage. If the webpage loading time is slow the user can lose interest and shift to another similar website. Maintaining customers satisfaction is very important as it helps your website to gain the trust of the website and for that neglecting any technical issue can damage your websites credibility
• Inflating the content with keywords – Over optimization and keyword stuffing is another common SEO mistake. These are the unethical practices of search engine optimization. It is the shortcut way of manipulating the search engine ranking of your website by loading your website with keywords. This is often marked as spam by search engines like google. By practicing this method you are not only jeopardising your online reputation but also putting the faith of users on line. Practicing such tactics can result in penalties from search engines. Instead of helping your website to increase its reach these practices can ruin the websites reputation

Tools to Help Identify SEO Issues

There are various tools available to help you detect the SEO mistakes. The name of the tools are

1. Google Search Console

Google search console is a free tool powered by google that lets you monitor the presence and ranking of your website. It helps the user to with you, It  helps you in many ways like 

• Performance data – It keeps you informed about the presence and overall performance of  your website by monitoring click through rates, click impressions and so on
• Index coverage – Check if there is any page that google is finding difficult to index, locate the page, look for the issue and fix it.
• Error alerts – It will send an error notification on your device if it finds a page that that has some issue with indexing, spam or any other issue that can ruin your websites presence in search results
• Backlink Information – You can inspect the websites that are linked to your domain.
• Search queries – You can check the most used queries that people are using that are leading people to your website.
• Submit sitemaps – By submitting the xml sitemap file to google you will be making it easy for it to find new and updated content for you.

Additionally it helps the website owners by identifying and fixing the negative content that can damage the content quality of your website and ranking. It also works as a communicator between google and the website owner to deliver messages related to issues, penalties, or errors

2. Google Analytics

The objective of this platform was to provide data to help you in better marketing, Improved performance and an overall boost in business. This collects data keeps track of user behaviour which helps you to provide a better user experience

Below are the Key points that will help you to understand How it Works:

• Installing tracking code – You add a java script code to your website page after setting up google analytics. This code stores data about the users activity

• Placing cookies – Google analytics places cookies in the browser of the user while they are dwelling on your website these small files stores the the information of the users activities

• Collecting Data – Tracking codes are used for collecting data about their dwelling time, conversions, clicks etc

• Processing the collected data – Google analytics server processes all the collected data and organize them into meaningful metrics and dimensions

• Generating report – Google analytics server presents all the collected data in the dashboard after processing them. It gives you an insight about the status of your website.

3. SEMrush

SEMrush is an advanced all in one marketing reporting software that helps digital marketers to promote their brands. It helps you with conducting keyword research for organic traffic, competitor analysis providing you a competitive advantage and google ad optimization.

SEMrush  has some specific features like:

• Providing accurate keywords – A digital marketing tool must be able to provide accurate keywords data. If the provided keyword data is misleading than it will cost the company its time
• Keeping track of backlinks – Keeping track of the backlink index is very essential as an SEO tool, irrelevant to the size of the website.
• Analysis of your competitor – For any ideal digital marketing tool having the ability to gather information about your competitors search trends and PPC performance is very crucial

4. Ahrefs

The primary task of Ahrefs is to check the authority of the backlinks. Ahrefs is able to do so because it has one of the largest live link databases. Ahrefs gives you a better understanding of your website so that you can optimize it better.

Ahrefs dashboard keeps you updated about your data. Just by adding an URL you can monitor the errors, new links, referral domain, URL ranking.

By subscribing to Ahrefs you get access to various tools that can help you to boost your business

Top 5 Ahrefs tools are:

Site explorer tool – This tool is equipped with two other tools like backlink checker tool and organic traffic research tool that helps you with keeping track of your backlinks and also to help you to stay a step ahead of your competitors.

Content explorer tool-This tool monitors the popularity of your contents. It has a large database of 2 billion articles so generating an article is not a big thing. Its key factors are 

Keyword explorer tool-It stores above 2 billion keywords in its database which gives you a many options to choose from. It has a unique feature see click data that gives you an idea about how frequently that keyword has been used. It generate high click keywords by integrating keywords

Rank Tracker tool- It improves your site ranking and reach to more valuable traffic. It has three subscription plans monthly, weekly and yearly. It monitors the click rates, average position and ranking.

Site audit tool –The main function of this tool is to analyse common SEO problems that exist in your website. This also helps you to monitor the speed of your website and sends you regular reports on your SEO campaigns so that you have preparation time for any problem that arises 

5. Moz

Just like Ahrefs, SEMrush, Moz is another one of the most useful all in one tools used for exploring and monitoring website parameters. It helps the brands to increase their visibility and ranking across the search engines. The main purpose of this tool is to enhance brand search performance. This marketing tool is very popular among the beginners as well as the experts for its reliability. It provides you with various educational blogs, guides. Just like SEMrush, Ahrefs it also has some key features like

• Site crawler – With the help of this feature identifying technical issues on a website becomes easy. This issues can affect search engine ranking so this feature is very useful
• On-page optimization – It provides you on page optimization and scores so that you can improve your content
• Audience analysis – Moz helps you to see from where the visitors accessed your website. The visitors mostly come from paid ads, social media, and search. It gives you a better understanding about the most preferred keywords visitors use to get to your website.

6. Screaming frog SEO spider

This is not just another site auditing tool, Its ability to crawl through the entire web page looking for 404errors, wrong meta tags, wrong direction, duplicate content  makes it easy for it keep you alerted about any arising problems by providing specific data. 

Why you should use Screaming frog SEO spider

• It is user friendly
• It provides transparent interface
• It can generate XML sitemap
• It can detect the invalid links
• It lets you export important SEO elements to your spreadsheet

Screaming frog SEO spider has 2 versions, one is free and another one is paid 279$/year. With its free version you get a crawl limit of 500URL links, find broken links errors, Locate the duplicate page and so on.

7. Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO is your answer to all your queries on how to improve your word press SEO. It has a solid 4.8 out of 5 rating on the official word press directory and over 100000000+ active installation. The range of tools that it provides helps you better in optimizing the content on your website increasing the efficiency of this plug in.

It is able to teach you while working and highlights the section that needs improvement and gives you reason why it needs improvement and makes it easy to use for everyone.

Yoast has certain advantages and disadvantages they are

Advantages

• It can automatically generate XML sitemaps which makes indexing easy.
• It has features like preview and customization that will help you in optimizing social networks.
• It provides readability analysis that helps in editing.

Disadvantage

• The free version has limited functionality and advanced features require a paid subscription.
• Sometimes it can generate alerts and recommendations that are too irrelevant.
• The interface can be busy or complex for a user who just started using it.

Common On-Page SEO Mistakes

SEO is a great strategy for digital marketers, if utilized properly it will help the website owners in various ways from increasing their traffic to bringing in more leads and generating conversions. There are certain rules that people should follow while implementing SEO strategies for their business and expecting it to grow. People often make some mistake that harms their websites’ google ranking factor and search marketing.

 1. Compromising with the content quality

Content quality is very important for the website. If the website is filled with content that is poorly written, irrelevant, low quality content then from a users point of view it would seem like the website is not serious about their content. Then why would you think people will take your website seriously and spend precious time on your webpage. This will reduce their dwelling time and it will give your competitors an advantage to take over you in the competition.

Solution – The proper solution to this issue is to maintain the quality of your website and focus on informative content creation. Post engaging content that keeps people’s attention on hold. Improving and maintaining the content quality on your website improves the ranking in the search engine results page. There are certain tools available that can help you in improving the quality of your content like

• AI powered tools for content optimization- These tools run on NLP and LLM it helps you in finding the right keyword, researching, content planning with the help of AI that boosts our website. example – Marketmuse, Clearscope
• Grammar and style tool– It makes sure the content posted on your page readable and accurate by checking the punctuation, grammatical error, and spelling mistake. Example – Grammarly, Hemingway editor
• SEO platforms – There are many SEO platforms that have key features like content marketing, keyword research, site analysis to improve the content quality of your website and fix low quality content. Example – SEMrush, Ahrefs, Moz and so on.

 2. Keyword stuffing

One of the most commonly practised unethical  tactics to improve  the search engine ranking is keyword stuffing. This method is exactly what it sounds like, the website owners filling up the content with keywords without giving much importance to the precise placements of keyword placement.

 There is no doubt it is effective , for a short period of time. But in the long run it has certain negative outcomes which we will discuss below.

• Increase in bounce rate
• User getting frustrated easily
• Website can be flagged as spam
• Decrease in user engagement and ranking
• Lower conversion rate
• This is considered as violating the search engines policies and it can result in penalties
• Entirely removed from search engines

Solution – To avoid the consequences of being labelled as a spam website by search engines there are certain steps that you can take, they are

• While creating a content keep in mind that a human will read it so write according to that not to just get your rankings up
• Try to cover the entire topic but avoid using the keyword unnecessarily.
• Create content that are rich in information and uses the keyword in correct context
• To improve SEO using synonyms, secondary keywords, long tail queries is also a viable option.
• Try to use the keyword in title tags, meta description,
• Maintain the density of using the keyword which is 2-5%

3. Using Duplicate content

Fresh  contents are a must if you want to give your website a distinct look. Using duplicate content questions your authoritativeness, it not only drives more people away but also gives access to your competitors to take the lead in this competitive market.

If you clone, copy paste a content or have similar content whether it’s a web page of your own website or any other website, then you do not need me to tell you the effect it will leave on the established reputation of your website. When the users find similar content across the website page or same content as other websites then that downgrades the reputation of your website.

This can harm your website in many ways like 

• increasing the bounce rate
• Confusing the search engines
• Risking the authoritativeness
• Weakens the backlink value
• Have to face legal action if it is plagiarized without permission
• Get your website labelled as spam

Solution – In order to maintain the uniqueness of your contents and to make them look different from other websites you can follow some strategies like

• You can use the 301 redirect method. This method is very important in maintaining the ranking of a website. It signals the search engines that the website has been moved to a new URL
• You can also use canonical tags that help the search engine to identify your website easily. It gives your website a unique identity. You just have to use the rel=”canonical” in the head tag of the page’s html code.
• You can add no index tags to instruct the search engines not to include certain pages from your website. These pages can be thank you pages, admin pagers. Just in case these pages carry content that is similar to the other pages. This is where the No index tags come in handy
• Monitoring your web page regularly is very helpful because by doing so you can find out the issues early.

4. Slow loading speed

There is nothing better than a website that runs smoothly. A website that loads quickly and saves time of the user increases user engagement and improves the user satisfaction level. 

But what if the page takes a lot of time to load ? A slow loading page leads to a lot of repercussions like 

• Increase in bounce rate
• Negative online image
• Lower ranking and organic traffic
• Decreased user engagement and conversion rate
• Gives the competitors  a competitive advantage

Solution – There are many solution available to increase the load speed of your website they are

• Optimizing images – Websites are made with html and CSS codes. All the other contents of a web page is written in words so they do not take much time to load but the image filers are large so that is the reason why it takes time to load. To avoid this problem you can optimize your image, you can reduce the dimension, resolution or you can compress it in small size
• Minimize the codes – In order to increase the loading speed you need to minimize the codes that are acquiring unnecessary spaces, white spaces. code comments . this minimises the CSS and increases the loading speed of the web page
• Remove unnecessary java script – Web pages have unnecessary java script codes that load before the content and it also decreases the site speed of the page. By removing these codes you can increase the loading speed of the web page.

5. Ignoring structured data (schema markup)

Schema markup/Structured data is what provides the content on your website individuality. Ignoring the structured data is not a smart thing to do. Structured data is important because if you put it along with your content then it would be easy for the search engine to recognise it and present it on the search engine result page.

Ignoring the structured data can result in

• Decrease in click through rate
• Decrease in the chances of appearing on voice assistants search results
• Reduced internet visibility
• number of visitors declining

Solution –

• Implement structured data for all your web pages
• Use Google schema mark up validator as it will point out the errors for you so that you can correct the schema markup for your website

6. Not enough internal linking

Internal linking is an important part of SEO. Interlinking is when the different pages of a website are connected with each other by using hyperlink. With the help of link building the user and the search engine both can easily navigate through the content of your web pages and increase the search visibility.

Interlinking is important for SEO because it improves the user experience, navigation and engagement. The most common interlinking mistakes are

• Broken links – A broken link is when you add a hyperlink of a page on another page and for some reason if the page got deleted, renamed, or moved then the hyperlink will take you to nowhere this is known as broken link

Note – If the hyperlink contains a typo then it is also considered as a dead link

• Internal no follow link – Suppose your web page has a no follow link on its code and linked to another page on the same website. It tells the search engines not to follow it and pass on them. This is done to avoid the spam pages
• High click depth – It is basically when a hyperlink takes a lot of clicks to reach. This can frustrate the user and make them impatient
• Orphan page – If a web page on your website is not linked to any other page then that web page is considered as an orphan page. It becomes hard for the user and search engines to locate this page resulting in less visitors
• Non descriptive anchor – When a web page has a link but no description of where it will lead you is called non descriptive anchor. It is considered as a negative SEO practice because it gives no description about the destination.

Solution – To deal with the problems of internal linking we can follow these steps:

• There are web crawler tools available like screaming frog SEO spider, google search consoles that will crawl through your website looking for broken links, orphan pages
• Focus on linking the relevant pages that provide helpful information to make it more user friendly
• Use descriptive links that let the users know where this link is taking them.

7. Unable to keep track of SEO performance

Monitoring SEO aims to track and measure the performance of your search engine optimization. By monitoring your SEO you get to know about the status of your SEO strategies and whether they are delivering any result or not. Many digital marketers think that once they have followed the SEO strategies they are safe and they do not need to keep in check the status of their SEO results.

Monitoring SEO performance also plays an important part in ranking factors. If not kept in check regularly this can lead to

• Reduced search engine ranking
• Giving your competitors an advantage
• You will be unaware of the changes in google algorithm
• You will be unable to differentiate between what is working and what is not
• Without monitoring you will be unaware of the online reputation of your company.

Solution –

• Monitor the organic traffic as it gives you an idea of the number of people who visit your site without the help of paid ads
• Use tools like Google search control, google analytics to collect data about conversion, traffic, search visibility.

Common Off Page SEO Mistakes

When any action that is taken outside of the website negatively impacts the search engine ranking and damages your online reputation, credibility, that is considered as an off page SEO mistake. There are many off page SEO practices that help your website to increase its ranking and visibility like

• Collaborating with popular content creators,
• Using social media platforms like Facebook, twitter, Instagram to build the presence of the brand
• Earning backlinks from popular websites which will help to build trust
• Promoting positive reviews and testimonials
• Acquiring brand mention across all platforms also helps in building reputation

In the process of processing the off page SEO methods there are some lines that you are not allowed to overstep.

1. Buying links

There are websites that pay another website to use their website link in their webpages in order to increase the traffic as well as search engines ranking. This process is known as buying links. Buying links is effective and can boost the social media ranking of the website but for a very short period of time.

This method is considered to be a double edged sword. It can increase organic search but it also can get your website labelled as spam. There are some repercussions to this method like

• If anyhow google algorithm notices that you are using this tactic to increase your google search results ranking it can discount the paid link which will make the link useless for you
• Google can put penalties on your website for inflating your backlink profile and manipulating the search engine ranking. It can also remove your website entirely from the search engine result page.
• This tactic can harm your websites long term SEO and reputation
• Can lose the authoritativeness, credibility and users trust.

Solution –

• Your priority should be opting quality of the links over quantity
• Make sure the link and the content is relevant
• You can follow natural link building methods, this opens a path to diversify your strategies
• Before indulging in business with any site for link building first check the content quality of that site

2. Ignoring the online reputation/online mention

Online mention and online reputation can be considered as siamese twins. Ignoring the online presence of your website is not a good option unless you want your business to tank. See monitoring the online presence of your website is as important as any other strategy that you will utilize for the betterment of your business.

By ignoring the online reputation and online mention you are risking your business in many ways like

• Giving advantage to your competitors
• Losing control over your brands narrative
• Losing potential clients as people prefer brands with good online image
• Loss of customer trust, decline in revenue

Solution

• You can also use Google business profile to monitor the customer engagement and the rank they have
• Implementing effective social media strategies is also a viable option. It lets monitor the online presence of your website on different social media platforms to keep the online perception of your brand in check and counter any false baseless allegation
• You can use tools like google alert so that whenever your brand is mention it will alert you so that you can respond on time
• Always mind the tone of your response does not matter how negative the comment is you should always avoid taking it personally
• Offer a solution to the person leaving bad comments and once his problem is solved ask them to leave a positive review
• Build community by engaging with the people on social media

Common Technical SEO Mistakes

Technical SEO is when you work towards building the backend and infrastructure of your website so that the online ranking increases. Some common technical SEO mistakes are:

1. Underestimating the importance of meta tags

Meta tags help search engines understand the content on your page and result in a surge in website visibility. Underestimating the importance of meta tags is not an option if you want search engines to easily locate your website as meta tags help the search engines understand the target keywords . Underestimating its importance can lead to

• Improper title tag can lead the search engines to misunderstand the content of the web page and display it on the search result. It can make the content of the page irrelevant to the keyword
• If the meta tag is poorly written then there is a possibility that when someone enters the keyword the search engine will show random text from the website and it does create a misunderstanding between the website and the user by ignoring the keyword.
• Using a poorly written meta description is also damaging because that is the first thing people notice before clicking on the link, this makes your website unappealing to the user making the user less likely to click on it.
• Improper meta tags will make your website appear differently on other search engines.
• If the meta tag is irrelevant to the content of the page this leads to user frustration and increases the bounce rate.

Solution –

• Use proper meta tags and meta description that matches the content of the page. This way you will make it easy to locate for the search engine as well as the user.
• Use different title and meta tag for all the pages of your website to avoid the tag of producing duplicate content
• It is a good idea to use your keyword in meta tags and meta description but make it seem natural not forced.
• In order keep a hold on the attention on the user it is very important to write something that keeps the content engaging
• You can use a call to action in the description to increase the engagement rate.

2. Ignoring the importance of images

Images are a very important part of a website. A well descriptive image not only keeps the user engaged but also pops up in the image search results. If your website has any image related issue then it can cause problems like

• You should fix image issue, because if your website consists oversized image then it will reduce the loading time
• Drawing crowds is also possible from google image results as a good number of crowds comes from there. Not appearing on the google image search results can cause you to lose out on a good amount of users.
• If you are not using image alt text then people who are visually impaired who rely on screen reader wont be able to discover your website
• If you are using stock images then it will make your website look the same as other 10 low ranking websites losing its distinctiveness.
• Using broken Images can also harm the overall user experience, and because of this the website can be tagged as unprofessional

Solution

• Optimize the image that you are using on the website by doing so you will increase the loading speed
• Use informative alt text for the images as it will increase your accessibility
• Use genuine images that are relevant to the topic of the content
• If you want the search engine to understand the content and context of your website you must use descriptive tags and alt text

3. Poor Crawlability

Crawlability is the measure of how fast search engines can access your content, go through it and make an index of the content. If your website has content that works like an obstacle for the search engine to go through your content then search engines won’t be able to index its content. The contents that work like a speed breaker for search engines are

• Orphan pages
• Broken links
• Redirect loops
• Slow loading speed
• Not adding a XML sitemap
• Rbnot.txt files
• Duplicate pages
• Poorly structured content
• Unnecessary use of canonical tags

Solution

• Make sure your Robot.txt file is placed correctly and not blocking the crawlers path to potential pages of your website
• Check your website regularly for broken link and fix/remove if found any
• Build a website that is easy to navigate for the crawlers
• For search engines to easily find and access your website you can add internal links from relevant pages
• By adding a clean and updated sitemap helps the search engine to index the important pages from your website
• Make a mobile version of your site. By keeping your site mobile friendly because commonly selects mobile friendly site
• Regularly audit your site with the help of site audit tools like Google search consoles, google analytics, SEMrush etc.

4. Mobile friendliness

A large number of people use mobile for online search reasons why you have to make your website mobile friendly. The mobile version of your website has to be quick responsive with a good loading speed. If your mobile site is not as good as the desktop version site then it will lead to negative outcomes like

• If the user finds it hard to use the website on their mobile device it will leave them to frustration
• Higher bounce rates will be caused because of slow loading speed
• It will set a narrative that the company does not prioritise the users convenience
• Missing out on clients who use mobile to search for services
• People are mostly inclined towards sites that are easy to operate on mobile

Solution

• Make your content mobile friendly. Write short paragraphs, optimize images to decrease the loading time for mobile devices.

• Prioritize user convenience by laying a design that fits on any mobile screen and easy to use
• Keep the site simple and remove any unnecessary content that clutters the design
• As there are more mobile users in comparison to desktop user so it will be better to design your website for mobile users first
• Regular monitoring of your website on mobile devices will keep you updated about the current status of your site
• Try too keep the distractions like pop up adds and promotions as low as possible
• Keeping a search bar in the design will make only enhance the user experience

5. Missing alt text

Alt text are important because it helps the screen reader to narrate the context of the image to those who are visually challenged not only that it also helps the search engine bots to relate the content of the image with the keywords boosting the chances of being discovered by the search engines additionally it is also useful when for some reason an image fails to load on your device it describes the subject of the image. If your website has images without any alt text then it can lead to

• Search engines won’t be able to discover images from your website without proper alt text
• Less likely to approach to the people who rely on screen readers for information
• It wont be much of an use if the image is not descriptive

Solution

• Add alt text that conveys the entire subject of the image in concise manner
• Do not use the same words that is already have been used in the blog
• A detailed alt text helps the user to understand the context of the image

6. Ignoring local SEO

Ignoring local SEO might not seem like a big problem but it damages your business on a more ground level. See if you are running a small shop or cafe you want people to find it on google maps when they search for “cafe near me”. In this search results people prefer places that have good ranking online.

Ignoring the importance of local SEO can lead to

• It won’t be visible to local customers
• Giving your competitors an advantage
• Weak online presence
• Your website will lose out on traffic, sales opportunities

Solution

• Online listings will help you to reach to the target audience
• Create a google business profile to get registered on local directories as it will make your business visible on google maps. With its help you will be visible on local search results and increase your ranking for searches with local intent.

Pro tips to avoid SEO Mistakes

SEO is a great tool for boosting your website. It does not matter if you own a big company or run a local business, SEO is for everyone who can use it properly. But being careful while doing so is also important. Below we will discuss the pro tips that can guide from making the most common SEO mistakes.

1. Carrying out regular SEO audits

Making a well established website is not easy, it takes a huge amount of time, effort, and money to build a website. What would be your reaction if you see that the performance of your website is not up to the mark. You won’t be happy at all.

Maintaining a website is the same as maintaining a vehicle. You have to keep it in check regularly or it will start to collapse if not checked for a long time. To maintain a car you have to do certain things just like that to maintain the performance of your website and improve it you need to perform regular SEO audits.

A search engine uses many ranking signals that decides the position of your website ranking. There are some signals which are more important in comparison to others but to maintain a good ranking you need to take all the rankings into consideration and optimize them. The basic function of these ranking signals is that they indicate what part is performing well and which part needs improvement.

There are basically 2 ways you can audit your SEO

1. You can do it manually by using comprehensive checklist
2. You can use website auditing tools like Google search console, Google analytics, SEMrush, Moz and so on

There are many benefits of performing regular SEO audits like

• It provides you a clear idea about how to increase your ranking by identifying the problem that was hampering the visibility
• It can detect all the technical issues easily like duplicate content, indexing issue, broken links, orphan pages etc by fixing this issues you can make your website run smoothly
• It helps in locating the content that are outdated, and the content that can be optimized for better results
• It points out the USP of your website and missed opportunities and also provides you the insight of the strategies obtained by your competitor which gives you a competitive advantage
• Regular audits also help you to keep updated about the changes in search engine algorithms and trends which lets you to optimize your content according to that
• It also keeps you updated about the weak part of your website and by fixing that you can generate organic crowd which will increase the conversion rate
• Performing regular audits ensures the regular optimization of your content which is beneficial in a long run

2. Optimize the content according to the changing algorithm

Your website’s position on the search engine result page depends a lot on the google algorithm. It decides where your website will be placed in the search result. Google algorithm is basically a bunch of codes that work on calculation that commands the devices behaviour. To maintain your websites ranking always keep in mind that

• Google keeps the updated content on top so update your content regularly
• Maintain the relevance of your content as it prioritises user friendly, informative, and relative content on top of the search result.
• If you are well updated about shift in algorithms and keep optimizing your content according to that it gives you a competitive advantage
• Actively monitoring and adapting to the changes in algorithms can prevent any kind of negative impact on your website like drop in ranking, engagement, visibility

3. Why using black hat tactics is risky business

Black hat tactics are really beguiling. These tactics do sound like a sure shot attempt to uplift your google ranking but the catch is if it does not work in your favour it will get your website removed from the search engine, hinder your reputation and might even get you penalised.

It is proven that the black hat tactics will get your ranking high by manipulating the search engine only if you enjoy taking shortcuts in achieving something big. Using black hat tactics is similar to having a knife on the neck and a gun on the back. There are a number of negative outcome of using black hat tactics those are

• Penalised by the search engines and marked as spam
• Complete removal from search engine ranking page
• Damage of reputation
• Loss of user trust
• Loss of online visibility
• Increase in bounce rate

4. Providing fresh content and keeping it user-centric

Let me ask you one question: What is the key reason behind the success of any brand? Is it the content creator? is it the search engine? It’s the people obviously for who you are creating this content.

When you are creating a content you always want it to be accepted and appreciated by people. Public acceptance plays a huge part in the growth of any brand. To be appreciated by people you need to prioritize creating high quality content that grabs public attention in times like this when people have a really short attention span

In order to do so you need to include the keyword naturally in the title tag and website content. Using wrong keywords that do not relate with the content will cause your SEO efforts to fall flat on face.

If you focus on keeping the content fresh and user centric then it will benefit your business in numerous ways like

• Enhanced user engagement
• Improved user satisfaction
• Better user experience
• Accessible to all user
• Boosted website traffic
• High conversion rate
• Authoritative brand image
• Increased credibility

Conclusion

To wrap this up, it is clear that SEO strategies play a huge part in ensuring that your business grows. But you have to monitor it on a regular basis to make sure it is working in your favour. In this blog we have talked about all the possible mistakes people make in SEO. We also have discussed solutions for the problems and their benefits.

These are very common SEO mistakes made by people. These mistakes can spoil all SEO efforts and harm your business, but if you use the right methods, refrain from taking short cuts, and with the help of the right tools you can easily avoid making these mistakes and fix any damage that has already been done. In case you are still not sure if you can fix the SEO mistakes by yourself, appointing an expert SEO agency is always a good option for you.