It is extremely common to use SEO for the website promotion because of tough competition in the virtual world. Businesses are trying to outdo each other in order to garner the market space.

People think that by implementing popular SEO techniques the website can attract the web traffic but more often than not reality doesn’t meet the expectations.

In fact majority of clients are stuck in the technical jargons and lose focus on the key business objectives. They make common mistakes while formulating the SEO strategy for the website. Some of them that should be avoided are as follows:

Morris Edwards is an SEO Trainer by profession and Writer by hobby. He has been providing SEO training courses in Singapore. He has done lots of creative works in the field of Search Engine Marketing. He has written multi fold blogs and articles that present strategic approach, and marketing tips for online businesses.

Absence of relevant content

Since Google search engine came into being, it has been evaluating websites based on the quality of the content. Algorithms are undergoing innumerable changes to mark thee web pages that provide relevant information to the visitors.

It helps to separate the wheat from the chafe and compels the marketers to discard the fluff content. Majority of businesses try to fill the page with unnecessary information that users are not interested in. It is one of the most Common SEO Mistakes that should be avoided.

Whatever you are writing needs to be short, crisp and to the point. It is bound to attract the attention of the people and make the website popular. Google has compiled a list of such pages and have assigned them to the authority domain category.

If you are creating a website, make sure that it has simple navigation and information that can be read by the niche audiences. Flowery language or beating about the bush would not increase the traffic but providing in depth content would do. In today’s world big and small businesses have to live up to the expectations of the clients and the best way is to mention only relevant content on the website.

Black hat SEO is a big NO

Black hat techniques are used by marketers to get quick result for the clients but the strategy can easily back fire. It is a well known fact that spam tactics for back links are often deployed to cheat the search engine however with changes in Google algorithm, people have to pay penalty if they are discovered sooner than later.

Do not post duplicate content on the website because the crawlers would not index the website. In addition, Low quality content that is poor on readability is rejected outright by the Google.

Keyword stuffing should be avoided as it does more harm than good in the long run. Content becomes unreadable and the passage loses sight of the business objectives. In order to stay relevant, use keyword along with the natural flow of the text. It not only increases the web traffic but also gets indexed easily by the crawlers.

Another factor that should be kept in mind is the questionable redirects that can hamper the rankings of the website.

Google carefully monitors the quality of the back links and if it found something fishy, the whole web links is banned in a jiffy. In addition, marketer should refrain from cloaking that actually masks the real objective of the website.

Do not overload the website with content

Since the arrival of videos and pictures on the internet, businesses of all hues are using them in abundance however loading the web page with too much information is bound to affect the loading speed of the website.

Visitors have a short attention span; therefore they do not want the page to take forever to be displayed in the browser. Majority of people are suing smartphones to connect to the internet, therefore the connection speed is limited by bandwidth. Hence, it is vital to optimize the numerous elements of the web page so that the website is loaded within the shortest possible time frame.

The crawler monitors the activity of the users very closely when they visit the website. In fact, they also check the actions that are taken. In case the time spent is due to the load metrics, Google may not index the website.

In spite of all the information, you would not be able to attract the attention of the visitors. One should compress the videos that are larger in size to lower the loading time. Files that are in different format can be packed into optimized form to make the website more efficient.

Cluttering of the content

One of the most important factors that have to be taken into account is the cluttering of the content. Visitors do not like to search for a needle in the hay stack but want the search tool on the website to be fast and efficient. In other words, include the information that is relevant to the products and services that are being promoted.

Huge paragraphs with all of text, pop ups, array of videos and images on the web page create confusion in the mind of visitors. What more, the bounce rate might increase no matter how optimized the pages are.

You can try to include information by providing relevant links on the landing page. It will not only free up the space but make the interface user friendly.

A great experience for the visitors can boost the ranking of thee website by many notches and promote the brand value of the company. You can use numerous caching and avoid the use of front loading plug-ins. One should also find whether the cause of load speed is due to the badly written codes.

Improve the navigation attribute

A website where searching suitable information is a night mare would never score high on the search engine listings. It should provide excellent navigation to the users so that they can find the data they are looking for. If a simple click of the button can retrieve the information, it goes a long way in improving the ranking of the website.

Important content along with frequently answered questions should be grouped together at a single place on the page. It not only reduces the clutter but also increase the chances of accessing information within a very short period of time.

Every page of the website should be clearly labeled and formatted to facilitate easy linking of the different components in the website. You should create a sitemap and multiple forms of navigation to increase the popularity of the website.

Solid navigation is the key to optimize the website as it is indexed quickly by the search engine bots. People can launch the search tool and find data according to their requirements and specifications.

Dealing with 301 and 302 redirects

When the content is moved from one URL to another, the search engine will consider it as a new page and might not index the same unless suitable redirects are created. 301-redirect is necessary to permanently transfer the authority to a new URL while the 302-redirect signifies that the shift is temporary and the content would return to original location after some time. Sometimes, webmasters also use the 404 status code to indicate that the information is not available.

In large websites, the process becomes tedious because there are thousands of the pages to be dealt with. Creating redirects is not an easy task because it is lengthy however one should make sure to complete the job in an impeccable manner.

If redirects are not available, it can lead to penalization by the search engines. Although forfeiting older URLs could also lead to sacrifices of the previous backlinks, it is essential to maintain the rankings of the web pages on Google. In a nutshell, if you are moving to another location, specify the same through redirects to the users.

Back link: Quality is important

Quality backlink is an essential part of the SEO strategy however people make mistakes of creating all types of backlinks. People are of the view that if they acquire links from authority domains, the chances of top rankings increase exponentially. As a result, they try to buy out the links which is a huge SEO mistake. If the crawlers detect the issue, they can immediately ban the website from the listings.

You should focus on creating a buzz in the social media and on the internet to generate quality backlinks. It is a long process with organic output however the website becomes popular and climbs on to the search engine rankings. One of the best strategies is to create highly entertaining campaigns to engage the customers.

The old strategy of link exchange is now passé as Google has banned the practice. Moreover, backlinks from the blog networks that were very popular in the past are also being panelized by the search engine. In addition do-follow links embedded in the articles can also create problems for the webmasters

Neglect of local search

Smartphone users in an area tend to look for services and products in the local area. In other words if you are neglecting the local search option in the website, the chances of sales might decrease.

People who want to avail services tend to look for the same in close proximity. They are motivated buyers that are most likely to visit the brick and mortar store to buy the products. You should make sure to display correct business information to chalk the sales as soon as possible.

To start with, register the name, address, email, telephone number in the local online and the offline directories. They are relevant to the niche customers located in close vicinity to the company.

In addition, the contact information should also be shared to the Bing and Yahoo. The data needs to be verified in advance so that users can get the desired results. Local search is highly targeted and provides timely output to the users. If the business is listed in the local database, it attracts the prospective customers in huge numbers.

Fresh content

A site can stay popular only if it loads fresh content in a timely manner. People spend lot of time and money to design the website but forget to refresh the information on the page. It is one of the most important on page SEO mistakes.

Google and Bing crawlers do not index information that is old; therefore focus on changing old data with new to get noticed. More content in the website means more keywords and higher probability of indexing but do confirm that the information is relevant to the target audiences.

Frequent posts and blogs about the new products and services keep the visitors engaged. They get daily dosage of information that keeps them interested in the website. In addition, you can also install the facility of notifications to inform the users of new content when they arrive.

Poor interlinking

Webmasters use keywords in the place of anchor text but they are often used at wrong places. Therefore, it is extremely important to find suitable locations where they can be inserted.