The latest search engine optimisation (SEO) tactics are vital in keeping a website in good ranking. It is also utilised to ensure that the website is ahead of its competitors.
SEO techniques rapidly and constantly changing to keep up with the algorithms made by Google and other search engines. Various strategies are formulated to retain or increase the rankings, as well as to improve the websites significantly.
There are ways to prepare in order to get away from different moves that could get you in trouble. Here are some SEO traps you should avoid:
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Link building
This strategy was unnatural according to John Mueller of Google, back in February 2015. But it has been clarified that buying, selling, or asking for links is acceptable. It can be done as long as the Google Webmaster Guidelines is not violated. Otherwise, the website could suffer long-term and penalties will be imposed.
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Anchor texts
Abusing the use of anchor text, may it be unintentional or not, can get you penalisoned for over-optimization. Moz conducted a study and found out that you can have better rankings even if you only post a couple of exact match anchored links from highly relevant web pages. Opting for 5 to 10 links to different kinds of anchor texts, along with a few major keywords is acceptable.
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Lacking content creation
The website is likely to move lower in the rankings if it’s only updated with only a few posts a month. Steady content creation is an effective way in making the rank higher in Google. It is recommended to make fresh content to keep your website up-to-date, improve the traffic flow and conversions. New content addressing the queries of potential and existing customers in your niche is a good way to show your users what you’re capable of.
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Lesser quality content
Ensure that you provide unique content to optimise your site for search engines. Post useful and valuable content that your visitors can see.
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Targeting single or specific pages
Perform a link evaluation through the Google Webmasters account and start building your link profile. It is better to create a good link profile than targeting just a single or specific pages to rank on Google. According to experts, it is one of the most important SEO ranking factors.
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Unfriendly mobile design
Non-mobile-friendly websites doesn’t really cater to mobile users. To achieve better conversion rates and user experience, make sure that the website is well-designed and mobile-optimised. Mobile-friendliness provides a bigger chance to reach the mobile users.
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Low site user engagement
Low user engagement lowers the search engine ranking. Gain some insights and study the preferences and behaviour of your target audience to improve user engagement.
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Poor user experience
Bad user experience can intensely damage the rankings and devalue the website. The users will quickly click away and will discontinue exploring the website. Satisfy the users’ queries by making it visually appealing, easy navigation, and with high-quality content.
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Advertisements
Using interstitial ads in mobile sites can be penalised by Google. It can be annoying to website visitors and gives a negative user experience because it blocks out the relevant content.
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Misuse of reconsideration requests
Violating the Google Webmaster Guidelines such as posting an unnatural link that redirects to another site will get you automatically or manually penalised. It can be revoked by sending a reconsideration request to Google. However, once the penalty is revoked but the violation is done again, it makes the reconsideration process difficult to process again in the future
Do not let the website downrank due to these 10 common SEO mistakes. Google never stops in finding ways on how to apprehend webmasters that use different tactics to get higher rankings. Spamming the sites have manipulated the search engines before. However, due to new algorithms that Google makes, they are getting smarter at trapping the violators.
