Beginners to SEO make mistakes either because they are not aware of the basic SEO best practices or because they don\u2019t understand them correctly.<\/p>\n
SEO is a fast-changing industry and what worked a few years or months ago may not work today. It is thus important to stay educated and informed about the latest SEO developments.<\/p>\n
In this post you will read about the 18 most common SEO mistakes to avoid and what to do instead.<\/p>\n
Here is the list:<\/p>\n
Some people believe that by using a keyword research tool before creating their content, they are somehow cheating. This is nowhere close to the truth, it is in fact a big SEO mistake.<\/p>\n
A keyword research tool such as SEMRUSH<\/strong><\/a> or the Google keyword tool will give you an indication of what queries people\u00a0type in the Google Search Box.<\/p>\n By including those keywords in your articles or pages, you make the content more relevant to your users and easier to understand for the search engines.<\/p>\n This is probably the biggest SEO mistake<\/strong> and despite the emphasis given by both Google and Bing, still some webmasters do not provide unique titles for each page.<\/p>\n The title of a page is a very important SEO signal. This is what search engines and users read first when they try to understand what a page is about.<\/p>\n If you fail to provide them with a title that is meaningful to both \u00a0(search crawlers and users) you will minimize your chances of ranking high on Google<\/strong><\/a> (and other search engines<\/a><\/strong>) and in addition you drive visitors away from your web page.<\/p>\n The most common mistakes are:<\/p>\n How to write SEO friendly titles<\/a><\/strong>:<\/p>\n Not proving a meta description<\/strong><\/p>\n Another SEO mistake is not to provide for a unique meta description<\/a><\/strong> for each and every page.<\/p>\n A good meta description can increase your click through rates (CTR) and if your content delivers what promised in the description, it is more likely to increase your conversion rate as well.<\/p>\n Descriptions should be unique (between 150-160 characters), non-keyword stuffed and attractive to the user.<\/p>\n Pro Tip:<\/strong> Read my seo tips for beginners article<\/strong><\/a> (point 1) on how to SEO your page titles and descriptions.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Social media is one of the best and most effective ways to promote your website or new content.<\/p>\n It is a huge mistake if you are not active in at least one social media platform.<\/p>\n Most SEO experts agree that social signals are gaining more ground as a ranking factor and besides the hidden SEO benefits, social media is also a good source of traffic.<\/p>\n You don\u2019t have to be active in all networks, or to spend\u00a0a lot of time socializing without a purpose.<\/p>\n You need to find which platform is best suited to your audience and try to build authority and trust by following the leaders in your niche and sharing informative and useful content.<\/p>\n Don\u2019t expect that because you\u2019ve written what you think is a good post, people will start sharing it on Facebook or tweeting about it.<\/p>\n This is not going to happen in the beginning or until you have managed to build a decent\u00a0audience (which includes hundreds of email\u00a0subscribers, thousands of Facebook followers<\/strong><\/a> and tens of twitter followers).<\/p>\n Promoting your own work in the beginning is not a mistake at all and it is not something you should be shy about.<\/p>\n It will take a lot of effort, good content and persistence for others to share your work, but once you get to this point everything else becomes easier.<\/p>\n How to promote your blog posts<\/a><\/strong>? There are a lot of ways but the most effective are:<\/p>\n Not having your website registered with Google Search Console and Bing webmaster tools is like driving with your eyes closed.<\/p>\n Both Google and Bing created the webmaster tools as a way to help website owners find out more about their web properties.<\/p>\n There is absolutely no valid reason why you should not register your website.<\/p>\n There are many benefits to gain and the process is simple and even a beginner can do it<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n Instead of guessing what might be wrong and you are not getting as much search engine traffic as you should, open your eyes and take advantage of the feedback given to you by search engines.<\/p>\n It doesn\u2019t matter if you publish new content daily, every other day or once a week; what is more important is having a consistent publishing schedule.<\/p>\n Decide in advance how many times you plan to publish new content (and when) and stick to that plan, no matter what.<\/p>\n What I do to make sure that I don\u2019t miss out my plan is prepare a few blog posts in advance so that I have one week to 10 days to find some time and craft new content.<\/p>\n Consistency does have an SEO value and it does bring in more traffic.<\/p>\n Pro Tip:<\/strong> You can also read my previous post: How often should you publish new content<\/strong><\/a> to get an idea of how you can create your publishing plan.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Latest trends in SEO are about authority and trust.<\/p>\n Your goal is to build trust between your website and users and authority between your website and search engines.<\/p>\n One of the ways (it\u2019s not the only way) to build authority is by constantly publishing high quality content.<\/p>\n It’s a huge SEO mistake to concentrate on anything else and forget about the importance of content.<\/p>\n Instead of trying to have as many pages published, try to build authority and trust through your content. The benefits are a lot and go beyond achieving high rankings.<\/p>\n What is authoritative content? Content that has the following characteristics:<\/p>\n Pro tip:<\/strong> I urge you to read how to write SEO friendly blogs<\/a><\/strong> to get an idea on how to create high quality content and avoid this very basic SEO mistake.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Inter-linking your pages together is necessary for 3 reasons:<\/p>\n Most web site owners don\u2019t even bother to make internal links<\/strong><\/a> either because they believe it\u2019s a waste of time or because they are not aware that internal links are good for SEO.<\/p>\n What is internal linking?<\/strong><\/p>\n Internal linking is when you link from a page to another page in the same website.<\/p>\n Internal links are great for SEO since they allow you to create your own small web by linking your pages together. This helps search engines discover or revisit pages from your website and also gives extra information to users about a particular topic.<\/p>\n The most common mistakes that many webmasters do with internal linking are:<\/p>\n Best practices for internal links are:<\/strong><\/p>\n Google has many times mentioned that webmasters should pay attention to internal links because it helps them navigate a website better.<\/p>\n The screenshot below is from the Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide<\/em> published by Google a few years ago.<\/p>\n Here is an example of a good internal link: \u201cAn SEO friendly website<\/strong><\/a> has a good internal linking structure\u201d.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n It is really a crime not taking advantage of speed as a ranking factor. If there is one factor that we know for sure that it affects your ranking position, this is page speed.<\/p>\n Google and Bing want to make the web faster and they are doing everything they can from their part\u00a0to make this happen.<\/p>\n I know from my experience talking to clients that trying to improve the loading time of a website is not the easiest task to do but it is a mistake ignoring it.<\/p>\n A faster website will bring more traffic (due to higher rankings), will generate more sales and more page views<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n If you are running ads on your web site (like AdSense) a faster web site will also generate more ad clicks and ad revenue<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n How to improve the loading time of your web site?<\/strong><\/p>\n You basically have 2 options. The first one is outsourcing this task to a professional team and let them find their way through the bits and bytes and the other way is doing it yourself.<\/p>\n For the first option you can hire a developer through upwork.com or peopleperhour.com.<\/p>\n For the DIY solution, you can start by analyzing your web site through the Google PageSpeed Insights service<\/strong><\/a> and follow their guidelines.<\/p>\n I am not a big fan of the term ‘link building’. In fact, I don\u2019t even like\u00a0to hear it, I like to use the term promotion<\/em> instead.<\/p>\n Nevertheless, the reality is the same. Whether you call it link building, off-page SEO<\/strong><\/a> or promotion, it is one of the most important SEO processes, if you want to achieve\u00a0high rankings.<\/p>\n When\u00a0build links avoid making these SEO mistakes:<\/strong><\/p>\n Pro Tip:<\/strong> If link building is a new concept for you, read my previous guide: What are backlinks<\/a><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n If you ask anyone who is outside the SEO industry \u2018what is SEO\u2019<\/a><\/strong>, they will most probably tell you that:<\/p>\n While this used to be a common SEO tactic of the past, it\u2019s not the way today to get\u00a0a page in the top positions of Google today.<\/p>\n The problem with using such techniques is that Google no longer tolerates link building that has no other value than passing \u2018link juice\u2019 from one page to another.<\/p>\n Their updated quality guidelines<\/strong><\/a> state clearly that any type of links build for this purpose are against their guidelines and may lead to a penalty.<\/p>\n In particular they talk about:<\/p>\n Does this mean that link building is dead?<\/strong> Absolutely not. Google was the first search engine that came up with the idea that a link is a \u2018vote\u2019 of trust and that websites with the highest number of links should rank better than websites with lesser links; and this worked great for them for many years.<\/p>\n They actually did several tests for removing links from being an important ranking factor but they concluded that the quality of the results is better with the incoming links considered.<\/p>\n Besides Google, Yandex also started using links as part of their ranking algorithm and so does Bing and Yahoo.<\/p>\n So, how do you build links that matter without getting into trouble? <\/strong><\/p>\n First you need to make sure that your website and content are of good quality and professional.<\/p>\n Trusted websites don\u2019t link to any website so before even trying to look for link building opportunities make sure that you are proud of your website and content.<\/p>\n Second, build your personal social media brand. When applying to guest post on big websites one of the things they look is your social media profiles.<\/p>\n You have more chances of being accepted if you are active in social media with a good number of followers rather than having a poor social media presence.<\/p>\n Third, make connections with people that can help you get a guest posting position. It\u2019s easier if you are recommended by someone who is already publishing content than applying alone.<\/p>\n Fourth, you need to be ready to show samples of your published work (besides your blog). If you want to publish your content on good websites you will have to show them examples of your work published on other sites.<\/p>\n Web sites that have more pages in the index rank higher than websites with less pages, correct? Not necessarily.<\/p>\n Websites that have a lot of quality pages<\/strong><\/a> indexed will rank higher and not just any type of pages.<\/p>\n Pages with thin content, duplicate content or repeating content do not add value to a website, they actually harm a website\u2019s SEO performance.<\/p>\n If you are aim is getting as many pages you can indexed in Google, you may have to stop and revise your SEO Strategy<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n In a typical website, category, archive, tag and pages that do not have unique content should be set to \u2018noindex\u2019.<\/p>\n This will most probably reduce the number of indexed pages but it is a more optimized approach and will help your website in the long term.<\/p>\n Instead of trying to duplicate your pages, concentrate on creating pages with valuable content that have more chances of ranking on their own.<\/p>\n Use canonical URLS and page directives for pages that need to be present for navigation purposes or useful to users.<\/p>\n Pro Tip:<\/strong> Learn how to find and fix low quality pages<\/a><\/strong> and improve your website\u2019s overall quality.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I did not mention press releases above, because I wanted to give it more attention.<\/p>\n Some people still believe that adding links to press releases and distributing them through various channels will help SEO.<\/p>\n This is a bad tactic that should be avoided. Google with the latest release of Panda wanted to pass the message that press releases do not help SEO <\/strong><\/a>and they did it in the most obvious way<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n Should you stop using press releases? Not at all, there are still benefits from using press releases as a promotion channel but you need to ensure that any links in the press release are \u2018nofollow\u2019.<\/p>\n The first thing that many SEO experts<\/a><\/strong> do when trying to optimize a website is a keyword research. So far so good.<\/p>\n The mistake they are doing is that they only consider high volume keywords because they believe that this way they will get more traffic.<\/p>\n High traffic keywords are highly competitive and if you are starting out now (or have a relatively new website) you will never rank for those keywords, at least not in this life.<\/p>\n I am exaggerating so as to give you an idea of how difficult is to go after high traffic keywords with a \u2018normal\u2019 website.<\/p>\n What you should do instead? <\/strong><\/p>\n There is a lot of traffic that is easier to target on long-tail keywords.<\/p>\n Long tail keywords as their name implies are search queries with more than 2+ words. For example, here is a high traffic keyword \u201cSEO tips\u201d and a long-tail keyword \u201cSEO tips for beginners\u201d.<\/p>\n To use this technique, you need to know how to find long tail keywords<\/a><\/strong>, but for sure is a method that works and can generate traffic for all kinds of websites.<\/p>\n For successful SEO these days, you need to do more than just SEO. SEO needs the help of social media<\/strong><\/a>, content marketing<\/a><\/strong>, mobile marketing and all other tools available in a digital marketing arsenal.<\/p>\n If your tactic is to concentrate only on SEO you will not go far.<\/p>\n It is necessary to go beyond SEO and create a digital marketing strategy<\/a><\/strong> rather an SEO strategy alone.<\/p>\n Use traditional SEO techniques to optimize your website and content but for promotion purposes think outside the box and don\u2019t be afraid to try things.<\/p>\n Don\u2019t always try to think of ways to get more links but on ways to get more traffic and the links will naturally follow.<\/p>\n This is a bit technical but easy to understand. When the Google crawler is reading a web page, it uses several techniques in order to interpret what a page is about.<\/p>\n2. Your page titles and descriptions are not unique<\/h2>\n
\n
\n
3. You are not active in social media<\/h2>\n
4. You don\u2019t actively promote your blog posts<\/h2>\n
\n
5. You are not using Google Search Console and Bing webmaster tools<\/h2>\n
6. You are not following a consistent publishing schedule<\/h2>\n
7. Your content is not of high quality<\/h2>\n
\n
8. You are not following internal linking best practices<\/h2>\n
\n
\n
\n
9. You have a slow loading web site<\/h2>\n
10. You are building incoming links too fast<\/h2>\n
\n
11. You are building low quality links<\/h2>\n
\n
\n
12. You are creating pages for SEO purposes only<\/h2>\n
13. You are using press releases for building links<\/h2>\n
14. You are targeting high traffic keywords only<\/h2>\n
15. You have separated SEO from your overall digital marketing strategy<\/h2>\n
16. You are not using the <H1> tag correctly<\/h2>\n