SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and the technique which helps to improve your website’s visibility and traffic through various search engines is called SEO.

Are your competitors dominating your business? Are you struggling to get a higher ranking and traffic through search engines? This means your competitor’s SEO is stronger than yours or you are not following the best SEO practice that dominates your competitors.

Have you ever wondered why your SEO is not working?

The most common mistake you might be making is not following Google Quality Guideline. Also, Google keeps updating its algorithm for a better user experience.

If you are not following the right techniques your website might suffer organically.

There are several aspects you should examine to increase your Google organic ranking. There are more than 200 factors which could be responsible for the lower rankings regardless of how we try to follow the best practices.

If you are not sure why your focused keywords are not ranking #1 in Google then you might be committing a common blunder made by plenty of website owners.

Let’s dive deep and understand what common mistakes you could be doing that are affecting your SEO rankings.

Low site speed or page speed:

Recently Google confirmed that page speed is one of the important ranking factors for websites.

Search engines are designed to provide a better user experience with high search quality. However, slow-loading websites have the highest negative impact on user experience.

In general, the website must load within 2 to 3 seconds once the user visits your website. If your website takes longer than this, then you need to work on improving your website’s loading time.

You can use the Google PageSpeed Insights tool to check the loading time of your website and it will provide you with some suggestions for improvement too.

Content Optimization:

Despite many updates in Google’s algorithm, content is still the most important ranking factor.

If your website is not performing well in SERP (Search Engine Result Page) then conduct a content audit. (Because you may not know what major or minor issues you have with your site’s content). Make sure your content provides all necessary information about your product or services and satisfies the user query.

Your content must include your focused keywords and don’t forget to include semantic search terms in your content. Don’t stuff all your targeted keywords in a content (As Google do not entertain keyword stuffing anymore). Google prefers quality content which can further satisfy searcher’s queries and keyword-stuffed content will not be benefited the users. Try to make your content interesting and intended to solve user queries.

Focusing on irrelevant keywords:

It is noticed that many website owners make mistakes in selecting the right keywords for their business.

Focusing on generic keywords is the biggest mistake, it takes lots of effort to rank for those keywords, and even if you rank it won’t satisfy your business objectives. You will receive tons of traffic but no conversions.

The longer and more specialized your keywords are, the more they are likely to rank higher in the search engines.

It is recommended to go for long-tail keywords, you can use Google Keyword Planner Tool to find the relevant keywords for your website.

Poor Content Quality:

Poor content is a common SEO mistake that needs to be tackled. Content quality is important for Google to match your content with the search queries.

You must write for your audience, not simply for Google as Google functions to provide the best possible answer to its audiences. Write good quality and original content that shows your expertise, which will help you to gain visitors’ trust and as a result, higher rankings.

Some of the poor content examples are:

  • Keyword stuffed content
  • Grammatical errors
  • Spelling mistakes
  • Punctuation errors
  • Non-informative content
  • Misleading content
  • Not written by the experts
  • Non-elaborative content
  • Factual errors
  • Content written just for ranking and not audience oriented
  • Writing just for pleasing search engines

Content stuffed with keywords:

Repeating the same keywords in the content to manipulate search engine ranking is considered keyword stuffing. Search engines are now smart enough to recognize keyword-stuffed content.

Google algorithm keeps getting more complex day by day and it can easily identify if a website is attempting to exploit keyword stuffing to gain a ranking advantage. Doing this will now only cause a negative impact rather than a positive one.

Don’t write for search engines, focus on user intent, focus on quality, focus on expertise, focus on semantic terms and you will notice a quick improvement in your organic rankings.

Non-informative Meta Tags:

In August 2021 Google realized a new update for Meta Title stating that now Google will replace Meta Title with the page’s content based on the user search query.

To know more about Meta Title check this article - https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2021/09/more-info-about-titles

In most cases, Google finds that the Meta Tags are usually stuffed with the keywords, or they are too long or kept blank.

Writing non-informative and keyword-stuffed Meta Tags creates a negative impact on organic ranking. What we should learn from this update is Meta Tags must be informative and related to the content of the page only. If Meta Tags are well written and they relate to the page content then Google still considers them and will show them in the search snippet which also improves organic ranking.

External Duplicate Content:

When the content is copied from one website and used on another website then it is called external duplicate content.

Make sure you are writing a unique copy instead of just copying and pasting someone else creatives. If your website content is externally copied then it will be difficult to rank your website organically.

If you noticed someone copied your content then contact the website owner and ask them for the content removal. If your content is placed on any of the Google services then you can submit your request here:

Remove Content from Google Services - (https://support.google.com/legal/troubleshooter/1114905)

To detect duplicate content you can use Copyscape.

Internal Duplicate Content:

In general internal duplicate content means when a website uses the same content or creates the same pages within the website.

If your website has 2 similar content pages with different URLs then it is difficult for the search engine to identify which page to show in SERP. When a search engine is not sure which page to rank then your entire website might suffer due to internal duplication issues.

Siteliner is the best tool to find any negligible internally duplicate content from your website.

Thin Content:

If your blog posts or pages have too short or no-value content then it is considered Thin or low-value content.

It is not a ranking criterion, but audiences need adequate information, and thin content won’t contain enough semantical content that relates to the user search query.

Get rid of the pages with low content, blank pages, unnecessary pages, accidentally created pages, or anything else which falls into the thin content.

Over To You:

Let’s just say SEO is very complex or it is very normal. What do you think? The answer depends on how well you perform SEO activities. If you take care of these small unnoticed mistakes, you can surely take your SEO rankings to a higher level. SEO requires focusing on minute details and you must be ensured that these simple mistakes do not affect your rankings. While certain SEO issues can be attributed to human error, doing a frequent site audit can assist you in keeping your site is in excellent working order.

Fixing these errors can possibly improve your search engine rankings. An experienced Digital Marketing Agency or an SEO expert can efficiently take account of these details. Consider switching to Cubic Digital for all your SEO needs as we are the best recognized SEO Company in Ahmedabad servicing clients across the globe. We work for clients from various industries and optimize their websites avoiding any mistakes for the growth of their business. For more information about us, get in touch with us right away.