Commit SEO errors is quite common. Every time I do an audit or a new client comes in, there are recurring mistakes that are often made and that can hinder our positioning options.
I have already mentioned SEO guidelinesThe most common strategy, strategy or techniques that penalise in recent months, but many times the SEO errors do not correspond to a strategy of Black Hat SEO previously defined, otherwise they are just that, mistakes.
In this article I am going to review the most common mistakes that can jeopardise the positioning of your page. Most of them have easy solution.
Others may be out of your reach because they depend on the template or the design of the page. In any case, these are errors to be taken into account and whose solution can help you to have better results.
Web page structure with repeated headings
It is probably the SEO error I see the most. The structure of many WordPress templates predetermined or customised developments encode as H1 or H2 headings aspects that are repeated on all or a number of pages.
At the level of development o web designis a much simpler thing to do, but at the level of the SEO is a serious mistake. For example, imagine you have a travel website and there is a sub-section of the same useful information on each destination page in H2 or a big H1 with the name of the continent at the top.
This structure does not make sense, as the headings should provide information about the specific content of the page. This does not mean that it cannot be kept visually the same. But it will have to be done by keeping these visual headers with paragraph coding by modifying the CSS code.
In other words, the HTML headers should be distinct and specific to the content of each page (at least H1 and H2). The repeated aspects of web design structure should have the HTML tag paragraph or at least H3.
This is also the case for the top menu information or the footer. As it is information that is repeated on every page and does not add SEO value to the content of the page, it should not be formatted as a header.
Very heavy images
There are several recurring problems with images, but I'll start with the fundamental one: the weight. It is incredibly common to see images with print resolutions and sizes on the web pages.
Really, there's no need. It will look just as good with a few kilobytes instead of several megabytes.
The problem with the very heavy images is that slows down the loading of the page. This results in a worse user experience and ends up penalising the positioning. In the end, the dwell time because users end up leaving in desperation for two or three more seconds of waiting.
Time is money on the Internet.
Beyond too large resolutions, we can also find problems with formats. Many times I find photos in heavy formats like PNG and it doesn't really make sense. If we need transparency it is better to use WEBP, Google's favourite format and if not we can replace PNGs with JPGs.
The good thing about WEBP is that it combines the advantages of JPG (loss of information) and PNG (transparency). However, CMS like WordPress do not support it so we will have to stick with JPG.
Changing the formats will significantly reduce the weight and improve page loading.
Keywords too generic
Making a good keyword research is indispensable if we want to maintain a good SEO content strategy. In many cases, the problem starts here.
We are faced with a keyword research without any sense or strategy behind it. In many cases, it has not even been done. keyword research but rather that keywords have been selected blindly.
In other words, a person has decided to which keywords you think are relevant for your business without stopping to research volumes or to the SEO competence. This can lead us to use very generic keywords impossible to position.
Use long tail keywords or geolocated is fundamental in any start-up business. If you open a bookshop in Moratalaz, there is no point in trying to position online as "bookshop", you will have to go for "Moratalaz bookshop" or, in any case, "Madrid bookshop".
Trying to position it as a bookshop would simply spoil the job.
Irrelevant SEO work
Related to the above is the problem of do irrelevant SEO work. Often not only because they go for very generic words with many searches that are impossible to compete with, but also because of the opposite.
We may think that we want to position ourselves by an expression that no one is looking for. I already commented in my entry on how to position a new or unsearched product that there are cases where it makes sense to go for a keyword that nobody knows, in case it can be foreseen that demand will skyrocket in the future.
However, what happens most of the time is that the focus is on highly technical or complex expressions that are not understood by our target potential, which differ in their search intentions.
The SEO work The content we make must always be backed up by data and, in cases where there is no data and we still want to bet on something, at least logic must be on our side.
It is also important to ask whether it makes sense to bet on SEO or SEM. Often we insist on opting for organic when it makes more sense to go organic. paid and vice versa.
Videos hosted on the website
With the videos we have the same problem as with images, although there is a simpler solution. Hosting a video on your website takes up a lot of space, and also slows down loading tremendously of this.
What can we do? Very simple, host it externally in YouTube o Vimeo and embed it wherever we want. This way, the weight will be on those platforms and not on ours.
It is true that it requires the extra work of creating an account and maintaining it, but it is also a extra positioning opportunity. YouTube is the second most used search engine of the moment, so making SEO on YouTube with our videos is a decision with a lot of potential.
Beyond aspects of image margin, we will be able to multiply the interest and views of our content.
Missing metadescriptions
The meta-descriptions can play a major role in the CTR. And having a good CTR is key to good positioning. Acronyms for Click Through Rate this meter indicates, from the number of impressions, how many clicks we get.
Together with the H1which I will discuss in the next section, the meta-description is the text that appears when a user searches for something. The text that appears just below the headline (the H1) and briefly develops the content that will be found inside.
It is super common for there to be websites where the meta-descriptions. In such cases Google may take random text, including indexes, which does not always make sense.
Playing with meta-descriptions and testing is an important point of the SEO work because finding the right key can triggering the CTR. So don't leave it empty.
Even if you write them down, it is true that there are occasions that Google decide to ignore them and put a text selected by the browser. Even so, always give it the option and try to control what the user sees.
H1 creative
Another common problem is put a creative H1. In many cases it is because there is no difference between the title and the H1. The title of the page or the article can be creative, but H1 should be descriptive to provide Google and the user with information about what to expect.
When we talk about Creative SEO I have already mentioned some ways to apply creativity without losing sight of positioning. We can play with the title of the page as long as we also provide a different descriptive H1 that allows the search engine to understand what we are going to find.
Of course, the meta-description can also help us with this objective. It is important that we do not want to create expectation or beat around the bush in the H1, we must be concise and to the point. This way, Google will favour us.
Images without title and ALT attribute
Returning to the images there is another common problem. These are images where there is no text to give Google information about what the image is about.
These can be images with titles like IMG_0049372.jpg, image1.jpg, download.webp, for example. This is a mistake. The title of the image is another opportunity to give context that we should take advantage of.
In addition, we have the ALT attribute o alternative text which serves to describe the image. It is important because accessibility (blind people will thus be able to know which image illustrates the texts), but also for positioning.
A way to give more context and explain what the image is about, giving us a better chance of being featured in the Google Images or even in the general search when there is an image box.
Texts written by robots
It has been one of the latest trends. AI programs that write articles for you. Every time I logged on to my LinkedIn profile I had someone offering me a trial.
But what has happened? What I outlined in my article in Black Hat SEO. Google does not like to be cheated. All the tricks that are done to gain positioning quickly are eventually discovered and solved.
In the Google's latest algorithm updatethese artificial intelligence-generated texts are the target. If you've used one of these programmes thinking you could outsmart Google, I'm sorry to say you're in trouble.
Google wants original content that brings value to the user. And that can only be generated by an experienced human being.
What are the most common SEO mistakes you see, and do you think I've missed any?
