The American entrepreneur Phill Frost has explained SEO very well with her famous quote: “Successful SEO is not about tricking Google, but about partnering with Google.”
In this competitive scenario in digital marketing for businesses, achieving the top positions in search engines requires extensive knowledge and expertise for marketers about search engine algorithms and strategizing the marketing strategy that drives the best results.
However, no strategy can ever be flawless. So, even after considering all the aspects, your SEO strategy can sometimes go wrong as SEO can be easy to implement but difficult to master.
So, when anything in your SEO strategy or results goes wrong, it is in your best interest to take a step back, review, and analyze what went off course & how to rectify it.
Below is a detailed guide on how to analyze and rectify your WRONGS in SEO:
Identify & analyze the problem in your SEO:
To identify the problem, you must observe the organic traffic trends on your website (if it is dropping aimlessly), and in some cases, Google will remind you through the search console.
If you find the problem through a Google Search Console notification, that case, it is called the manual penalty. When Google finds anything wrong with your website, it notifies you and gives you a detailed description of the problem identified.
You can get a manual penalty for various problems, including partial link penalties, sitewide link penalties, and thin content penalties.
After solving these problems, you have to send the reconsideration request to Google to remove the penalty.
However, when you find a problem observing the organic traffic trends, such penalties are called algorithm penalties. Earlier Google used to notify you of algorithm penalties, but now it is not. So, you have to identify on your own.
Algorithm penalties may be caused by uploading poor-quality content, generating poor-quality links, buying backlinks, doing too much advertising, poor page quality, doing black-hat SEO, and many more.
To avoid causing these algorithm penalties to your website, you need to check Google Web Analytics regularly to detect the problem in its early phase.
However, we have listed some of the common SEO problems below, which you can avoid in the first place while drafting your SEO strategy.
Some common SEO mistakes to avoid:
1) Common on-page SEO mistakes:
Generally, you will get a notification through Google Search Console for your on-page SEO mistakes. But to avoid the following errors in your on-page SEO strategy and practice:
- Sneaky redirects
- Negligence on 404 pages
- Hidden text or keyword stuffing
- User-generated spam & pure spam
- Misuse of sitemap
- Not including social media in your SEO strategy
- Slow website speed
- Meta tags are not optimized
- Improper use of header tags
2) Common off-page SEO mistakes:
Google gives equal weightage for authenticity in on-page and off-page SEO. So, your link-building strategy should meet Google standards.
Below-listed backlinks affect your SEO ranking negatively:
- Paid links without genuine reference or links under ‘other' consideration
- Adequate number of backlinks from the region/country where you are not operative
- Paid links from low-quality directories
- Adequate hidden links
- Reciprocal links from sites other than partners or associates
- Over optimized anchor text mix and many more
To get around these link-building problems, you can:
- Create a list of links from authentic tools like Moz Link Explorer
- Generate links from sites having high DA & PA
- Use the ‘no follow' attribute on paid links
- Remove duplicate links
- Find & remove problematic links using the Google Disavow tool.
3) Common content mistakes:
Content is the ultimate aspect that puts all SEO practices in place. Hence it plays a critical role in the success and failure of your SEO strategy.
You can keep the following things in mind while creating SEO-friendly content to avoid getting any algorithm penalties.
- Use Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) keywords more in your content
- Avoid keyword stuffing
- Curate unique content without replication and plagiarism
- Make user search intent at the heart of your content
- Use facts and figures from authentic sites to back your arguments
- Use relative images, videos, gifs, and infographics in your content to make it more engaging
- Allow readers to share their opinions and feedback for your content
- Develop content relevant to your industry and expertise
In conclusion:
SEO is a continuous process that evolves from time to time. So, making mistakes and getting penalties will remain an integral part of it.
However, keeping up with the search engine updates and following model SEO practices may certainly work in your favor.
You can also engage with a leading SEO agency like ABK Digital to get SEO experts to work on your website and drive better results.
ABK Digital has worked with numerous industries with unique business requirements and catered exceptional results with its result-driven SEO strategy.
Contact now to get an expert opinion on the scope of SEO in your business growth!
