SEO, or search engine optimization, is the practice of making sure that your blog is easily found by people who are looking for it.
It's a complex field filled with many competing theories and ideas, so it can be hard to know where to start.
However, there are some common mistakes that many make when they're first getting started with SEO, mistakes that could harm their blog instead of helping them succeed.
In this post, we'll go over what those SEO mistakes are and how you can avoid them.
Many people who are new to SEO try to optimize their blogs by stuffing keywords into the content as much as possible. Don't do this!
The best way to use keywords is in the page title, h1 tags, and subheadings.
Your title tag should contain your main keyword or phrase once and be between 10-15 words long.
Your h1 tags (the main heading on a page) can also include a couple of good keywords but don't overdo it otherwise it will look spammy.
And finally, you can use some relevant keywords in your subheadings but don't go overboard here either—no more than two on each page would be ideal!
One of the most important ranking factors is page load speed, which is how fast your blog loads.
If you want a high-ranking blog, you should make sure that it loads quickly and doesn't leave users waiting around for it to load.
If a page takes too long to load, this can be caused by any number of things—too many images, too many plugins running at once, or too much code on a single page—and all of these issues will negatively affect your rankings in Google’s eyes.
However, there are ways to avoid these pitfalls so that your blog runs as smoothly as possible.
To test the speed of your blog, use tools like Pingdom, webpage test, or Google page speed insights; all of these provide detailed reports about how quickly various pages are loading on different devices.
Having a slow blog or blog outages can be a big problem for SEO. If your blog is slow, it will be much harder to rank in search engines. If your blog takes more than 3 seconds to load, you may lose some visitors.
How to improve your blog's loading speed, try using use a CDN (content delivery network), optimize images and videos, and compress files using Gzip compression.
Google has made it clear that a blog that's not optimized for mobile users is going to get hit with a penalty, so if this is the case for you then you're already behind the curve.
If your blog is not doing well in search results, you'll need to take some steps to make sure that your content is more visible through Google's algorithms.
One of the best ways to improve how high up on the SERP list your pages rank is by making sure that your blog is responsive and doesn't use too many redirects, which are often used as an excuse for poor design.
Not only will this help ensure better rankings but also improve user experience because they're less likely to bounce back.
Mobile traffic now accounts for more than 50% of all blog visits, which means people are more likely to stick around on your blog if they can easily access it on their phones. In plain terms, if your blog isn't mobile-friendly, you're missing out on half of your potential audience!
So make sure your blog is responsive so that it’s mobile-friendly. This can be fixed by using responsive web design (RWD) techniques, which allow blogs built with html5 and css3 to adapt their layout based on the device being used by a user.
For example, if someone is viewing your blog from their phone, the content will automatically shrink down into columns instead of taking up an entire screen like it would on a desktop computer monitor or laptop screen.
Backlinks are the backbone of your search engine optimization strategy. They help you rank higher in search results, and they also tell Google that people are linking to your blog, sending a strong signal of your blog is authentic.
So how do you get good backlinks? First of all, you can't just buy them—Google frowns on that practice and will penalize you for it. But there are plenty of other ways to earn quality links
One easy way is by writing articles or guest posting on popular blogs with large audiences. The more traffic a blog has, the more likely it's going to be able to send some readers your way when they link back to one of your articles from their blog.
Another way is by adding social media icons like Facebook-like buttons and Twitter follows buttons on every page so people will share those pages with their friends and followers on these networks (and maybe link back).
You need to have a tool that can monitor your backlinks.
Monitoring your backlinks is important because it’s the only way to see if any of them are broken, and fixing broken links is important because it will also help you build trust with search engines.
It's important to choose the right places from which you build your links.
And by low quality, I mean links from blogs that are not relevant to your blog or links from blogs that are not trustworthy, or links from blogs that haven't been updated in a long time, or never have been updated.
It's not enough for a blog to simply exist—you want it to be fresh and relevant as well. If you're getting links from blogs that haven't changed since 2008, they probably won't do much good for your SEO efforts and may even make it worse.
Links coming from pages with little or no content at all, which Google considers spammy due to their lack of significance or usefulness for users are also bad.
The same goes for anything else you'd consider unhelpful: links coming from irrelevant categories on directories; links coming from useless forums; etc.
Don’t build links from spammy or low-quality blogs.
Be careful of building links from blogs that have been penalized by Google.
If you see an opportunity for a link on a blog selling links for money, then walk away immediately. This is also true if someone contacts you and asks to buy your content to use it as part of their blog – they are more likely to use black hat SEO tactics to improve their rankings.
Header tags are important for SEO because they help search engines understand what the page is about. As a best practice, you should always use header tags on every page of your blog.
It's also not uncommon to see a blog with multiple h1 tags on one page. This is bad practice.
You can use multiple tags if you need to break up large sections into separate sections but make sure that you only use one h1 tag per page otherwise, it could cause confusion for search engines trying to read through your content.
The proper way to use h1 tags is to have one per page unless you're designing a long-form blog post.
If you need subheadings within your content, use h2 tags instead of adding more h1s. The same goes for sub-sub headings; if necessary, use h3s instead of adding more h2s.
Broken links are bad for SEO.
Broken links on your blog are an immediate red flag for search engines. A blog that is riddled with broken links can also lead to a loss of trust among visitors, so it's important to keep track of them and address them as soon as possible.
Broken links can be caused by bad code or moving pages around, so be sure to check both cases when you're trying to identify what's causing these erroneous URLs.
It's also important to make sure that your images are hosted on a reliable server, as it can result in broken images if the files become corrupted or deleted from the host blog.
Removing pages from your blog will break their internal and external inbound links unless you use 301 redirects as well as rel=canonical tags if applicable.
If you want to change the URL of a page without breaking any other pages, use 301 redirects, so-called permanent redirects. So that visitors who click on old URLs will be directed to the new ones instead. This method also helps with SEO by helping Google understand which pages are related.
Rel=canonical tags tell search engines which version of similar content should be considered canonical when there are multiple versions available online.
Clean up old content. You may have some pages or posts that are no longer relevant. These can be taken down and replaced with new content if needed.
Keep links working properly on all pages and update your content regularly.
Make sure that all of your pages are updated every few months at least or more often when possible, as outdated information creates a bad impression on readers and Google as well.
It's a great idea to try and stay current on what your customers want. If you see a spike in people searching for something, it's probably worth your time to revisit the content you have about that topic and put out new material.
If you haven't done anything with the old article yet, rewrite it using different keywords that might be more popular now than they were when you first wrote the article. This can help keep up with changing search trends and also shows Google that fresh content is being created from time to time.
If you have already published an article on a topic, but there are new developments since then, consider updating or adding a section to the existing content to make it more relevant again (and continue providing good information).
For example, you wrote about how Facebook advertising works last year but now there are more options for targeting audiences based on location or gender than there used to be! Update your original post so people don't get outdated information when they click through from Google searches related specifically to those topics.
Google Analytics is a free tool that gives you insights into how people are interacting with your blog. It can help you make more informed decisions about the content on your blog, and show you what's working to attract visitors and convert them into customers.
Not using Google Analytics is a common mistake. It's a free tool that lets you track the number of visitors, where they come from, and what they do on your blog.
Google Analytics also gives you valuable information about keyword usage and popular pages on your blog so that you can improve your content accordingly. If you don't have this information, it's hard to know if your content is working.
It'll tell you what pages are the most popular, how long people are spending on them, which keywords they're using to find your blog, etc. All this information is very useful for fine-tuning your SEO efforts so that you can rank for more relevant terms.
Keyword research is one of the most important components of SEO. However, some overlook the importance of understanding user intent.
User intent refers to the reason why users search for something on Google or Bing.
They may be looking for a specific piece of information or they might want to purchase something online. Understanding the user’s intention will allow you to create content that caters to their interests and needs, which ultimately helps you rank higher in organic search results.
The most common mistake is not having a clear understanding of user intent but rather just focusing on keywords.
The question you should ask yourself is, "what do users want?" then answer this question by doing some research and analyzing data such as keyword trends and user behavior.
It's not enough to simply rank for certain keywords if your blog isn't going to convert visitors into customers.
You can't just optimize for keywords that people search for when looking for something specific; you also need to optimize for keywords that represent the kind of content your audience wants to consume, whether it's an article or video, or something else entirely.
Meta descriptions are the snippets of text that appear in search results to describe your blog and encourage readers to click through to your page.
Since they're so important, we've all seen them countless times, but it's easy to forget how much they can be improved.
Have you ever wondered why some meta descriptions are so much better than others? If you look at the top 10 results for most keywords, you'll notice a huge difference between what makes it into those positions and what doesn't.
And it has nothing to do with keyword density or keyword stuffing—it's all about quality content!
Meta descriptions are important because they show up in search results. It is important because it tells Google what your content is about and gives searchers an idea of what they will find once they click through.
If a user clicks on your link, they need to know what they will find when they get there. Poorly written meta descriptions can not only confuse visitors but also cause them to bounce back from the blog.
It's also important to make sure you're using the right keywords.
The best way to avoid this mistake is by focusing on your audience, not the search engine. Search engines aren’t people – they are algorithms that use keywords and phrases to find web pages matching a user’s query.
This means you have to get inside your target customer’s heads to write content that will rank well for them. If a keyword isn’t something a person would type into Google as they look for information related to your business, then don't use it!
To help you out with this step, try using SEO tools like Semrush or Moz's keyword explorer to help find key phrases that might be valuable for ranking in search engines.
Try not to over-optimize your blog by stuffing it full of keywords, this just makes it more likely that Google will flag your blog for spammy practices and demote its rankings accordingly!
Duplicate content is bad for SEO, plain and simple.
If you have duplicate content on your blog, it can cause a problem for your blog in terms of how Google views it. This can mean that search engine results will be affected negatively, which means less traffic for you!
So what exactly is duplicate content? It’s any type of text that appears on more than one page across your blog or blog.
It may seem silly to worry about this as long as it’s not the same text on each page, but there are some SEO-sensitive situations where even slight differences in wording could be detrimental to your blog’s success.
To fix this problem, you need to find all of the duplicates and either change them so they're not so similar or remove them altogether. You can also use a tool like Copyscape to see if there are any duplicate results for your keywords on other blogs.
If you have a page that you want to feature on another page, use the canonical tag. This will tell Google which page should be indexed by its internal algorithm and allow you to maintain good quality content across all pages on your blog.
Now that you’re armed with knowledge about the biggest SEO mistakes to avoid, you can start making improvements to your strategy.
Remember to stay focused on what matters: creating content that readers want and need, optimizing it for search engines, and measuring how well those efforts are working.
In this way, you'll be able to create an effective SEO strategy—one that will put your business ahead of its competitors!