10 Common Search Engine Optimization Mistakes To Avoid (With Solutions)

Do you ever use Google Chrome, Safari, or Edge web browser on your mobile phone to get some quick answers?

I'm sure, you do.

However, you think about how search engines determine which websites should get top ranking or which ones have to be ignored.

It's called SEO or Search Engine Optimization.

In today’s internet-driven world, each business is operating online such as from food restaurants and tutoring to IT services and e-commerce services. SEO is the most used channel of digital marketing to establish online visibility for your website.

However, search engine optimization demands expertise and skills which means it’s not an easy task. Most website owners make common mistakes regarding website search engine optimization. It triggers a negative impact on search rankings and ultimately downs the website's reputation.

In this article, we're addressing those 10 common mistakes that you should avoid when doing SEO for any website whether it’s an e-commerce store or an automobile. Also, I mention the solutions with it so you don’t have to Google to find how to maintain your website ranking.

Let's start.

1. Neglecting Keyword Research

In search engine optimization, keyword research counts as the core pillar that lays the foundation of success. Meanwhile, researching the perfect keyword might be a frustrating and annoying task to do. You have to identify which kinds of phrases are commonly searched online and what patterns they have followed.

If you fail to determine about target the right keywords it can lead to poor rankings and missed opportunities. This becomes a golden chance for your online competitor and outrank your website in the search results.

Most importantly, if your website is new, don’t solely go for short and seed keywords that have thousands of search volumes. Because these keywords have 70 - 90+ KD (keyword difficulty), it’s hard to achieve the expected rank in search results with low website domain authority. You can try the long-tail keyword for better results.

Keep note: Without a well-researched keyword strategy, your content may not align with what your audience is searching for. This can lead to your website ranking down and you might see the ranked keywords are lost and you don’t get such much organic traffic.

How to avoid mistake for keyword research?

• Use tools like SEMrush, Google Keyword Planner, or Ahrefs to find relevant keywords for your exact niche.
• Analyze competitor keywords to gain insights into what’s working in your industry. Competitor analysis will help you to know the keyword gaps.
• Focus on a mix of short-tail and long-tail keywords to capture different types of search intent.

2. Not Focusing On-Page SEO

On-page SEO indicates to the optimization of individual pages on your website to rank higher and earn more qualified and relevant traffic. This kind of search engine optimization is important to consider with best practices.

Some SEO executives are not focusing on on-page SEO and completely ignore it. That results in poor website ranking and increases the chances of a search engine penalty.

There are common on-page elements you should have to consider and they include title tags, meta descriptions, headers, and URL structures. Adding relevant keywords and phrases into these elements will elevate your website ranking to the best SERPs.

Keep note: Not considering the importance of best on-page SEO will not help your website get its desired rankings. Adding repeated keywords in title tags, meta descriptions, headers, and URL slugs will count as the black-hat SEO practices solely to manipulate the search rankings.

How to solve on-page SEO mistake?

• Ensure that each page has a unique and descriptive title tag and meta description that include relevant keywords.
• Every page should have only one H1 tag and avoid its multiple uses.
• Use header tags (H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, H6) to structure content and make it easier for search engines to understand the page’s hierarchy.
• Optimize URL structures and slugs to be clean, concise, and keyword-rich.

3. Overlooking Mobile Optimization

As per reports of 2024, 60.67% of website traffic comes from smartphones. With increasing numbers of users accessing websites via mobile devices, mobile optimization is no longer optional. It’s very important to keep focus on.

As you’re practicing the SEO for your website, make sure the site is mobile-friendly. That means it quickly loads in each device without any glitches and the content is displayed correctly.

If your website is not mobile-friendly, you might see higher bounce rates and lower rankings. Especially, when you have an e-commerce site or course-selling platform, you must consider the best optimization for mobile-responsive websites.

Keep note: Search engines like Google motivate, mobile-friendly indexing. It signifies the site’s mobile version is counted for crawling, indexing, and ranking.

How to make your website mobile responsive?

• Implement responsive web design to double check your website adapts to various screen sizes.
• Test your site’s mobile performance for best results using tools like Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test.
• Optimize page speed and usability for mobile users. Utilize the tools like Google PageSpeed Insights.

4. Failing to Create Quality Content

Search engines like Google prioritize high-quality, relevant, helpful, and people-first content. According to Google’s 2023 core update, they emphasize the quality content creation that helps people get the information they need. Your website content should be designed for people not for bots to influence the search rankings.

As now, Artificial Intelligence (AI) introduced to the world, most website owners are taking leverage of it for content creation. AI use is not limited to only crafting compelling copywriting and generating a brand video. However, for writing blog posts and designing images, AI is an integral part.

Keep note: As an SEO executive, you can take the help of AI for content optimizing the quality of prepared content, analyzing the performance, deciding the KPIs, etc. But, don’t completely rely on AI because it sometimes represents an incorrect result and information. Use it at your sole discretion after checking the facts.

How to design a high-quality content?

• Focus on creating valuable, useful, helpful, and informative content that addresses your audience’s needs and interests.
• Use a variety of content formats, such as blog posts, infographics, and videos, to keep users engaged.
• Regularly update your content to keep it fresh and relevant adding the recent news related to the topic.

5. Neglecting Internal Linking

Internal Linking is a very important aspect of the game of Search Engine Optimization. Your website’s pages should be interconnected with each other. This helps not only search engine bots to flexibly navigate the site but it also guides users to make a desired action by clicking the pages. That’s why for getting the best results for SEO, internal linking is considered as the ideal option.

It helps search engines understand the structure of your website and establishes a clear and perfect hierarchy between pages. Neglecting internal linking can lead to poor site navigation, affect the user experience, and lower search engine rankings.

Keep note: When connecting the web pages make sure you’re following the good practices. It means you have to interlink only those pages who relevant to the main page, don’t blindly link irrelevant pages. For example, on your e-commerce site blog’s page, you can interlink another post relevant to the page but adding a privacy policy is considered as a bad practice.

How to optimize internal linking for better on-page SEO?

• Incorporate internal links within your content to connect related pages and pass page authority to other pages.
• Use descriptive anchor text (try a maximum of 20 characters) that provides context for the linked page, it helps users and search engines to click the link and land on the desired page. 
• Regularly review and update internal links to make sure they are still relevant and functional. Make sure if any page is deleted permanently and shows a 404 error then resolve it with the related page redirect. Take the help of Google Search Console to find the page-related issues.

6. Disregarding Technical SEO

Another common mistake SEO executives sometimes make is “Technical SEO.” This involves analyzing and optimizing the technical aspects of your website to improve its search engine rankings. Technical issues such as slow page speed, broken links, orphan pages, and crawl errors can negatively impact your SEO performance.

From the best user experience perspective, your site should load fast, the content displayed correctly, the links be optimized with best practices, and unused Java scripts are disabled.

As Google like search engines focuses on AMPs (Accelerated Mobile Pages), your site’s pages should be optimized for it to unlock the chance of appearing at the best position in web rank.

Keep note: Most of the search engine optimization executives are not familiar with the technical aspects of the website like HTML, CSS, or Javascript files. For that, they should discuss it with the web developers to minimize these files' unwanted loads and make the site’s loading speed faster.

How to optimize the website for technical SEO?

• Conduct regular site audits to acknowledge, identify, and fix technical issues.
• Optimize page load times by compressing images, using webp or PNG image files, leveraging browser caching, and minimizing JavaScript.
• Ensure your website has a clean and efficient code structure for easy understanding and a well-defined sitemap.

7. Using Duplicate Content

The core fundamental of Search Engine Optimization is to create original, trusted, and helpful content. Don’t just copy other’s sites content and after such modification publish it to your site.

Once the search engines determine your site has many duplicate content pages, it is considered a bad practice and increases the chance of penalty in rankings.

As you’re relying on AI for content generation to improve your productivity, ensure you double-check the response and implement it correctly for the best results.

Having duplicate content confuses search engines to acknowledge which page is correct for indexing and ranking. Ultimately, it dilutes the content authority and leads the lower rankings.

Keep note: Duplicate content is a red signal of the SEO. If you find duplicate content on the site, try to solve it immediately. Once it is identified by the search engine bots it negatively impacts your SEO efforts and you may see the keywords rankings are down. To bring out your site demands patience and the best white-hat SEO practices.

How to avoid duplicate content issue?

• Use canonical tags to indicate the preferred version of a page if similar content exists on the site. So, search engines can determine the best page to index.
• Avoid copying content from other sites, it’s a bad practice. Instead, create unique and original content by deep research and keyword selection.
• Regularly check for and address duplicate content issues using tools like Copyscape or Siteliner. If you’re choosing AI for content generation, make sure you check the plagiarism to find if content exists or not.

8. Ignoring Local SEO

Another common SEO mistake is “Ignoring the Local SEO.” Up to 90% of website owners emphasize ranking across the world but they do not focus on the foundation of improving the local search results. As per my experience as an SEO content writer, I consider the localized results that help to improve search rankings.

For businesses with a physical location or those targeting a specific geographic area, local SEO is important. Ignoring this can result in missed opportunities to attract local customers who can interact with your website and take desired actions. Local customers have a strong feeling to connect with your business while engaging in other tasks.

Keep note: Once your business website is launched, don’t try to rank on global keywords that have a combination of short-tail and long-tail. First and foremost, start by getting some local keywords and try to implement them into your website’s content from homepage to blog pages. You can try social media reach too for these keywords.

Best ways to optimize online business for Local SEO:

• Optimize your Google My Business listing with accurate information, including your business name, address, phone number, and business hours.
• Encourage customers to leave reviews and respond to them promptly by using polite words.
• Use local keywords and create content that targets your local audience for quick reach.

9. Neglecting Link Building

To be successful in SEO strategy, you have to gain a link from reputed websites to prove your site content’s credibility and authority. But, as of now, some of the SEO freshers are using a black-hat technique to lead spam link building. It is not recommended by Google and search engines.

Backlinks, or links from other websites to your own site, are considered as a significant factor in search engine optimization. They signal to search engines that your site is reputed and ideal.

Not considering link building can limit your ability to improve your search rankings and drive traffic. When you publish the online content, place it in relevant directories and submission sites to get back a link to your site.

Keep note: Don’t try to get a backlink from other sites using spamming techniques like creating a fake account and submitting it to generate a link. Organic link building is always recommended to earn quality backlinks prioritized in search rankings. Invest some funds to tag your content sponsored and get back a “do follow” backlink to the content.

How to attract a organic link to your content?

• Develop a perfect link-building strategy that includes outreach to relevant sites and creating shareable content.
• Engage in guest blogging and partnerships to acquire high-quality backlinks organically.
• Avoid low-quality or spammy link-building tactics, as they can lead to penalties and lower rankings.

10. Focusing Solely on Search Engines

Most SEO freshers do not have proper knowledge about how to add relevant keywords to content, so they do keyword stuffing. As the single keyword is used most frequently it signals a bad practice of user-frindly content. This counts as the content is related to influence the search rankings and it prepared for search engines, not for users.

While optimizing for search engines is important, focusing solely on algorithms can result in a poor user experience. Search engines aim to deliver the best possible results to users, so it’s crucial to balance SEO efforts with creating a positive user experience.

Keep note: Creating content only for search engines triggers the unwanted penalty and it is not recommended for the best search rankings. You have to prepare the content for the user’s needs, issues, and solutions that help your site rank well on the web. Using keyword variations naturally is recommended.

How to optimize content for users instead of search engines?

• Prioritize user experience by designing a clean, easy-to-navigate website with helpful and valuable content.
• Optimize the content users instead only for manipulating the search engines.
• Regularly gather feedback from users to identify areas for improvement or by adding new content.

SEO is the most chosen digital marketing channel used by all kinds of businesses and service providers from e-commerce to IT & software development. But, avoiding these mentioned mistakes can be helpful for your search engine optimization efforts to get better results. 

Conclusion

SEO is an ever-evolving field that requires ongoing attention and adaptation. By avoiding these common mistakes and focusing on best practices, you can enhance your website’s visibility, attract more organic traffic, and improve user engagement. 

Remember, search engine optimization is not a one-time task but a continuous process that requires dedication and a strategic approach. 

Stay informed about industry changes, monitor your performance, and adjust your strategies as needed to achieve long-term success.

Want to make your business website optimized for SEO? Let's talk further. Simply contact us and we'll get back to you.