Five On-Site SEO Mistakes--And Five Fixes
Increasing website traffic is a pivotal goal of SEO. But business success requires the right traffic: targeted visitors, interested in your unique product or service.
To attract this targeted audience, the best websites create relevant content optimized for search engines. In the SEO world, this task is divided into two parts: content creation and technical SEO.
In a sense, every visible website detail, from articles to page titles, from photos to product prices, is a piece of "content." Technical SEO optimizes as much of this content as possible to attract a targeted audience.
Now, any site can attract traffic--and many do, to no avail. What distinguishes a successful online business is the ability to translate traffic to conversions, when a visitor performs a desired action, like purchasing a product or clicking a link. Without SEO, your site may attract traffic. With SEO, however, traffic often leads to conversions.
When we write about "on-site SEO mistakes," then, we mean mistakes that reduce conversions. The mistakes below are typical of websites that do not perform SEO. They may or may not attract traffic. Whatever traffic they do attract, though, usually navigates away after viewing only one page. (This is known as "bounce rate.")
These mistakes happen to all websites. Optimized websites deal with these mistakes quickly as part of routine website maintenance. Unfortunately, for many websites these mistakes linger, potentially reducing traffic--and worse, conversions.
It's a universal online experience: the annoyance of expectantly clicking a link only to arrive at a HTTP 404 page. These links, a true scourge of the Internet, are called broken links. A standard definition of a "broken link" is a link that does not point to any destination.
Any site can have a broken link, but too many broken links can compromise your site's usability. Google "doesn't lose sleep over broken links," but usability is an important factor for visitors. As Google's Webmaster John Mueller notes:
"If you find things like this, I'd fix it primarily for your users, so that they're able to use your site completely. I wouldn't treat this as something that you'd need to do for SEO purposes on your site, it's really more like other regular maintenance that you might do for your users."
Simply put, by compromising usability, your alienate your visitors, and potentially reduce your conversions.
Only poorly-maintained sites let broken links accumulate. Well-maintained sites fix broken links routinely. This is one advantage of ongoing website optimization: it guarantees no broken links! In either case, broken links can be easily discovered and fixed with a broken link checker. We like Google's first result for "Broken Link Checker."
Yes, most websites suffer from a broken link or two. Far worse are bad or artificial links, described in Google's words as "any links intended to manipulate a site’s ranking in Google search results."
To Google, a good link points one-way, from one site to another. Links, we know, are a key ranking factor for Google--and presumably other search engines.
In the old days of the Internet, certain "Black Hat" webmasters created links to sites in exchange for return links. When Google caught onto to this technique, the same webmasters turned to a new tactic: the creation of many websites, ten, twenty, or more, owned by a website, and built for the purpose of creating links to the original website. With an abundance of incoming links, the original website catapulted to the top of the search results.
To combat link-building abuse, Google created the Penguin algorithm--yet these "bad links" still continue to harm websites.
For this reason, in the SEO world, we often define "backlinks"--links from another website to your website--as low quality or high quality. For a search engine like Google, links offer clues to the relevancy and quality of a website's content. High quality links can be defined in different ways, yet most come from trusted, relevant sources that send increased traffic.
Do you think you have bad links?
Contact a reputable link removal service! Or call a quality SEO firm, like Stepman's SEO
Search engines and users are not fond of duplicate content--content copied and pasted from your own site or other sites without attribution. Like a broken link, duplicate content fails to satisfy a browser's expectation. Browsers click to discover new information. Duplicate content makes your website redundant and boring. Duplicate content usually leads to a higher "bounce rate."
You might ask: What if the browser hasn't read the original content?
Of course, this happens, but Google discourages duplicate content, and may actively penalize websites that copy and paste from other websites. So avoid stealing.
Of course, not all duplicate content is equally bad. Many websites believe it is OK to copy and paste certain types of text from other sites. Product descriptions, for example. You often discover duplicate content when searching for popular electronic items or health supplements. Many sites sell the same products with the same descriptions. This form of duplicate content, while not as bad as stealing, may be viewed unfavorably by search engines.
On your own site, as much as possible, vary your content. If you duplicate too much of your own content, you will confuse a search engine, which might not know which page to choose for a certain query.
Of course, again, a good website optimization campaign varies all content, specifically targeting each page to specific keywords.
Too many websites do not offer enough content. As President Obama once said, "There's no there there."
The more original content you have, the more content the search engines will crawl, index, and rank. And if your content is mistake-free and original, you're ranked content will be more likely to inspire conversions.
Of course, SEO is crucial. As we noted above, content can come in many forms, like text, images, or videos. A good website optimization campaign will optimize each element of content to attract a targeted audience.
If you have a lot of imagery, for example, SEO guarantees that have descriptive tags. Without these tags, the search engines might not know how to categorize the image.
Whatever the case, original, relevant content is a must for conversions.
Read: "Content Marketing 101: How to Write Relevant Content"
Fix Your On-Site SEO Mistakes with Stepman's SEO
Do not let these common website mistakes harm your traffic--or worse, reduce your valuable conversions. Fix your mistakes now and forever with an ongoing optimization campaign. To learn more about your options, contact our blog's sponsor, Stepman's SEO: 215-900-9398.
Stepman's SEO combines traditional marketing methods and organic SEO--with an emphasis on natural website optimization--to design thoughtful, inspiring, and effective online marketing campaigns.
To attract this targeted audience, the best websites create relevant content optimized for search engines. In the SEO world, this task is divided into two parts: content creation and technical SEO.
In a sense, every visible website detail, from articles to page titles, from photos to product prices, is a piece of "content." Technical SEO optimizes as much of this content as possible to attract a targeted audience.
Now, any site can attract traffic--and many do, to no avail. What distinguishes a successful online business is the ability to translate traffic to conversions, when a visitor performs a desired action, like purchasing a product or clicking a link. Without SEO, your site may attract traffic. With SEO, however, traffic often leads to conversions.
When we write about "on-site SEO mistakes," then, we mean mistakes that reduce conversions. The mistakes below are typical of websites that do not perform SEO. They may or may not attract traffic. Whatever traffic they do attract, though, usually navigates away after viewing only one page. (This is known as "bounce rate.")
These mistakes happen to all websites. Optimized websites deal with these mistakes quickly as part of routine website maintenance. Unfortunately, for many websites these mistakes linger, potentially reducing traffic--and worse, conversions.
 |
| Like a poorly-cropped photo, website mistakes happen. The best websites fix these mistakes quickly. |
Common SEO Mistakes: Five Solutions
Broken Links
It's a universal online experience: the annoyance of expectantly clicking a link only to arrive at a HTTP 404 page. These links, a true scourge of the Internet, are called broken links. A standard definition of a "broken link" is a link that does not point to any destination.
Any site can have a broken link, but too many broken links can compromise your site's usability. Google "doesn't lose sleep over broken links," but usability is an important factor for visitors. As Google's Webmaster John Mueller notes:
"If you find things like this, I'd fix it primarily for your users, so that they're able to use your site completely. I wouldn't treat this as something that you'd need to do for SEO purposes on your site, it's really more like other regular maintenance that you might do for your users."
Simply put, by compromising usability, your alienate your visitors, and potentially reduce your conversions.
Only poorly-maintained sites let broken links accumulate. Well-maintained sites fix broken links routinely. This is one advantage of ongoing website optimization: it guarantees no broken links! In either case, broken links can be easily discovered and fixed with a broken link checker. We like Google's first result for "Broken Link Checker."
Yes, most websites suffer from a broken link or two. Far worse are bad or artificial links, described in Google's words as "any links intended to manipulate a site’s ranking in Google search results."
To Google, a good link points one-way, from one site to another. Links, we know, are a key ranking factor for Google--and presumably other search engines.
In the old days of the Internet, certain "Black Hat" webmasters created links to sites in exchange for return links. When Google caught onto to this technique, the same webmasters turned to a new tactic: the creation of many websites, ten, twenty, or more, owned by a website, and built for the purpose of creating links to the original website. With an abundance of incoming links, the original website catapulted to the top of the search results.
To combat link-building abuse, Google created the Penguin algorithm--yet these "bad links" still continue to harm websites.
For this reason, in the SEO world, we often define "backlinks"--links from another website to your website--as low quality or high quality. For a search engine like Google, links offer clues to the relevancy and quality of a website's content. High quality links can be defined in different ways, yet most come from trusted, relevant sources that send increased traffic.
Do you think you have bad links?
Contact a reputable link removal service! Or call a quality SEO firm, like Stepman's SEO
Search engines and users are not fond of duplicate content--content copied and pasted from your own site or other sites without attribution. Like a broken link, duplicate content fails to satisfy a browser's expectation. Browsers click to discover new information. Duplicate content makes your website redundant and boring. Duplicate content usually leads to a higher "bounce rate."
You might ask: What if the browser hasn't read the original content?
Of course, this happens, but Google discourages duplicate content, and may actively penalize websites that copy and paste from other websites. So avoid stealing.
Of course, not all duplicate content is equally bad. Many websites believe it is OK to copy and paste certain types of text from other sites. Product descriptions, for example. You often discover duplicate content when searching for popular electronic items or health supplements. Many sites sell the same products with the same descriptions. This form of duplicate content, while not as bad as stealing, may be viewed unfavorably by search engines.
On your own site, as much as possible, vary your content. If you duplicate too much of your own content, you will confuse a search engine, which might not know which page to choose for a certain query.
Of course, again, a good website optimization campaign varies all content, specifically targeting each page to specific keywords.
Not Enough Content
Too many websites do not offer enough content. As President Obama once said, "There's no there there."
The more original content you have, the more content the search engines will crawl, index, and rank. And if your content is mistake-free and original, you're ranked content will be more likely to inspire conversions.
Of course, SEO is crucial. As we noted above, content can come in many forms, like text, images, or videos. A good website optimization campaign will optimize each element of content to attract a targeted audience.
If you have a lot of imagery, for example, SEO guarantees that have descriptive tags. Without these tags, the search engines might not know how to categorize the image.
Whatever the case, original, relevant content is a must for conversions.
Read: "Content Marketing 101: How to Write Relevant Content"
Not Optimizing for Mobile
Most websites receive a majority of their traffic from mobile sources. As Stat Counter reveals in its most recent "Desktop vs Mobile vs Tablet Market Share Worldwide," which measured traffic from July, 2017 to July 2018, mobile now attracts 52.95% of all traffic.
As Google notes: "This presents a tremendous opportunity for marketers to reach people throughout all the new touchpoints of a consumer’s path to purchase."
As Google notes: "This presents a tremendous opportunity for marketers to reach people throughout all the new touchpoints of a consumer’s path to purchase."
In a sense, then, the other advice listed on this blog is somewhat irrelevant, if your website is not optimized for mobile. So is your site mobile-friendly? If you don't know, take the "Mobile-Friendly Test" here. Or you could simply Google your website from your smart phone. Since 2015, Google has distinguished mobile-friendly sites with a "Mobile-Friendly" tag in search results.
If your website is not optimized for mobile, you risk compromising user experience--and, you guessed it, conversions--for a full 50% (or more) of your audience.
To optimize your site for mobile, contact a reputable mobile optimization company today.
If your website is not optimized for mobile, you risk compromising user experience--and, you guessed it, conversions--for a full 50% (or more) of your audience.
To optimize your site for mobile, contact a reputable mobile optimization company today.
Fix Your On-Site SEO Mistakes with Stepman's SEO
Do not let these common website mistakes harm your traffic--or worse, reduce your valuable conversions. Fix your mistakes now and forever with an ongoing optimization campaign. To learn more about your options, contact our blog's sponsor, Stepman's SEO: 215-900-9398.
Stepman's SEO combines traditional marketing methods and organic SEO--with an emphasis on natural website optimization--to design thoughtful, inspiring, and effective online marketing campaigns.
Five On-Site SEO Mistakes--And Five Fixes
Reviewed by penulis
on
08.30
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Reviewed by penulis
on
08.30
Rating:
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