5 COSTLY SEO Mistakes that Can Destroy Your Google Rankings

Advertisement
Our goal here is to provide you with quick and easy solutions that don’t require you to be an SEO expert. These SEO tips and tricks will help you get your SEO optimization back on track to receiving gobbs of organic traffic from the search engines.

1. Duplicate Content

There are ways that you can create duplicate content in the eyes of Google and not even realize it.

One of the biggest duplicate content killers for Google has been, and will continue to come down to websites that DO NOT provide original and high quality content.

Copying other blogger’s content is one of the most common methods done by blogger’s and beginners SEO’ers, that can throw up a red flag for Google. Duplicate content will dilute the value of your information, but can also lead to a penalty by Google.

Another method not known by many, that can create duplicate content, is a canonical issue. This is where you have a website that is accessible by the www and non-www version of its URL address. Follow the link above to see if you fall into this category.

2. Your Page’s Loading Speed

Even a 1 or 2 second difference for your website’s page to load can make the difference between the searcher staying or hitting the back button at lightning speed. “Faster sites create happy users.”

An oldie, but goodie: Google Webmaster Central Blog states Google’s position for Site Speed.
Google states that they have gathered data that reinforces their thoughts that Speed does matter on the Internet. They have ran experiments that determined that site speed is not only important to site owners, but to ALL Internet users.

Having your page load in under 4 seconds should be your goal here… achieving faster results is even better.

Here is a great tool called PingDom that will test your website for speed robbing bottlenecks!


For WordPress site owners
, here is an article that will help with tips and tricks to reduce your download speed… follow the 4 steps given and you can reduce your loading time by precious seconds.

To help with some of the technical back-end scripting that causes longer page loading times, use the WordPress plugin W3 Total Cache. This plugin will help reduce your site’s downloading speed and is a must-have plug-in for any WordPress user.


3. NOT Updating Your OLD Content


Optimizing your website for SEO is like having a pet. You’ll need to feed it regularly and give it some attention. Just like your pet, Google wants you to pay attention to your site and feed it regularly with fresh content.

Google wants up to date content that shows that you care, and are around to manage your site, so be sure to visit some of your old pages and update them from time to time with new links and updated content to meet today’s fast-paced world.


There is nothing wrong with going back to an old article and adding a paragraph or two to keep it updated.


4. Writing for the Search Engine – NOT the Human


I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again
, “Write with the reader in mind, not the search engine.
Your readers should always come first. Never fill your web page with information that you think the search engines might like… it makes for a poor user experience. Always provide value-based content for your readers.

Many people think that stuffing their article with keywords will attract more visitors via the search engine. It might, but keep in mind that if you over-optimize your information and your content holds little to no value to the reader, you won’t get very far. It’s going to show through the human element factored into Google’s search engine algorithm.

Creating valuable content and optimizing for the ‘user experience’ should always be the top priority.


One of the many signals in the Google algorithm is Bounce Rate, which you can read about here: Is a High Bounce Rate Killing Your Profits?


5. Not Using Title Tags or Meta Descriptions Tags Properly


The Title tag is arguably the most important SEO tag for any site. If you are looking for an SEO tip that will improve your search engine rankings… the Title tag is it.

Google usually only accepts the title to be a length of 60 characters, so don’t go overboard and write a whole paragraph. If you want to keep your title under control, you will need a helpful plugin called the All in One SEO Pack for WordPress.


This plugin will help keep your title under control, because the default WordPress site will use your headline to make the Title which may be more than 60 or so characters, which Google will cut off at their character limit.

The Meta Descriptions tag may not be important for SEO rankings, but it is important for click-throughs to your site, which is measured by Google.


An online tool that is of great value to let you know where you stand with your Title tag, Meta Descriptions tags and others tag is the meta tags analyzer tool. This exceptional tool will inspect every meta tag of your web page and offer suggestions to make improvements.

This is an essential SEO tool to add to your SEO arsenal, so keep the web page bookmarked. This HTML website tag checker will evaluate the length and relevancy of your title, description, and keywords meta tags.


This invaluable tool will also measure your page’s downloading speed, the amount of links on the given page and many other crucial elements. Just make sure that you follow the guidelines and suggestion mentioned by the meta tags analyzer tool.

Here are the Google Webmasters Guidelines… follow these rules and you will be golden with Google.

No comments:

Post a Comment