Beware of SEO errors. Whether voluntary or not, they can severely impact your website. This post will guide you with the most common on-site SEO blunders to avoid.
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By ignorance or clumsiness, you constellate your SEO strategy with many errors. Some are tiny, and others are major. But both can seriously affect the positioning of your web pages. In the worst-case scenario, it can even lead to the exclusion of your site from search engine results. So, let us help you learn how to spot such deadly on-page SEO mistakes to eradicate them.
Not Modifying Your Robots.Txt File
Like cities have their signposts, websites have their robots.txt file. This file tells search engine robots which files and pages on your website they are supposed to crawl, and which are banned from circulation.
The SEO error here is not to optimize this file, that is, to leave it as is. By default, it allows robots to visit all pages of your website. And that is one of the biggest on-site SEO mistakes.
Robots do their job quickly. Now imagine that your site is more than 100 pages: robots may be computer programs, but they still have limits. If you let them crawl all of your pages and files, they may come back to you less often and prefer other sites. The ideal is, therefore, to configure your robots.txt to exclude everything that does not interest the robots (temporary directories, pages under construction, etc.) And avoid reproducing SEO errors of this type!
Unbalanced Internal Linking Strategy
Internal networking must be an essential component of your website’s SEO strategy. If backlinking is often put forward for natural referencing, internal links are just as necessary, because they help popularize your pages.
Internal links allow you to link pages of your website to each other. Your website is more fluid and more pleasant to navigate, which helps you to optimize your SEO. But be careful not to fall into the trap of over-optimizing your internal links. It could have a negative impact on your positioning.
Most digital marketers get confused in this and hence, end up with an imbalance. Especially for blogging sites, it is one of the most hazardous SEO blogging mistakes.
Creating Duplicate Content (Even Without Doing It On Purpose)
There are two types of duplicate content: voluntary content copying and the willingness to copy and paste. Consequently, there are two common SEO errors in this area:
- When promoting your business, you have to write a description of your business and post it on several supports: website home page, professional social profiles, job boards, etc. The problem is that it takes time to write the same thing over and over. To earn it, you have knowingly duplicated the content to display it everywhere. And in doing so, you lit a Bengal light telling Google that you are trying to rip off its robots!
- You ask your collaborators to write content to publish on your professional blog. And you realize, after a while, that your site has been downgraded. Because some of your collaborators said that it was better to pick up pieces of content here and there rather than bothering to be original.
The effect is the same in both cases: Google favours the oldest content or having the highest ranking. You, therefore, end up with major on-page issues due to plagiarized content.
Asking Search Engines Not To Index Your Website
It is a simple SEO fault, made possible by a point of detail of your CMS (content management system). It can have significant consequences on natural referencing of your website to crawlers. Because this option, if activated, has the effect of making your website say: “No thanks, robot friends, I don’t want to be indexed so as not to appear in the search engine results! “
Indeed, some search engines may decide to index it anyway but frankly, are you interested in taking this risk?
Fortunately, this is also one of the easiest SEO errors to correct. If by chance, you have checked the wrong box, you just need to uncheck it on the settings page.
Final Takeaway
Remember, SEO is a subtle preparation. A single deviation can impact the position of your web pages hard. So, take all the necessary precautions and avoid making the errors mentioned above at any cost.