7 Mistakes that Cause a Lower Search Engine Ranking

Optimizing your website for organic search is most likely your first strategy for getting your website visible online. As you head along the path to the front page of search results, make sure you don’t unknowingly commit mistakes that can actually lower your ranking. We wrote up a list of common mistakes made in SEO, so keep reading!

7 Costly SEO Mistakes

The choices you make when developing your website can have a profound impact on your SEO results. Make sure you are not actually harming your site’s search engine ranking instead of helping it.

1. Overusing keywords

Keyword stuffing, or adding a large number of keywords just for the sake of a good position in search engines does more harm than good. Search engines find your site better if you have relevant, specific keywords. Nowadays, the ideal keyword density of a page should be 2-4%. Don’t forget that you are writing for your visitors!

2. Obscure content

The first and foremost rule to good SEO is good content. Content is for your visitors, not for your colleagues and certainly not for search engines. Therefore, avoid any obscure or incomprehensible text, or any technical jargon that may interfere with the understanding of your content by your target audience.

3. No interlinks

Add links between the internal pages of your website, not just to your homepage. The anchor text is key. A call to action such as “click here” and “see here” is not favored anymore by search engines so make sure you use keywords for your link. Check out our golden rules for link creation.

4. Content that’s difficult to index

Search engines cannot or have great difficulty indexing certain content. Although design is surely an important aspect, make sure it doesn’t impair the functionality of your site. Don’t overwhelm your website with:

• Flash
• JavaScript
• Frame

5. Duplicate content

Don’t paste in old content, never repeat the same content over and over, and above all, avoid plagiarism. Any form of duplicate content affects your ranking in a negative manner. Never repeat the page title in your website, but give each page a specific and appropriate title.

6. Slow loading time

Search engines give preference to pages that load fast so make sure your website isn’t facing the problem of slow load. If you find your site loading slow, consult our post on how to speed up your site.

7. Relying only on SEO software

Although SEO software seems like an easy solution to generating leads, it has limited value if it’s your only strategy. Each website has its own complex structure that requires a personalized approach. You as a web owner, are the only one who can know your product, target audience, and goals the best.

Optimizing your website may be a complex task, but certainly a rewarding one. It’s important that you check your website regularly to continually improve your SEO results. If you want to discover more ways on how to optimize your website for search engines, check out our posts on choosing keywords, link building, and image optimization.

Are you planning on developing SEO on your website? Try the step-by-step guide.