A website is the prime medium to get in touch with the world in today’s date. Whether you create a website for selling products, showcasing your passion or grow your business, a website has an endless potential. However, people make some mistakes with their website that don’t let them enjoy the myriads of possibilities that a website has to offer! Well, there can be a number of reasons, but the foremost one that strikes our mind is the on-page SEO mistakes!
Apart from the quality of services/products, marketing is the foundation of any business to excel. And poorly done marketing can make any business sink. And when it comes to the marketing of a website, the first thing that pops up in our head is SEO (search engine optimization). It helps a website rank on the top page of Google and thus, gaining more clicks from potential customers and having more sale queries!
If anyone of you has a little acquaintance with the SEO, you would know how important on-page optimization is. This is the building block of a successful SEO campaign which can never be neglected if you are aiming at top ranking without any failure.
As you can assume, this humongous importance of on-page SEO is the reason why we are reaching out to each and every one of you with the mistakes that are often found. We get tons of SEO projects where the on-page SEO mistakes are quite apparent and some have the mistakes hidden deep down. Either way, your SEO efforts and dream of ranking can go in vain.
Before we come down to the mistakes in on-page SEO, let us mention the reasons why the mistakes may happen!
Most Common Reasons for On-Page SEO Mistakes
Since we get SEO projects from all across the globe in a big number, we have the liberty to analyze every project and find the commonalities among them. Our research team has been able to detect a few points where the whole on-page goes wrong! Here they are:
Doing It on Your Own
When you start learning about SEO, it seems interesting and quite an easy endeavor. So, like any other human being, your natural reaction is, “Oh! This is too easy. I can do it on my own!” So, you save your money and start the on-page optimization work all by yourself. And that’s where it goes wrong. SEO is a complex process and more than science, it involves creativity and artwork. It’s all about creating a new way of making your site more significant than others in front of Google. And there are a lot of things that only the experts would understand. So, you do something wrong without even understanding it. At the end of the day, the website remains as a roadblock for itself and you blame Google for not ranking your site.
Not Auditing Your Site
No matter how cool your site is or how renowned it is, there’s always a scope for some flaws to have remained. That is the reason why you should never skip the auditing part. SEO audit ensures that all the flaws of your on-page and technical SEO is found in order to get fixed. So, never underestimate the importance of an SEO audit. Well, if you don’t know the disease, how can you cure it? Isn’t it so? We get so many websites that are suffering from clearly visible on-page issues just for the fact that they have skipped the SEO audit. In your case, don’t repeat the mistakes.
Not Consulting an Experienced SEO Expert
This is the more painful one among the reasons that cause on-page SEO mistakes. Well, we can understand that you did your website’s SEO and weren’t successful. That did not involve any investment at least. But hiring an SEO expert or an SEO company for the job but not accomplishing the target simply because of their inefficiency wastes your investment and time. We, at Intlum, have received a number of SEO projects which were previously handled by some other search marketing firms. All of the website owners were scared and worried whether they’d face the same result. And we worked day and night to put a smile on their face by bringing good result. But why hire a second company when you can choose the first one properly!
In terms of choosing an SEO company, make sure you are doing a bit of research on that company. Take a look at their online reviews, testimonials, and most importantly, see how they are ranking! A credible SEO Company should be able to rank its own website.
A credible SEO Company should be able to rank its own website.
Intlum ranks at the top position on Google for a competitive search term, ‘SEO Company in Kolkata’, which is the reason many users hire us for SEO project.
However, without wasting a single second of yours, we would quickly move to the on-page SEO mistakes that may not seem dangerous but are lethal.
Common On-Page SEO Mistakes That Can Ruin Your Website and Savings
When you make a mistake in on-page SEO and you are not aware of that, you are ruining your website and savings. You keep investing in it and in return, your website’s SEO health gets worse!
Not Using a Keyword Research Tool
Some people don’t know how to use a keyword research tool and some people simply don’t use it and stick to the subject-matter because they feel keywords can leash the literary aspect of the content. Well, that’s the beauty (or challenge) of it. You have to use a keyword in a way that it makes the perfect sense and blends with the content. Keyword research is important and that is the reason why there are hundreds of keyword research tools available out there.
Including keywords in your content makes your content super-powerful as it targets the particular term that is more popular than the others (with the same meaning). Moreover, in today’s SEO landscape, using one keyword over and again won’t gonna work! You have to use long-tail, LSI, and synonyms of the primary keywords. In order to find out those keywords, you have to use a keyword research tool.
Using Keywords Excessively
Quite the opposite of the first mistake, many people tend to use keywords excessively in the content in order to have their website rank faster. Well, balancing between using no keywords and too many keywords is the expertise of the top SEO firms. Using too many keywords in a certain content is what called ‘Keyword Stuffing’ and that’s one of the first benchers among the activities that violate Google’s ranking algorithm. Putting 20 keywords in a 150-200-word article is one of the primitive on-page SEO mistakes, people are repeating even today!
Not Using Unique Page Title and Description
One of the biggest on-page SEO mistakes but often ignored by many webmasters, not providing a unique title and description to your webpage can cause your website more harm than you can ever imagine. The page title and description appear on the SERP and that’s the only thing that would help users understand the subject-matter and instigate them to click on your link.
Now, the mistakes that we often find are same title and almost no description for the pages, no optimization, and assuming it an extra load! Following are a few things to remember while creating the title and description:
- Page Title should not be more than 65 characters (with space)
- Page Description should not be more than 155 characters (with space)
- Title and description should always be keyword optimized with the primary, LSI and synonyms in a relevant manner
- Along with the SEO aspects, the title and description also be engaging enough to prompt a user to click on it
- Putting the website name is necessary for the homepage but not for the others
Inconsistent Publishing Schedule
Regardless of whether you publish content once in a month, week, or day, you need to follow a certain schedule for the content publishing. One of the most common on-page SEO mistakes that we come across is inconsistency in the publishing schedule. People want quick results but SEO is something that takes time to bloom. So, once they don’t find any ranking with one article or two, they start skipping the schedule and they stop writing.
This directly affects the on-page SEO health of the website. While this is not related to the SEO value but it’s related to the traffic and more traffic means more trust. Trust us, Google loves those sites where people pay regular visits.
But I may get sick or any other urgency may appear! What to do then!?
So, in order to maintain your schedule, you may write articles or other forms of content in advance! Then you can publish it on the day when it is supposed to be published. Moreover, if you are using WordPress, you can have it in the draft to publish it with a single click or even better, you can schedule the content!
Linking (Internal and External)
Internal and external linking directly or indirectly affects the on-page SEO. Here, many individuals make mistakes. If you don’t start linking properly, that’s one of the most lethal on-page SEO mistakes you may make! Most website owners and even webmasters don’t bother linking to the internal pages and external resources, which results in poor on-page optimization.
Why Internal Linking is Important: Google bot enters to one of your pages, and when it finds an internal link, it goes there and the internal link there leads it to another page. So, this process helps with crawling a vast part (or the entire) of your website.
Why External Linking is Important: Google loves those websites that help their users with good resource and information. So, when it finds that you are linking to an external resource for educating your audience with something that your site does not have, it appreciates your effort. That appreciation adds to the ranking process.
But how to do internal and external linking?
Well, there are no rules, but we can provide a guideline here:
- Be descriptive about the linking. User should understand the about the linked page from the anchor text itself
- Don’t use generic anchors like ‘Click Here’ or ‘Read More’
- Using tag clouds is a bad practice for internal linking
- Try to link to the high-DA sites when it comes to external linking
- All external links should open in a new tab to prevent the increasing bounce rate (when a user leaves your site by clicking the external link because it opens in the same tab)
- Keep updating your old contents with internal and external links
No linking at all to too much linking can be lethal for your on-page SEO and this is one of the subtle on-page SEO mistakes that you may repeat unknowingly, which is why it’s recommended to hire an SEO agency.
Using Poor-Quality Content
Content plays a pivotal role in SEO. If not first, it is surely one of the two most important ranking factors along with backlinks. Many companies and writers fail to come up with a good-quality content that impresses the search engine bots as well as the readers. Content is an important factor for Google and because of the low-quality of the content, many websites had to suffer in the past and many are suffering in today’s date as well.
But I have the best writers on the desk! They write so well. Why is my website not ranking then?
This line can pop up in your mind. And that’s natural. You may have a writer who is exceptionally creative with words and style of writing. But when we talk about SEO, we are not limited to the literature. SEO content’s three most important factors are information, readability, and keyword implementation.
SEO content’s three most important factors are information, readability, and keyword implementation.
So, when you write a piece of SEO content, try to
- Put as much information as you can to make sure that your readers don’t need to look elsewhere.
- Make the content easy to read. That’s the difference in SEO writing and literary content. Here, your reader can be anyone (that includes someone who may not know English very much). So, instead of flaunting your vocabs, stick to the idea of making them understand everything.
- Implement keywords in a way that they don’t seem “PUSHED.” It may trouble you at first but you’ll understand how to blend your keywords in your content naturally.
Neglecting Low-Volume Keywords
This is a huge mistake that one can make. If we can label one mistake as a ‘Silent Killer’, this on-page SEO mistake would be the one. Without much experience in the SEO field, it would seem to be the best idea to target the high-volume keywords only. And that’s what everyone does. But…
When you only target the high-volume keywords and start neglecting the low-volume ones, you dig a grave for your website.
Just imagine how many people would want to target the high-volume keywords that could bring them a lot of traffic? So, along with the high-volume, you target the keywords that come with high competition. And sometimes the competition is so vicious, it’s next to impossible to outrank the already-ranking results (because of their authority and trust flow).
So, you keep doing SEO and ultimately, stop optimizing the page, thinking that SEO is not your cup of tea!
On the other hand, you have those countless low-volume keywords that may not bring you that many traffic like the high-volume ones but surely, they would be way easier to rank. So, you put less effort to get ranked.
Thus, instead of not being able to rank and get a single visitor, you get ranked and get some visitors. And you may get ranked with the high-volume keywords later on as your DA increases.
Not Optimizing Images
An Image can indeed speak a thousand words but search engine crawlers don’t understand those words because they don’t have eyes as we do! So, how do they ‘see’ an image? Simple, through the ALT Text, which describes what an image is all about.
So, when you just skip the ALT Text part, your image misses the chance to get ranked. And let us tell you, Google Image Search is increasing at a rapid pace!
Well, the lack of image optimization does not end here! Another very subtle and delicate on-page SEO mistake that we have seen almost 80% websites are repeating is naming the image file improperly!
Google can read the image file name that you upload. So, when you name your images something like image1, or gksjgbo, or 123, it can create confusion.
So, naming your image file (and any other file) properly is the best thing for you and SEO.
Slow Loading Time
It’s simple – if your website has good user-experience, Google loves you. And web page loading time is surely one of the prime aspects of a website’s user-experience. When a web page loads slowly, it irritates the users and believe us, internet users are less forgiving and skeptical about second chances. So, the moment they find your site taking more time to load than they expected, they will close your website and move to another one (who is your competition).
Yes, that’s bad for the traffic but how does that affect SEO and ranking?
Well, if you think a little more deeply, you will get it.
When the traffic leaves your website, it increases the bounce rate of your website. And an increased bounce rate means diminished ranking and SEO.
So, optimize your webpage loading speed and try to stay within 3 seconds.
Never Repeat These On-Page SEO Mistakes
So, you do have an idea of the on-page mistakes that are lethal for your website. Well, there are more deep and technical errors that may lie in your website that you may not even know! Try to contact your SEO partner to fix any issues which are mentioned here.
However, if you feel that the SEO company you have hired is not standing up to your expectation, you may also call us for a quick consultation. We provide free consultations and our experts explain everything clearly so that you don’t have any confusions in mind.
