What are common SEO mistakes

Search engine optimization (SEO) is crucial for driving traffic and visibility to websites, yet many make preventable errors hindering their progress. This article outlines some of the most frequent mistakes made and actionable solutions to resolve them. The goal is to analyse where sites typically go wrong to help you audit and boost your own SEO health.

Not Researching Target Keywords

Targeting keywords searched by your potential audience is an SEO fundamental. Yet in a rush to create content, many forego proper keyword analysis. Consequently, they end up optimizing pages around terms rarely input by searchers. As one report revealed, “90.63% of all website pages get no search traffic from Google.”

To illustrate, say you sell homeware products online. Rather than researching industry terminology, you may guess at phrases and craft content around words like “household items” and “useful wares”. Unfortunately, hardly anyone searches such generic, vapid terms. Your content then languishes, invisible to search, even after an optimization push.

As industry veteran Rand Fishkin explains:

“If you want search traffic, you need to target topics people are searching for.”

Follow these steps to research and hone in on worthwhile keywords:

• Leverage keyword research tools to analyse search volumes for relevant terms
• Assess optimization difficulty for potential keywords
• Balance searcher demand with achievability targets for your capabilities

Getting keyword research right is the first step to search visibility. Yet, failing to shape content that answers searcher intents remains another common stumbling block.

Failing to Match Searcher Intent

Alongside targeting keywords people input, you must also satisfy the underlying searcher intent behind queries. As Google themselves state, their algorithm aims to understand “…the kinds of results users want to see for a particular query, and then providing those results.”

Therefore, while you may optimise pages around commercially relevant keywords, Google may decline to rank them for certain searches if the content angle does not give users what they want.

Take an example, e-commerce site selling kitchenware targeting the phrase “best frying pans.” Their product category pages get crafted and technically optimized to highlight pans they sell. But the #1 ranking results are actually blog comparison posts about different frying pan options:

These comparison articles better match an informational “research buying options” customer intent, whereas the ecommerce content focuses on driving sales. So despite strong optimization around that keyword, the product pages struggle to place highly.

The takeaway is to shape content formats, angles and calls-to-action that align with searcher intent. Study what current top results do to satisfy users for target keywords. Common considerations include:

• What content types rank highly (e.g. blog posts vs product pages)
• What content formats do they use (lists, comparisons, tutorials etc)
• What angles do they highlight (e.g. budget options)

Crafting content that answers user queries should be priority one. SEO that misses this mark will always underperform its potential.

Chasing Overly Competitive Keywords

With important keywords drawing heavy monthly searches, it’s tempting to target these high-traffic terms above all else. But often excessive competition around lucrative keywords makes winning top rankings exceptionally difficult without significant authority and resources.

Rather than pouring endless efforts into trying to rank for extremely tough keywords, take a pragmatic approach:

• Audit the authority and link profiles of current top-ranking domains
• Research keyword difficulty scores to estimate competitiveness
• Be realistic about your capabilities and resources
• Build up to highly competitive keywords over time

Balancing ambition with achievable targets will yield better ROI from your optimization and content work.

Insufficient Quality Backlinks

Gaining backlinks remains crucial for signalling website credibility and authority to search engines. As Google’s John Mueller affirmed: “Links are an important signal that we use for our algorithms.”

Yet, failing to build a sufficient profile of quality backlinks is still a common issue limiting organic growth. For example, take this search for the highly competitive keyword “SEO”:

The top result has over 720 referring domains. By contrast, a site hoping to contend may have only a fraction of that link equity:

Lacking backlink authority makes an SEO climb for desirable terms even tougher. To build quality links:

• Identify relevant sites to guest post for
• Produce content that sites may wish to reference
• Outreach professionally to quality sites
• Be patient – sustainable link building takes time

Gaining earned backlinks should become an ingrained habit, not a one-off push. Because even for less competitive terms, link signals matter for outperforming other pages targeting the same keywords.

Violating Google Webmaster Guidelines

Under pressure for backlinks, some resort to shady tactics like buying links or reciprocal arrangements with other sites. However, such practices clearly violate Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, risking penalties if discovered.

As the guidelines state, prohibited link schemes include:

• “Buying or selling links that pass PageRank”
• “Excessive link exchanging (“Link to me and I’ll link to you”)”

There are no shortcuts here – black hat tactics ultimately hurt websites. Building links takes considerable effort through producing valuable assets others may naturally wish to cite, not paying or scratching others’ backs.

Ignoring Internal Link Opportunities

While external backlinks signal credibility to Google, strengthing your internal link structures enhances crawlability and interconnections between content. Unfortunately, many neglect internal link building due to the labour involved across potentially thousands of pages.

The repercussions however can be lowered page authority scores and siloed, poorly linked content. To better leverage internal linking at scale:

• Use site audit tools to automatically surface linking opportunities
• Connect related content across sections
• Drive internal links to traditionally isolated pages like service and locations

Blocking Googlebot Crawls

Google cannot index or rank content it fails to discover and crawl. Yet restrictive settings like firewalls, robots.txt files, or page level noindex tags may inadvertently block Googlebot’s access. This leaves content unable to vie for featured snippets or rank for keywords it targets.

Confirm Google can fully crawl your site using tools like:

• Google Search Console for inspecting crawl errors
• Site audit checkers to identify blocking issues
• PageSpeed Insights to test site accessibility

Address identified crawl obstructions like adjusting firewall settings or robots.txt to open access. Embrace site crawls rather than restrict them, enabling your best content to get discovered.

Creating Slow Page Speed

Site speed critically impacts multiple performance metrics from customer experience to search visibility. Yet a surprising 33% of sites fail to load in under 3 seconds. Sluggish page speed leads to higher bounce rates and worse rankings. As Google notes:

“Page experience factors make up 10% of desktop ranking factors…that includes page speed and page experience signals.”

Common performance destroyers include unoptimized images, bloated code, and poorly planned server infrastructure. Audit speed using tools like PageSpeed Insights or WebPageTest to catch laggards. Then build optimization including:

• Compressing images
• Minifying CSS/JS
• Enabling browser caching
• Optimizing server response times

Great content fails to achieve its potential without the performance enabling users to consume it. Avoid leaving site speed gains on the table.

Conclusion

Mistakes during search optimization efforts can significantly hamper results. Check your website against these common errors such as:

• Targeting over-competitive keywords
• Failing to match searcher intent
• Building insufficient quality links

Getting SEO fundamentals right makes tangible differences. Challenge assumptions, analyze site performance, and keep maturing efforts over time. What potential pitfalls could your SEO contain, and how might you address them?

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