Some SEO errors can often create problems for a site regarding traffic and positioning on Google. To err is human; everyone has made mistakes on their web projects, and learning from them is essential to avoid repeating them.
For this reason, in this article, I will list the most common and particular SEO errors I have encountered while analyzing some sites. Let’s get started!
Technical SEO Errors
Here are some issues related to the more technical aspects you often encounter when analyzing a website, whether you’re an SEO agency Philippines or an international SEO Agency.
1. Site not indexed
One of the SEO errors to avoid, which can immediately affect the positioning of a site, is the one related to its failure to be indexed. Especially during the online publication of a site after a restyling, the rule
is forgotten inside the robots.txt
User agent: *
Disallowed:/
Not allowing the spider to crawl the site.
The same oversight can happen by leaving the “Discourage search engines from indexing this site” checkbox in WordPress settings. You will notice this problem by typing the advanced command site:sitename on Google and not finding any pages in the index, by Screaming Frog not starting the site scan, or by warnings or checks on Google Search Console.
2. SEO Migration Without 301 Redirects
Even though for most of us SEO Specialists, 301 redirects are daily bread, it still happens to see sites that, after a URL remapping and a change of menu structure, almost completely lose their ranking on Google and related traffic. Forgetting to do 301 redirects is very serious because it creates high damage to the site also in terms of company turnover.
In an SEO migration after a restyling, you should always set aside an additional budget, if required, to allow the SEO consultant to carry out and set up the 301 redirects with the necessary time and in the correct way.
One of the most common SEO mistakes related to the 301 redirect, is to believe that the redirect set from an old well-positioned page to a new page that does not deal with the same topic as the previous one, manages to maintain the same ranking on Google.
For example, the most typical situation is to redirect all pages to the home page, compromising the general positioning of the site in a few days.
3. Redirect loop
If 301s are done, care must be taken to avoid Redirect Loops, which are pages redirected to themselves.
On the .htaccess file with a high number of 301 lines, two identical URLs may be written on the same line. In this situation, the page will go into a redirect loop, creating a site malfunction and a browser service page warning that says, “This page is redirecting too many times”.
This often goes unnoticed because the redirect loop disrupts that single page, which, if not analyzed manually, can remain online without noticing the error.
Here too, Screaming Frog comes to the rescue with its new function “visualization> Directory Tree Graph”, which allows you to use red and green dots to identify pages that have a status code 200 and those that have problems such as 404, loops, blocked by robots.txt, etc.
4. Incorrect management of www and non-www
The website must be reachable only in the preferred version chosen: www or non-www. A site that is displayed in both versions generates a duplicate site. Therefore, one of the two must redirect to the preferred one so that both versions are not indexed in Google’s SERPs. To verify, simply do a test by adding and removing the www in front of the domain name. In this way, you will avoid one of the most banal SEO errors but one that can significantly impact positioning.
5. Internal 404 errors
Providing your user and Google Bot with an internal 404 error on your site is never recommended, and it is always best to carefully check that no such errors are generated. You should always keep an eye on Search Console and after 301 scan your site with Screaming Frog, in order to identify this type of Status Code.
6. Mixed Content
A few years ago, Google recommended that websites use SSL certificates. Many webmasters found themselves migrating web projects from HTTP to HTTPS protocol. One problem that often arises after this technical intervention is mixed content, that is, content that remains in HTTP on HTTPS pages (for example, images).
It is not a situation that immediately compromises positioning, but it overloads the bot and disperses the crawl budget. On a page, therefore, both images, content, and resources must be managed with HTTPS. Also be careful with versions of sites fully accessible in both http and https.
7. Indexing pages with thin content
Another mistake added to the list of SEO errors to avoid is the one related to the indexing of pages with thin content or even with demo pages of the template of the CMS used. In addition to these, as anticipated, are the template pages purchased for the site’s development, for example, in WordPress, which are left as “published” and made indexable.
8. Heavy images
One mistake that affects the site’s performance is that of adding images that are not named correctly and are extremely large in terms of size and weight.
A heavy image slows down the site, struggles to load and is not appreciated by Google. Often we see websites that complain about performance and speed problems related to this sometimes overlooked aspect.
Always upload images to the site that are of the correct size and that match the actual space they will occupy to reduce their weight without losing quality.
9. Speed
Speed has always been a relevant ranking factor for Google, even more so since mobile devices have become particularly important for their diffusion. Not providing a fast site to your users is a mistake that can cause your project not to rank among the first Google search results.
10. Incorrect management of the site’s languages
Without going into the technicalities of managing languages on a multilingual site (hreflang and rel alternate), it happens to see sites with different languages that have untranslated URLs and that maintain the same translation of the main language URL, or worse URLs without specifying the language like a folder. For example /en/; /de/; /fr/
Another aspect is to avoid inserting untranslated meta descriptions and titles that generate duplicates throughout the site. Not translating language URLs and meta tags is a pretty big SEO mistake. International SEO is complicated enough. Let’s not complicate our lives!
11. Incorrect navigation architecture
Creating a site without first thinking about the navigation architecture is a mistake that can be easily avoided. A good organization of the menu and navigation paths helps SEO and the User Experience.
12. Duplicate content
Especially in large sites or e-commerce sites, similar content and pages are created and managed incorrectly. A typical problem in e-commerce sites is creating the same product pages, associating them with different categories, and generating duplicate content on different URLs. The SEO error, in this case, is precisely that of not managing these duplicates with the real canonical or not correctly organizing the site architecture.
Content-side SEO errors
Once we have seen the SEO errors related to the technical and programming aspects, here are the most common ones on the content side.
13. Lack of SEO strategy and no keyword research
One of the most common mistakes is not having an SEO strategy thought out at the beginning of the project and believing that what is written on a site is necessarily searched by users. Nothing could be more wrong.
At the base of a web strategy is researching topics, queries, and keywords related to a business.
Before drafting content and creating a site, it is always a good idea to do keyword research.
14. Cannibalization of Content and Search Intent
Another classic situation is to create pages focused on extremely similar or identical keywords or themes for SEO purposes, thinking of positioning them all. By operating in this way, you only risk adding content that will be cannibalized in Google’s SERPs, even on the Search Intent side.
I prefer to create pillar articles on a main theme or key and satellite content with different search intentions. In this way, the cluster of words in the theme to be worked on is expanded without competing for the same keys in Google’s SERPs.
15. SEO Tags: h1 and various header tags
Header tags are the titles that serve to divide content. There are h1, h2, h3, up to h6. Especially the first three must be managed in the correct way avoiding using them for graphic purposes but maintaining the hierarchy and logic for which they were designed.
- The h1 is the page’s title and is the most important one that identifies the topic; generally, it is unique on the page, except in exceptional cases, and must be unique on the site.
- The h2 is the subtitle of the page and the h1 – there can be more than once, and it is used to divide content into paragraphs and sections.
- The h3 is the subtitle of the h2; there can be more than once, and it is used to divide the sub-paragraphs.
Among the most common SEO mistakes? Seeing h2 repeated in the footer without logic, or h1 used for their size and graphic appearance instead of using CSS correctly.
So, correctly use them!
16. Keyword Stuffing
A technique that has fortunately been abandoned, but that deserves to be mentioned, keyword stuffing consists of repeating in an exaggerated and completely unnatural way the keyword for which you want to position the page. You notice this problem simply by reading the content and noticing, without a shadow of a doubt, the excessive use of the keyword within a sentence. This does not mean that you should not repeat the keyword on the page but not do it as in the example presented directly by Google.
So be careful when you write content; remember that a text must be written for the user and only then for the search engine. Don’t chase the phantom “rules” of SEO Copywriting; think about those later; focus first on the clarity of exposition and the quality and depth of the concepts you must expose.