5 Deadly SEO Mistakes that kill your Google Rankings
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a dreaded word for digital marketers. It can give you unprecedented access to free traffic with a good ranking or leave you unidentifiable amidst the vast mob of results. While, there is a lot that has to be done to optimize there are also simple SEO mistakes which even the best make.
These especially concern digital publishers who produce a lot of data and in turn goof up the certain crucial SEO aspects. We take a look at what can go wrong for you. The glance into simple yet deadly SEO mistakes that can kill your Google rankings.
1. Duplicate Content Within the Site:
For big publishers who come up with a lot of content, duplication is common even within their own site. This happens quite often with follow-up articles on a certain topic. One can find at least one paragraph in each article published that is an exactly copy of another article published first (We are not counting quotes).
Then there are technical goof-ups which make your content seem duplicitous. These include same Title tag and description appearing on every page, same article being sourced with multiple URLs, etc. Some studies say on average, 25% of each article is copy. Click To Tweet
Duplicate content and its effect on SEO is a big debate. Even if Google does not penalize you, everyone agrees that duplicate content certainly does harm your ranking. Thus, it is a big NO for publishers who have a good competition and would like every page of theirs to rank.
For small sites it is an easy problem to fix but for large ones it becomes a huge task.
With large amount of content being produced, planned approach is necessary. Multiple tools are available and its easy but what is essential is the continuous attention and action.
2. Duplicate Content in General:
More often than not websites will have content which was originally published by someone else. This is applicable for all news, fashion, trends, tech websites. The topic if hot and trending will have multiple sites posting similar content all at the same time.
It is important to ensure non-duplication.
If your page isn’t ranking for the term it is because 90% of the time the content is published after other big sources have already published it.
This is yet another Big No. Be the first to talk about it or be smart about it. Majority of the internet has duplicate content and search engines know that. But duplication drastically cuts off the authority of your website, which will automatically reduce… Click To Tweet You won’t necessarily need a penalty to harm yourself.
3. Shallow Content
It is understood that time is critical. Many a times you might post content just for the sake of it, trying to make the most of the urgency. Studies report content for lower-ranking sites to be shallower than competitors, more than 80% of the time. Thus, shallow content is another deadly SEO mistake.
Algorithms change, thus the technical aspects will also change. But the quality of your content will always be a crucial factor.
Search Engines always want to serve the most relevant content to its users, hence it will always consider quality of paramount importance.
Spinning off content with no structure has to be avoided. It will spunk your authority and downgrade your back-link game, severely affecting your rank.
4. Broken Links
Your website has been there for so long. So many pages, articles, blogs added every single day, all of which have multiple links mentioned in each of them.
But as days pass the websites you linked to change, pages get altered, content moves, URLs get redirected. Thus, many of those links turn up dead or broken. Being engrossed in the present scenario you might completely overlook the increasing number of links that are turning out to be broken on older articles.
Broken links decrease the relevance of your website. Search Engines recommend pages which which appear updated and most relevant. Pages with broken links even if they have quality content get down-ranked. Click To Tweet
Thus, again continuous awareness and action is important. Several tools are available to help you identify the broken links. Replace the broken links with updated ones.
5. Internal Linking
Linking internal content is a great idea. It is practice used by many. But just linking without any strategy is bad. You might link to pages which rank for the same keyword you want the current page to rank for. That is exactly how you lose out on the ranking.
So get your link game sorted out first hand. Ensure that the links you provide, even if internal are not a competition themselves.
SEO Mistakes: Conclusion
These five SEO mistakes are very relevant for major publishers. These are simple to sort but easy to overlook, but have a damning impact in the long run. Get these straight and you have got the basics right, which won’t be affected by any logical algorithm change.
