When it comes to successful search engine optimization (SEO for short) there are many aspects to consider, which change frequently.
There is a possibility that you are afraid of making mistakes, but let’s look at the bright side of things: you learn more easily through failures. Of course, sometimes optimization mistakes can go unnoticed, so you need to pay more attention.
Mistakes like not adding keywords to titles or building irrelevant links can be made by absolutely anyone. But there are some less visible mistakes that can affect your position in the search rankings.
1. Errors of type 4xx
This error means that a user or a Google bot failed to access that page on the website. Among the most common errors that fall into this category are 403 and 404 errors. A 403 error can be encountered when access (for the user) to a certain source is prohibited. It can also be treated as a restriction for certain pages. On the other hand, those of type 404 (which we have all encountered) signify the non-existence of the pages.
When the crawler encounters a 404 page, it treats it as a waste of time and resources. So, if you are the suspect of several similar pages, it will certainly not affect you in a positive way. Broken pages can appear for various reasons: either the user has written the wrong link, and the desired resource cannot be accessed from that path, or you yourself have deleted certain link pages.
2. Internal links not working
Non-functional links can be both external (referring to another website) and internal (referring to resources from your own website). Google Analytics is among the tools for checking these links. This platform deals with website performance analysis and is useful in finding broken links.
3. Duplicate titles
By means of titles you help crawlers and users to identify the main subject of each page of the website. If you have several similar types, sometimes it is very difficult to identify them, but for this problem too there is a saving tool, available to everyone: Google Webmaster. This platform offers a number of free tools that will help you improve your visibility on search engines.
4. Duplicate meta descriptions
By means of meta descriptions, you provide a brief overview of any page on the website, thus helping search engines and, last but not least, users. Creating a unique description for each (relevant) page will certainly influence the organic CTR increase.
5. Links to HTTP pages
The security of a website is an important factor, both for crawlers and for users. Secure pages have the HTTPS protocol in the link body. Therefore, links to resources from HTTP (unsecured) pages can negatively influence online visibility.
6. Unindexed pages
Have you encountered this error? What can it mean? In short, the search engine crawler could not process a certain page on the website, so it did not index the content on it. Unfortunately, without the help of indexing, that page will not be able to appear in the search engine rankings.
7. Duplicate content
Duplicate content shows that a certain type of content appears on multiple web pages or even websites. The problem is that the search engines cannot decide which of the targeted pages will be processed by the crawler, eventually resorting to not indexing any pages. Our advice is to always opt for content that is authentic, relevant and presented in an easy to understand form. That way you won’t have problems with copyright or with search engines!
8. Pages with a slow loading speed
We are in a hurry, from the biggest to the smallest. We don’t have time to waste! Therefore, a website that does not load in more than three seconds can represent a problem in the user experience. This is the main reason why a slow loading speed of a website can affect your position in search engine rankings.
9. The website map is structured incorrectly
You may encounter this problem when your sitemap provides unclear instructions about how search engine crawlers will index your pages. When creating the map, try to remove the following elements from it: duplicate URLs, robots.txt file, pages with errors, images and non-existent links. Make sure you don’t block your CSS files in your robots.txt file!
10. Images that are not displayed
In addition to looking unsightly, an image that failed to load can affect the user experience and that of their… crawlers. Therefore, a few images of this type can be enough to negatively influence your position in the ranking.
Conclusion
If you are an SEO expert or digital marketing professional and you find any of these mistakes, take action as soon as possible because they can affect your websites dramatically!
