3 Website Mistakes That Can Seriously Hurt Your Google Rankings
When it comes to ranking your website, Google has very strict rules that are tricky to follow and often complicated.
Ranking high in Google’s search results, however, is highly important and can hugely impact your revenues. According to an article on Hubspot, a high ranking is “like getting tens of thousands of dollars worth of free advertising in the most relevant trade magazines for your industry, every time a new issue comes out.”
While you don’t have to go crazy trying to comply with every single Google request, making some changes to your website can greatly impact your positioning and bring more eyes to your content.
Here are THREE often-ignored mistakes that hurt your visibility.
Mistake #1: Using too many keywords
Once upon a time, keyword stuffing was the key to getting you Google visibility. That means that if you had a blog that used the keyword “dog vaccines” 100 times, it would show up high on the first page of results when people searched for information about vaccinating their dogs.
That changed a couple of years ago, and Google now rewards valuable content – longer pieces with outbound links and images – instead. In fact, Google now looks for authoritative content that is an average of 1000 words or more, uses relevant vocabulary, and includes high-quality inbound links.
Mistake #2: Too many dead links and broken pages
Google penalizes websites that contain errors, especially 404 errors (page not found) and dead links. This goes not only for links to other pages on your own website, but also links to outbound websites that are dead, causing redirects or having other issues.
In addition, Google also penalizes poor quality outbound links. These are links that lead to spammy sites or sites that are obviously just selling things but not providing readers with any valuable information.
Mistake #3: Ignoring the power of social media
Here’s the thing about content that gets shared many times: Google sees it as being high-quality, interesting content that it’s worth a good ranking.
While there’s no way to guarantee your content will go viral, you can increase the chances of that happening by making sure it’s very easy to share your articles. How? By placing Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and other social media buttons just below your article’s title.
You can even add a “call to action” at the end of the article to entice your readers to become active through sharing, commenting and backlinking to your blog.
