SEO

7 Most Common SEO Mistakes you Should Avoid

Written by: Cynthia Ugwoh - Common SEO Mistakes

It has often been said that a well-executed SEO strategy will help your business grow effectively and this is why you should avoid these 7 most common SEO mistakes. 

Sometimes you can forget to fix the crucial things that ensure the success of your SEO strategy while you were busy doing other things or overlooking them. The return of a properly optimized website is ranking and organic traffic from search engines.

Suggested read: What is SEO?

Below are the common SEO mistakes you should avoid in order to ensure maximum SEO success.

7 Most Common SEO Mistakes you Should Avoid

1. Slow Website 

Common SEO Mistakes

A slow website is one of the common SEO mistakes you should avoid.

You will lose the majority of your visitors if your site is slow. Google recommended that the page load time for websites on both mobile and desktop devices should be less than 3 seconds. A slow website is an SEO mistake you should avoid in order to keep your audience.

Also read: The Concept of ON Page SEO – Ultimate Guide

The following elements affect how the content of your website is rendered to visitors;

a. First Contentful Paint (FCP)

Google Chrome Lighthouse’s performance section tracks FCP. It evaluates the time (in seconds) your browser takes to render the first piece of DOM content once a visitor visits your site.

b. Time to Interactive (TTI)

TTI uses HTTP archive data and it measures page load speed. TTI evaluates when a page becomes fully interactive.

Also read: Ultimate SEO Guides for Ranking in 2023

c. Time to First Byte (TTFB)

The interval of time between sending a request to a server and having the first byte of data delivered to the browser.

To improve your website load time, first, use the Google page speed Insights tool to check your website performance. It will generate the analyzed result with suggestions on what you should fix.

To fix your site load time, run your website through Google PageSpeed Insights tool to evaluate its performance and learn more about how quickly your site loads and possible ways to increase your website speed.

Common SEO Mistakes

Also read: Best Guide for Keywords Usage in SEO

2. No or Poorly Installed Robots.txt

 robots.txt file

Robot.txt is an important file on your website you should never ignore. A robot.txt is a text file used by websites to communicate with web crawlers and other web robots. Robots are often used by search engines to categorize websites.

This text file is used to allow or disallow what the webmaster wants web crawlers to have access to. If the robot.txt file is poorly written or by mistake disallow what you are not supposed to disallow, this will affect your website ranking on search engine. Since SEO success is what you are after, learn how to use robot.txt file to allow search engines from indexing your website and not otherwise.

It is better to allow web crawlers to have access to your website, and then use the “noindex” or “nofollow” HTML tags within your content to tell google which link is important and which is not.

Here is a free robots.txt generator you can use.

block search crawlers

Also read: 9 Most Important SEO Guides to Help you Rank on Google

3. Not Submitting Sitemap to Webmastertools

Not submitting your website to webmaster tools is an SEO mistake you should avoid. In our previous article, we talked about SEO guides for ranking which also highlights the importance of using webmaster tools.

Google already provided these free analytical tools (search console and google analytics) to help you monitor your websites. So, avoid this mistake and ensure to submit your website to webmaster tools.

It is one thing to submit your website to webmaster tools it is another thing to monitor the data for possible improvement. The data from this tool will help you understand how to improve your website. So, do not overlook it.

Also read: What is SEO Analyzer?

4. Poorly Design Websites and Site Navigation

Common SEO Mistakes

This is a common SEO mistake upcoming bloggers make. They mostly choose to use free themes or templates which are not fully optimized for SEO.

If you realize this mistake very early, then it is better to use a premium theme if you are using CMS like WordPress, BlogSpot, or Wix.

It is also necessary that you organized your site navigations in order of relevance as this will help web crawlers to learn and understand your website.

Also check: Top Affiliate Programs you can join and Start Earning

5.  Not Fixing Broken links or 404 Errors

404 error and broken links

Not fixing broken links and 4004 errors is an SEO mistake you should avoid. If you submit your website to webmaster tools as described above, it will let you know when a link is broken then you can fix this link or redirect it.

Every time a visitor hits a broken link or 404 error on your website, you tend to lose a such visitor as the visitor would look for the information somewhere else.

6. Building Negative Backlinks

building negative backlinks

Building negative backlinks is an SEO mistake you should avoid.

Yes, Backlinks are important for SEO because they let Google understand that other websites/content linking to your content finds them informative. Do not buy backlinks but let your backlinks grow organically. Gets backlinks from quality websites and it will help your domain authority and ranking.

Recommended: How to Choose a Good Web Hosting for your Website or Business

7. Not Properly Understanding your Audience

understand your audience

As of April 2022, there were more than five billion estimated internet users worldwide by statista, which is 63.1 percent of the global population. This means that your audience will come from different parts of the world and it is important your know, understand, and then interpret the information they are consuming on your website. Your audience will leave behind footprints every time they visit your website and learning how to better serve them will aid the success of your online business

Understanding and interpreting how your customer/audiences behave on your website is in one way connected to their keyword usage and you should as well learn about this. Google console and analytical tools are free tools you can use to better understand your audience. 

More Tips

– Do not plagiarize

– Using completely AI-generated content is a bad SEO practice but you may use it as a writing assistant.

– Update old content regularly 

– Avoid keyword stuffing

In conclusion?

What Are the Most Common SEO Mistakes you Should Avoid?

You should avoid the following SEO mistakes;

1. Slow Website
2. No or Poorly Installed Robots.txt
3. Not Submitting Sitemap to Webmastertools
4. Poorly Design Websites and Site Navigation
5. Not Fixing Broken links or 404 Errors
6. Building Negative Backlinks
7. Not Properly Understanding your Audience

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Cynthia Ugwoh

Cynthia Ugwoh is an innovative SEO Specialist with a track record of growing organic website traffic to increase website while specializing on on-page optimisation, off-page optimization, SEO Audit, and keyword research. Excited to make an invaluable contribution across multiple digital platforms to raise a company's search engine rank, traffic, engagement, and conversions. contact: Cynthia.ugwoh@gmail.com

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