9 Common SEO Mistakes (& How To Fix Them)

9 Common SEO Mistakes (& How To Fix Them)

Mistakes happen! We’re all human. Here are 9 common SEO mistakes that may be impacting your search performance & how you can fix them.

There are a number of SEO mistakes that can lurk beneath the surface of your website and sabotage your search performance. So it pays real dividends to stay on top of the latest trends and search rank policies because the SEO game is constantly changing.

One major change is right around the corner with the rollout of Google’s Core Web Vitals as ranking signals. If this is news to you, and you want to make sure your website is ready for this massive switch in May 2021, take a look at Ryte’s “Web Vitals” report, found under Performance.

1. Long page load times

If you’re looking to fix just one thing about your website, make it page load speed. Especially on mobile devices, because 53% of mobile site visitors leave a page that takes longer than 3 seconds to load.

The single biggest reason for frustratingly long load times? Bloated image files that lack compression or mobile-friendly formats like JPEG 2000, JPEG XR, and WebP! Trimming down mobile load times is more crucial than ever, as the switch to Google’s Core Web Vitals means severe search rank drops when important images take more than 2.5 seconds to load.

How can I improve my page speed?

Start by understanding what pages should take priority. You can test pages individually using Google PageSpeed Insights or test your entire website at once using the Ryte Core Web Vitals report.

There are several different methods to load time which are covered in this extensive page speed guide.

2. Poor mobile optimization

In 2021, mobile optimization is a must-have for any website, not an option. More than half of web traffic worldwide comes from mobile, and with the introduction of page experience as a major ranking factor, Google is prioritizing mobile performance this year.

But as our recent independent industry study revealed, mobile site performance is still lackluster even among market-leading e-commerce websites. So most users still experience long load times, visual inconsistency, unresponsiveness, and annoying pop-ins. Perhaps because website operators test from a desktop bias? Don’t be one of those websites! If in doubt, start with a Ryte mobile crawl to see how your site performs.

3. Dead links and 404 Pages

Every website has some skeletons in the closet, aka dead links to pages that have since expired into the great big trash can in the sky. Users may or may not happen across these links and receive an error code 404 (file not found). Your webmasters may or may not be aware these links exist, either.

But guess who sees every single one of those misdirects? Crawlers from Google and other search engines! And if search engines find too many 404 errors on your website, it not only interrupts their crawl, they take it as a sign that your website is not properly maintained – and dock your search rank. Ouch!

But not to worry, finding broken links is quick and easy if you have a crawling solution, like Ryte.

4. Content is too similar

Duplicate content arises when the same content can be reached using various URLs. Near duplicate content or similar content occurs when from paragraphs or blocks of the same or nearly the same content. In general, you can avoid Near Duplicate Content by optimizing available content and making it unique.

Near Duplicate Content can also sneak in if, for example, your CMS automatically generates URLs for a filter. In this case, it is possible to designate the appropriate sites with the tag:

<meta name="robots" content="noindex, follow">

5. Title tags are not optimized

Title tags are one of the easiest, ranking-relevant OnPage elements of a website to optimize and the page title is one of the first elements on your website that a Google user will see, as search engines use the page title as the clickable title of the search snippet.

How can I optimize my title tags?

They should each be unique (so don’t use the same title tag for more than one page) and indicate what users can expect from visiting your page. Make sure you insert the main keywords of the page in the title. Title tags should be a maximum of 70 characters in the title, otherwise, Google will shorten it in the snippet.

6. Bad Meta Descriptions

Meta descriptions fulfill an important function in the SERPs. Together with the title, they entice searchers to visit your website.

A meta description should briefly and succinctly summarize the contents of the page. Make sure to use the main keyword of the target site in the description text.

What makes a good meta description?

Consider using a call to action to entice users to visit your website. Finally limit your meta description to 175 characters, including empty characters, so that your description can be shown in full.

7. Incorrect internal linking

Internal linking impacts how well users can find their way around your website. It also supports the Googlebot in crawling your website and deciding the thematic relevance of subpages.

Common internal linking errors include:

How can I improve my internal linking?

Ensure that you link to a further subpage only once on a site because the Linkjuice is divided among all the available links in the internal linking.

8. Not storing a Sitemap

A Sitemap.xml is a file that lists all the URLs of your website in a machine-readable form. The transmission of your XML sitemap does not at all guarantee that the URLs will be indexed, but the file will increase the chance that search engine crawlers will visit even weakly linked subpages and will include them in the index.

To store your Sitemap.xml in the GSC, store your file in the root directory of your domain and submit it in the Google Search Console.

9. Unoptimized images

Images fulfill many functions on your website. Common image errors include:

How Do I Optimize My Images for SEO?

Start by compressing images that you use for your website. After compressing, save your image files with descriptive text that contain relevant keywords for your page. This helps with accessibility and allows search engines to “understand” the content of your images.