There are various ways to promote a website, but a combination of them works best. The main goal of SEO is to get the site to rank well in search engines so that relevant pages show up when people search for something. Even professionals with a lot of expertise make dumb blunders that can drop the site’s ranking far below the top 100.

This post will teach you the most common SEO mistakes people make when web promoting and how to avoid them. If a contractor does this job, you should know what to look out for.

The most typical SEO mistakes

This list doesn’t include all SEO mistakes, just the ones that freelancers and professional optimizers make a lot. Some of these are because the client doesn’t always know what they require or doesn’t agree with the suggested right choice.

1. No targets for SEO promotion

When there are no goals or they are set wrong, promotion is done without thinking about the target audience or using the wrong tactics. The first one brings more worthless traffic to the site, while the second one makes you do things that aren’t important to your business. Some examples of aims are:

promoting groups of business requests;
raising brand recognition;
getting mentions of the company and connections back to it.

You need to choose which of them is more crucial to avoid making a SEO mistakes. You may set checkpoints and keep track of how well your promotion is working after you know what your goals are.

2. Incorrectly chosen hosting

The server that hosts the site should be able to handle the traffic without any problems. The page loading speed goes down if this doesn’t happen. The site takes a long time to load, there are more errors, and search rankings drop.

There are several kinds of hosting, such as virtual, dedicated physical, and VPS/VDS. Each kind has its own packages, and the specifications of these packages are different. It depends on how the site works and how much traffic it gets.

3. The resource takes a long time to load

There are several things that can cause slow loading speeds, and you need to figure out what they are. The effects are always bad because this is a major ranking element in all search engines. We have already talked about ways to speed up a website.

4. The hierarchy of headers is incorrect

Headings are necessary for more than just making things easier for users; otherwise, changing font sizes would be suffice. Robots understand the order of headings on a page and can change its ranking in the search results based on this. To avoid this kind of SEO mistakes, the page should contain one first-level heading, two or more second-level headings, and lower-level headings if needed. Each level after the first one is inside the one before it. For example, there can be two or more H3 subheadings following H2, then H2 again if needed, and so on to the end of the article.

5. Texts that aren’t very unique

You can’t always say that a website with duplicate content ranks lower. The authority of the website also matters. But if everything else is the same, the one with unique content wins. Semantic novelty is just as crucial as technical originality. Different niches value uniqueness in different ways, but it’s best to stay away from circumstances when copy-paste is used on the resource.

6. Pages with only a little bit of content

There aren’t any set rules for how long all resources’ content should be. Ideally, the post should be as useful as possible for the visitor. If the material fits the person’s needs, which is what they came for, it can be said to be enough. If you’re not sure, look your competition, but be sure to consider the specialty and the area.

7. The path to landing pages is too long

A landing page is the one that a visitor should go to right away from a search or other source. It should be easy to access from anywhere on your website.

8. The structure of the website is bad

A website structure that isn’t user-friendly might be hard for both people and search engines to deal with. People who visit your site might not be able to find the page they need and leave. Search engines will also have a hard time figuring out which pages to look at first, and they will waste time on the website, which can cause problems with promotion, including a drop in the site’s positions in the search results. So, it’s necessary to make a structure that works well and is easy to use even when you’re building the website.

9. The website’s mobile version is inconvenient

A lot of people use mobile devices now, and they make up a big part of the traffic. The site needs to work with a variety of devices. You can either use a universal template that will look good on all platforms or make two versions: one for desktops and one for smartphones. You won’t acquire decent positions if you don’t do this.

10. Not updating the content

Google thinks a site has been abandoned if it hasn’t been updated in months. So, you need to put out new content on a regular basis. Keeping a blog with company news and helpful articles is the norm.

11. Promotion without looking at positions

A SEO expert who doesn’t keep an eye on positions can’t tell if his labor is paying off. Watching where a resource shows up for target queries lets you realize over time that you’re doing the work wrong and need to change the methods or the whole strategy.

12. Only doing internal optimization

There is no doubt that internal optimization is important, but not doing outward optimization is a big SEO mistake that slows down promotion.

13. The link mass is the same

There should be a lot of different types of links in the link mass. If you buy links on the exchange, don’t be shocked if your site “stands still” or is under a filter.

So, there are several techniques to get external links that are worth it:

from thematic websites;
сrowd marketing;
from blogs;
from social networks;
as inactive links;
with nofollow tags and so forth.

There should be a lot of different sources.

14. Sudden stop of SEO promotion

The business owner wrongly feels that they can halt SEO promotion when visitors start coming. Sometimes the optimizer has to start the work over again if they can’t convince the owner that it is mistake.

15. Ads on the site that are bad for you

Although this does not directly address SEO mistakes, third-party advertising banners cause user dissatisfaction and lower their faith in the resource.

16. Pages that are the same

When several pages handle the same user problem and are optimized for the same queries, this is known as SEO cannibalism. Pages stop each other from getting better search results.

17. You can access the website with or without www

A lot of the time, site owners don’t realize that search engines see a site with www and without www as two separate sites. There should only be one right choice in the search engine index to avoid making this kind of mistake.

Is it better to establish a website with www or without it? If the site is old and already gets visitors, we choose the option that is most common in the index. If the site is new and/or doesn’t get a lot of search traffic, it’s best to choose without www.

Don’t forget to choose the right mirror of the site in Google Webmaster Tools.

18. Not enough links from social media

Links from social networks bring in active and cheap traffic, and having them around speeds up indexing. Because the content on social networks is always changing, search engines often visitthem.

19. There is no information about your business

People are less likely to trust websites that don’t offer information about the company. In a lot of circumstances, there is a more significant reason to show them: the law.

20. The online store doesn’t have prices for goods

A lot of people say no when the website doesn’t provide prices. When there is competition, the user will go to the site where they can find all the information they need about the product. Click the link to learn why no one buys from my online store.

21. The website isn’t registered in Google’s major services

You need to register a website with Google (via Webmaster Tools, Place of Business, etc.) so that the search engine may learn as much as possible about the website, add it to its databases, and start ranking it for search queries.

22. Promotion of a third-level domain

If you don’t own the second-level domain (site.com), you shouldn’t start marketing a site with a third-level domain name (like forum.site.com) or lower. The owner can sell it, move it to an other domain, close hosting on this domain, or close your site. And everything you do will be for nothing.

23. The crew isn’t working together well

SEO work must be done consistently and in harmony, with no acts getting out of rhythm. It is unacceptable that ads were put up even when there were technical problems on the website.

We also warn about spam separately

You shouldn’t send spam:

Engines for searching. These are any measures that try to trick the search engine into giving your site a higher rank in the search results.
Discussion boards. Talking about your site in locations on the forum that aren’t meant for it and not on topic.
Bulletin boards. Putting advertising on the same resource too often. Placing an ad in an incorrect category.
Sending junk mail by email. These are letters that are sent to a lot of people at once, mostly for advertising purposes, to addresses whose owners did not want to get them.
You shouldn’t take part in “aggressive” active promotion systems. This won’t bring people to your site that are actually interested. When surfing (browsing sites) is set to automatic mode, the user can do anything, even sleep. This will just offer you a boost in your counter. By making such SEO mistakes, you can only harm your website and lower its ranking.
There shouldn’t be a lot of links and buttons on the main page of the website. First, these buttons probably won’t bring in a lot of visitors. Second, having a lot of buttons on the page makes it load more slowly and scares people away instead of drawing them in.
It is not a good idea to swap connections based on the idea that “the more, the better.” You are wrong if you assume that this will make your rating go up. In the past, it was perceived as normal, and these SEO mistakes didn’t cost the site owner as much as they do now.
Don’t depend on ads exclusively. Visitors won’t come back if they don’t find anything interesting on your website, and money will run out eventually.

Need Website Promotion?

Bohdan Prytulyak( CEO )

Founder and head of the PBB Design web studio since 2005

Common SEO Mistakes to Avoid