The 5 SEO mistakes affecting your website in 2020

SEO can be a challenging marketing tool, especially when you delve deeper than just making sure you have the right keywords. Many websites this year will be hampered by SEO mistakes which they may not know are occurring. This guide will go over the 5 SEO mistakes affecting your website in 2020.

Under-optimizing Meta Tags

Meta tags are a really key way to help search engines identify the subject matter of your pages. As well as how they are connected to keywords and phrases which your potential searchers may use. A meta tag will help make the link ‘click worthy’ which can help your overall traffic.

Creating your own meta tags is vitally important as it’s an opportunity to use the keywords you want search engines to use, and will also be highlighted to searchers. A unique meta tag however is not always possible especially in the ecommerce sector due to the amount of products everyone has.

Some of the key mistakes that businesses make with Meta Tags include:-

Duplicate title tags and meta descriptions 

Having two or more pages with the same title and descriptions make it hard for search engines to determine relevance. Overall affective rankings.

Missing H1 tags 

Not having an H1 tag will mean the Google algorithm is not able to have a clear understanding of your website.

Duplicate H1 tags and title tags 

Using the same H1 tags on an article can make it look over optimised. An over optimised page can mean that opportunities for rankings can be missed as search engines will naturally gravitate to H1.

Creating Duplicate Content 

Duplicate content can have a negative affect on your SEO but also how your audience perceives your brand. Putting out the same content on a regular basis can detract readers away as there is less engagement. From an SEO perspective duplicate content can lower your rankings.

Lowering your ranking will come from having two pieces of content which are trying to rank against each other. Overall this can eliminate the two and affect the other piece as well. Same is to be said for copying competitors’ content. Copying word for word really affects your ranking as it is also directly competing.

Creating individual and authentic content is the best way to go, and will help to build your ranking.

Forgetting Mobile Pages

In recent years with the increase in popularity of those who are using mobile applications, search engines changed their process and started offering ranking points for how optimised your content is. And as of September 2020 it will be a concrete ranking criteria.

Your mobile optimisation will be heavily down to the website, and the pages where it appears. Ensure the website you are working on is optimised for mobile. Not specifically just for content, but for overall user experience.

Not Addressing Site Performance 

Site performance should be of importance even outside of SEO. If your web page does not perform well, is slow to load and not a pleasurable user experience then you are going to lose traffic. In terms of SEO web page performance is becoming an increasingly important ranking factor.

Conducting a google site speed test is going to be a really good way to see how your website is performing. SEMrush has a really good option which you can access through their website. Google also now ranks the speed of your page on mobile devices as well. So referring back to the previous point, ensure that your website is optimised well for mobile. Or you may see yourself slip down the rankings.

Neglecting Internal and External Links

The use of internal and external links are basic fundamentals to SEO, and really help a page to rank and perform better. However, using links wrong in the wrong way can have a negative effect, and really affect the user experience on the website.

When inserting links into your content be that internal or external make sure they are relevant. When inserting external links you do not want to link to some giant content pumping business as they will ultimately take your traffic. Also ranking against them is going to be hard. With internal links make sure they are relevant to that piece of content, and can add value. Keeping people on your page is always going to be the challenge.

To Conclude

The SEO mistakes affecting your website are ones that can be easily fixed, and are usually quite basic. If you are not a keen SEO expert enlisting the help of someone is going to be the quickest and easiest way. Improving your search ranking, and ranking above your competitors is always going to be the key aim. If you liked this article, feel free to check out more on our Knowledge Hub.