Table of Contents
Do you know what the most significant SEO mistakes that might affect your rankings in 2020 are?
Here are a few common SEO mistakes which you need to avoid to get the best rankings in SERP
Biggest SEO mistakes in 2020
Fix the Broken Pages
Broken pages are one of the major issues which need to be fixed on any website. Especially, if you have any links pointing to the broken page, it can lead to poor rankings of your website in the Google search engine.
The reason why broken pages are bad for your website is that whenever Google crawls a website, it always crawls the website from the root domain, and then crawls the internal pages one by one.
A broken link can happen due to any of these two reasons:
- You are deleting a page on your website and forgetting to fix it
- Someone mistypes your URL in the search engine
Both these links lead to a 404 error on your website.
Publishing Poor Quality Pages
Another big issue with a lot of websites nowadays is that they publish very thin content. As a result, Google sees these websites as poor quality websites and eventually lower the rankings of the site.
If you are a webmaster who owns a small site with less quality content, you can outrank your competitors with ease. However, if you have a very big site with thousands of contents published on it, then you must put in more effort to publish quality content on your website.
Thin quality content do not add any value to users as well as search engines like Google. Hence Google does not rank such websites.
Duplicate Content Issue
The duplicate content issue is very similar to the thin content issue as discussed above. Most of the time, eCommerce sites tend to publish similar content for multiple products. This leads to the poor rankings of the website in the Google search engine.
The duplicate content issue also occurs when you are building a translation website. The translation plugin translates the duplicate replica of the original content, which eventually affects the website rankings.
Ignore the Existing Organic Search Traffic
Most of the times, webmasters forget to focus on the keywords they are already ranking for, and try to find new keywords for their content. If the webmasters do not focus on the existing keywords that are already driving traffic to their website, it can potentially lower the traffic of their website in the long run.
For example, if a website is ranking on 5th position for a keyword and maintain a bad CTR, then there is always a room for improvement. The webmaster can play with the attractive titles and also improvising the content for the keywords he is already ranking. This can increase the rankings of the website within a short span of time.
Not Considering Search Intent While Crafting Content
One of the biggest mistakes online marketers do is not considering the intent of the search while crafting the content. Before framing content, one needs to understand its target audience for the content being crafted. If the webmaster does not know whom he is targeting, then there is no point in writing content around high trending and high search volume traffic.
So, next time when the SEO audit is being done for the website, it is necessary to check if the keyword intent being targeted on your website is proper or not. If not, the content needs to be polished as per the intent of the keyword.
Not Optimizing the Content For Right Keywords
As mentioned above, not targeting the right keyword intent is one major mistake. Similarly, not doing proper keyword research before crafting the content is also another big mistake done by the webmasters.
Keyword research and content optimization are the basic things that need to be taken care of while performing on-page SEO optimization. If these two things are not done properly, no matter how good the keyword is, it does not perform well in the rankings of the search engines.
Once proper keyword research is done, the content structure should be planned very well. Always do a competitor analysis and get an idea of what approach they are following to structure their content for better rankings.
Not Considering ROI
Most of the webmasters start their SEO campaigns purely based on the guesswork. This does not bring in more sales or revenue to the website. Instead, it leads to a waste of time, money, and efforts after ranking an irrelevant keyword.
So, before starting out any SEO campaign, it is suggested to understand the ROI of that campaign and take a call accordingly. One should always keep in mind, “what will be the ROI of the keyword being targeted for the content?”
Not having a certain goal before starting the SEO campaign can affect your website performance.
In case if the keyword selected has a huge potential to bring in more traffic and revenue to your website, then you can invest your time and efforts in crafting high-quality content and backlinks to rank higher in the Google SERPs.
Not Performing SEO Audit
This is one of the biggest mistakes done by the SEO webmasters in the current scenario.
Most of the people who wish to start their SEO journey are not performing any SEO audit or analysis before entering that niche. As a result, they end up picking keywords with high competition and struggle for the rest of their life in ranking the keyword.
SEO audits are very important in understanding the weak spots of your competitors, as well as your website. It helps you analyze what things are holding your website back in SERP rankings.
Once you get hold of all the weak spots of your website, you can optimize it very well with the help of auditing, and observe better rankings in a short span.
Not Mapping the Site Architecture
A well-designed site can have a positive impact on your business as well as in the SERP rankings.
- Firstly, strong site architecture is important to help Google crawl your website fast and index the pages in an effective manner.
- Secondly, the authority of your website builds up very fast if the structure of your site is strong. Also, having a strong architecture of your site helps in ranking effortlessly without any backlinks.
- Finally, having a good site structure can help your website to get more conversions, as the users find your website more appealing and trustworthy.
Not Prioritizing the User Experience
Having a great UX is another advantage of optimizing your SEO performance. According to a survey, 38% of the users stop interacting with the website, if they find the UX of the website to be poor.
But wait, how can you improve the user interface and user experience of your website?
You, as a webmaster, can focus on the basic UX optimization tasks like:
- Optimizing the loading speed of your website
- Making your website more mobile-friendly
- Not using unnecessary pop-ups
- Not having any disruptive ad-placements
These are the basic key points for optimizing the user experience on your website.
Not Upgrading the Old Content
Most of the time, webmasters tend to forget updating their old content. This can lead to a drop in rankings of some high revenue-generating posts of the website.
If the webmasters spend some time analyzing the existing content and improve the content quality, it adds an advantage in terms of traffic to the website as well as revenue.
If the content is not performing well in SERPs even after the frequent update, then you must scrape off the content from your website.
Not Using the Long Tail Keywords in Content
Although it is important to optimize your content for the primary keyword, it is equally important to target the long-tail keywords as well in your content.
For example, if you are targeting any keyword on iPhone X, then you must also try to optimize your content for keywords like iPhone X specs, iPhone X pricing, etc. These keywords will have less competition compared to the primary keywords and hence rank faster in SERPs.
Moreover, this helps Google understand what your content is all about and helps in reaching your content to the laser targeted audience.
No Proper Interlinking
Interlinking is another great source of improving the authority as well as rankings of your website. Most of the website owners these days forget to interlink the content or fail to provide enough information to the user. This leads to poor rankings in the giant search engines like Google.
Whenever you publish new content on your blog or website, you must always check for the SEO internal linking, which acts as a content asset.
Not Building Relationships
Building relationships is pretty important in any field, likewise in the field of SEO. If you are having good relations with fellow webmasters, writers or people who are capable enough to provide you links in the industry, then it can benefit you both professionally and personally.
If you are having a relationship with the influencers in your industry, then you might be getting a good link opportunity from their next blog post.
Not Building Backlinks
If the content is king in SEO, then backlinks also have an equal role to play in your website rankings. Most of the newbies and professionals in the SEO industry try to emphasize publishing more content on the website and fail to build links to the content already published on the site.
As a result, authority is not built for the content published, and they fail to perform in the SERPs. Never get fooled by the statements “backlinks does not matter.”
The number of domains linking to your content has a direct correlation to the rankings in the SERP. If more number of domains are referring to your content, then the chances of you performing well in the SERPs is pretty high.
Companies like SEMrush have also confirmed that the number of quality backlinks pointing to your site can improve your rankings very fast in the SERPs.
Getting Irrelevant Links
It is very important to focus on the link opportunities that are highly relevant to your business. Gaining relevant links to your website can boost the traffic of the site in a short span.
Most of the newbies try to get the link opportunities from irrelevant websites as well. This has a negative impact on the website rankings.
Some webmasters also try using risky link building tactics like web 2.0s and PBNs, which will not only degrade the rankings of the site but also have a high chance of penalizing your website in the long run.
Buying links for your website is also not a good practice as you do not have control over the quality of the link you are purchasing. Moreover, buying links is against the rules of the Google Webmaster, so it is suggested not to buy any links for your website.
Anchor Text
While building the links, most of the website owners do not pay much attention to the anchor tags of the backlinks. This can cause a serious issue in the long run. Try to make backlinks on a single anchor tag can affect the website rankings. So, it is always necessary to have a variation of anchor tags for the website to gain proper rankings in the SERP and also sustain the top rankings in the long run.
These are some of the common mistakes made by most of the newbies in the field of SEO. Try to avoid all these kinds of mistakes in order to observe better rankings in the long run. Moreover, try to perform an SEO audit for the website frequently so that you understand the errors being faced by your website from time to time.
