SEO Mistakes To Avoid if You Want To Improve Your Google Ranking

As you probably know, search engine optimization is necessary if you actually want to have people reach your website because it improves your Google ranking, i.e. increases the chances of your website popping up first when people type in relevant keywords.

However, what many people forget is that SEO is an organic way of improving your website in general. So if your website isn’t, for lack of a better term, “SEO friendly”, in all likelihood, it probably is not properly designed.

You’re Lazy With Your Social Media

This is number one on our list just because of how egregious, yet easy to fix, it is. Social media is one of the most important factors when trying to perfect your SEO. All the Facebook sharing, all the Tweets, the Pinterest pins, this all does wonders for your Google ranking. This means you should set up pages for your website on various social media platforms. Also, you should make sharing your content readily available and easy.

If you’re going to ask visitors to share your content, be polite, don’t be pushy and avoid using bombastic language – this will just push visitors away.

Your Content Needs More Quality

People think that just because they did their SEO stuff correctly, that they can then let their content fend for itself. In fact, paradoxically, many websites obsess over the minute details of search engine optimization and let their content suffer.

Don’t be like that. Always focus on quality over quantity when posting your content, no matter what it is. This is what actually keeps people on your website, and gives you traffic. Furthermore, duplicate content is a sin. Google’s algorithm will notice you copy-pasting your content all over your website. This will cause your ranking to plummet.

Remember to format properly as well. The duration of time people spend on your website also influences your ranking. So if somebody just decides to skip the huge and unorganized wall of text that you call content, know that it won’t reflect positively on your ranking.

You Don’t Take Care of Your Links

As you probably already know, the number of links scattered all over the Internet pointing towards your site is directly proportional to your website ranking. But, there is one caveat – they need to be good links. This means a couple of things.

First, good means a decent website. If a site backlinks towards you and said site absolutely riddles its visitors with spam and cheap ads, you can be pretty certain that this won’t really help you achieve what you want.

Also, try to get your dead links under control. A link that brings up nothing will annoy users and mess with Google’s algorithms. There are a bunch of free apps online that can help you regulate dead and broken links. And honestly, if you’re really having trouble with this, you can always get a white-hat link building service to help you out.
You Are Not Utilizing The Proper Tools

There are just so many tools and apps out there, and yet, many people simply don’t use them. Even if you think you can handle everything yourself, delegating some of the work towards competent (and free!) apps will free you up to focus on other things.

Google Webmaster and basically any other widely used Analytics tool will really help you out. Using apps like these are the easiest way to track what is happening to your website, and will make SEO that much simpler.

You Are Not Using Keywords Properly

People think that placing keywords is easy. However, it’s as much of an art, as it is a science. Placing random keywords into your website may get you some traffic, but you need to keep a couple of things in mind if you want to maximize their utility.

First, avoid oversaturating your content with keywords. This may make sense at first, but know that now Google penalizes websites that are blatantly stuffing themselves with keywords – relevant or not. And this leads to perhaps an obvious, but woefully ignored point – relevance. Your keywords need to be specific enough in order to actually point towards your website, but general enough that people will actually type them into their search engine.

Remember to keep your keywords organic and have them in every 300 words or so. Don’t forget to place the keyword in your title as well.

Your Site is Sloooow

One of the Google ranking factors that people don’t think about often is page loading times. Waiting time is now important, which leads to our point at the beginning of the article stating how SEO is primarily about user experience. While the actual mechanisms and numbers behind this are still somewhat vague, there are a couple of things you can always do. Don’t be scared, you probably won’t need to revamp your entire website.

First, images – tinker around with different formats and resolutions, and see if you can get your website to run a little faster. Next, think about all the plugins you’re using, and whether you can replace them with something a bit more optimized (or delete them outright). You can also check with your hosting providers, and maybe change your package. Clean up your coding as well, and give compression a try

Final Thoughts

There you have it folks – the most common SEO mistakes. If you’re serious about your website and your content, you should stay humble and know that there is always room to grow. Know that even if you yourself have already been making these mistakes, you can fix them easily anytime.

**About the Author: David Koller is a passionate blogger and copywriter for Media Gurus, mainly interested in SEO and Digital Marketing.