
The Most Common SEO Mistakes & How To Avoid Them
As with anything else, 100% perfection in SEO is almost impossible to achieve, especially without external, professional help. This was backed up by one Cambridge University study looking at landing pages which followed site performance best practices. It found absolutely no perfect scores.
However, you can be aware of the most common errors and understand how best to prevent making them. Here, we look at some of the most common pitfalls which can affect your rankings in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) and your click-through rate.
Don’t duplicate content
Search engines will struggle to rank you well when you have at least two identical pages. Social media and linking power also become diluted.
Have enough content
Your blog posts and web pages should be long enough to do the subject justice. Your content needs to give the reader the information they went to the page to find out and it will be harder to rank well if what you post is too thin. Keep your content thorough, robust and easy to read or skim over quickly.
Use noindex tags
If you don’t want Google or other major search engine to index a particular page, remember to use a noindex tag. But keep tabs on any which pages are tagged this way.
Ditch this outdated tech in a Flash
Now discontinued from all the big browsers, Flash technology is quarter of a century old and seriously outdated. If you haven’t already done so, stop using it. Search engines can’t make any sense of any content housed in these files.
Google Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
AMP can help your pages load a lot more quickly. So it’s worth learning more about, even if it may initially seem rather technically complicated. It’s important to remember to remove any outdated tags. Equally, run checks for CSS stylesheets and JavaScript code, which aren’t always AMP-compliant.
Orphan pages
An orphan page is one without any links to it. Check for these, as search engines won’t pick up on or index them.
Make the right links
You need to link directly to landing pages, while links to any website with a poor reputation will also significantly affect your ranking.
Page speed too slow
This is one of the single most important factors there is, in terms of ranking and stopping people from leaving your site quickly. Do everything you can to keep page loading times as brisk as possible. Use things like browser caching and compression to help and talk to your SEO company.
Front Page Advantage: we’re here to help
Avoiding these common errors will enhance the user experience, along with your chances of nabbing a higher ranking in the SERPs.
At Front Page Advantage, we have the experience, resources and technical knowledge to steer you through and stay clear of some of the more frequently made mistakes, whatever industry or sector you operate in. Give us a call today for an informal chat, whether you’re an existing or potential client.