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Every website owner today knows the importance of SEO and so do SEO professionals; SEO can make or break a website’s image over the internet. It can be called as the ‘PR Tool’ of the Internet. Let’s start with the basics, what exactly is SEO and how important is it? SEO is the acronym for search engine optimization. In simple terms SEO means an activity which helps in increasing or improving search engine rankings. More simplified, SEO is the process involving various steps, tactics, and methods to improve a website’s ranking on the various search engines .SEO, although very simple can be a highly complicated process which can exhaust you .There are a number of articles over the internet stating the various facts, advantages, disadvantages, mistakes to avoid, ways to improve SEO for your website. However, reading these infinite articles can be mentally exhausting. I am going to talk about the 5 most common mistakes committed by SEO and non SEO professionals and how can you avoid them and sky rocket your website rankings.

  KEYWORDS, KEYWORDS, KEYWORDS!

Keywords form the very crux of search engine optimization. The right keywords can get booming results however, wrong or unrelated keywords can get your website a very poor ranking on search engines. A common mistake done in this area is the mistake of KEYWORD STUFFING. Keyword stuffing is the process of stuffing a number of keywords into web content in order to increase website visibility and page ranking. Over emphasising of keywords can bring result in negative user experience and unethical practices. Manipulation of sentences by using the same kind of keywords can frustrate and confuse the user and they might never visit the website again leading to low rankings of the website. Keyword stuffing can be avoided by using tools like SEMrush, SMALLSEOTOOLS, etc. The right keywords can sky rocket website rankings, keyword generator tools like KEYWORD SHITTER or KEYWORDS EVERYWHERE are very helpful and bring great results.

  CONTENT!

Content is another pillar of search engine optimization. Having well-tailored content can lead to high optimization, however weak content can lead to the opposite. Mistakes relating to SEO content can be seen in the form of neglecting already created content, adding to much content, creating sake of it content, unwanted and distracting content. Statistics state that most of the people, especially people using mobile devices read content in an F pattern. This leads to a big turn off if the content is boring or over written, this is something that poses a high threat to SEO rankings. If the user gets bored with your content, he is not going to bother to even go through your website. .Therefore it is a necessity to create solid and easily understandable content.

  TECHNICAL MISTAKES!

In the simplest of terms technical SEO mistakes refer to those technical errors in a website which leads to its ranking problems on search engines. An analogy can be used to explain it more clearly: Imagine that you have kept a small party at a restaurant and invited people for the same. Now, you have invited people, booked the dates, reserved a restaurant, however if you forget mentioning the restaurant address in the invite, how will people attend your Party? That’s how important technical SEO is. The list of technical SEO mistakes can be an infinite one, however the major ones include, duplicating content, slow loading speed of the page, interface unfriendliness (mobiles, tablets), not reviewing old technology and being up to date.
Luckily, there are many ways by which these mistakes can be avoided like increasing page speed, making the website interface (mobile, tablets, laptops) friendly, being more vigilant about the technical mistakes and not undermining its importance.

  BLACK HAT TECHNIQUES!

Black Hat Techniques refer to the use of those aggressive techniques of SEO or those over aggressive SEO strategies whose sole focus are to improve the website’s ranking on search engines and can be extremely unethical and harmful for the website in terms of ranking itself. Techniques like cloaking (using different versions of the same web page for visitors and search engines), duplicating content ( directly coping the exact same content of an article or blog already existing over the internet),  link schemes ( any manipulation of links of a website in order to increase the rankings over search engines), link spamming (posting out of context links on websites , blogs , forums ), illegal ways of making money over the internet all fall in the category of black hat techniques, also known as the “dark side of SEO” and can be very harmful if used.  Google has a strict policy with respect to black hat and penalises web pages which support this technique in order to increase their rankings. If a website is caught by a search engine using one of the black hat techniques, then the search engine makes sure that the websites are penalised for it and lower the rankings of the website.

 POOR SEO STRATEGIES!

Lot of times you may feel that you have used the best SEO strategies which will sky rocket your website rankings, however the opposite happens. This is because many times strategies like ON PAGE /OFF PAGE are either over used or underused.
On page strategies refer to the strategies used which help in high optimization of a website. Basically it means the various ways of improving your website’s ranking on search engine by highly optimizing different parts of your website, like title tags, the URL structure, page content, page speed.
Off page SEO strategies refer to those indirect strategies of promoting a website over the search engine that help in improving the website’s ranking over the search engines. Social media engagement, influencer outreach, creating shareable content are various ways of off page SEO. This article itself is an example of off page SEO strategy. However, there are many mistake made while using these strategies, one of the biggest mistake is the overuse of these strategies. The best way of using these strategies is using them in a balanced way with reference to the website’s target audience, social outreach and initial ranking over the search engine.

I hope this post has helped you gain information and understand the most common and overlooked SEO mistakes one can make. In PART TWO of the Three Part SEO series I will be talking about another very important aspect with respect to SEO; the various changes taking place within search engines which impact the SEO rankings of a website.

ABOUT THE BLOGGER

Kamakshi Ray is a 21 year Sociology student who is currently in her final year of graduation. She is an avid reader and an extremely passionate writer. Currently, She is working as a social media intern for Infozzle Software solutions where she writes about various topics related to SEO, Web Design,  E-commerce, etc. and manages the company’s social media profile on Linkedin and Facebook.