POSITIONING ERRORS - THEIR TYPES AND CONSEQUENCES - SERVICE BUSINESS

Positioning mistakes - 11 bad SEO practices

Have you started optimizing your website for the search engine? This is very good, but remember that many of the actions that seem beneficial are actually not. We present the most common positioning errors. Try to avoid them - seemingly trivial, but they can have a negative impact on your company and its position on the market.

Positioning errors and their consequences

You don't have to search too long to find numerous books, internet guides or videos presenting theoretical knowledge about positioning. As you know, theory does not always have to go hand in hand with practice and often - even positioners with some experience - mistakes in positioning occur. Their consequences can be quite significant - improperly conducted search engine optimization will not bring the expected results - climbing up in search results. Hence? Less traffic on the website, less conversions, lower profits and lower company recognition.

The most common positioning errors

We will point out eleven of the most common mistakes made during the optimization of websites in terms of search engines. You should beware of them, although some of them may seem beneficial to SEO on the surface - this is a misleading impression.

Use of popular keywords - when you are just starting your adventure with positioning, it is not worth taking a deep dive right away. Popular keywords mean that there will be a lot of competition on the way to the top of the search results. Although frequently used keywords generate more traffic on the website, it does not always translate into specific actions performed on it by users. It is better to start with less popular, but more accurately tailored to the already precise and specific customer inquiries. They don't generate that much traffic, but the conversion rate can be much higher with them.

Abusing keywords in the domain and page description. On the one hand, it may seem that the keywords placed in the description tag and in the website's domain will better define its subject and match the phrases searched for by users. On the other hand, such domain names or descriptions look artificial and may be unreadable for Internet users. Worse, if the keywords used in the description do not accurately reflect the content of the page, Google might consider you a spammer. Moreover, a long domain name packed with keywords can be difficult to remember and put on various types of advertising media.

Positioning by key phrases that are not in the content of the page. Firstly, this action is ineffective, and secondly, it is generally considered unethical. The use of key phrases unrelated to the subject of the page and not existing on it may result in a penalty imposed by Google and removal of the page from search results.

Duplicating the content and keywords of the home page on the SEO backend pages. Each page should have unique content. Otherwise, at best, you are weakening your home page's strength and ranking in search results, at worst - Google may consider it duplicate content and penalize you.

Too little adaptation of the website to Google robots. Check various elements of your website - in particular, the correctness of the code, title and description tags, alternative descriptions of images, headline content and the presence of keywords in the page content, graphic size, page loading speed, link anchors. Thanks to the information contained in these elements, robots can easily determine the subject of your page. Also check if the 301 redirects have been used correctly on your pages and if some pages are reasonably inaccessible to robots (they have the noindex attribute).

Exaggerated adaptation to Google robots. Positioning errors often result from insufficient attention to the content placed on the website. It is important to adapt the content to the search engine robots, but it is equally important that it is attractive to the recipient. Make sure that your pages have interesting, useful content, presented in a clear, readable form, supplemented with graphics and photos. Google robots will also take into account how the website is adapted to its recipients and whether the content posted on it is useful for them.

Incoming linking from insecure sites. Be careful which pages contain links to your site. Often these can be spammy sites or link farms, and this will negatively affect the position of your sites. Be careful when placing your inbound links on other sites - do not lead intrusive linking, as you may be considered a spammer. Try to carry out this process as naturally as possible.

Improperly run link exchange system. The system for exchanging links between pages (services), known as SWL, is censored on Google. This company considers link exchange practices to be illegal, but reasonable actions by SWL may benefit your site. Provided that you make exchanges with a thematically related page and do not do it periodically, on a regular basis. It is an open secret that many sites with the highest positions in the SERPs use SWL. You can gain a lot from trading, but you also risk a lot. Think about a less risky way to get valuable links to your pages.

Improper internal linking is also often made mistakes in positioning. Check that all internal links on your site are working properly and take you to the right pages. This is important in indexing, as robots may not reach some pages on your site this way. It can also be problematic for users when links lead, for example, to pages that no longer exist.

Hastily created SEO facilities. First of all, beware of putting all backend pages on one IP along with the home page - Google may detect this as an illegal activity. Make your backend pages look quite natural - create them in different domains, use different CMS systems, create original and unique content on them. Spend the creation of the backend over time so that the process of creating the next supporting pages looks as natural as possible.

Choosing inappropriate hosting. When thinking: SEO errors, many perceive specific actions related to the optimization of on-page content or inbound links. Meanwhile, it is also important to choose the right hosting for your website. Do not save money and choose uncertain quality hosting, especially as it may have an impact on the speed of opening the website and other operations on it. If your website is loading slowly, it will not have a positive effect on its position in the search results.

Are these all positioning mistakes?

The positioning errors we presented are the most common mistakes. Certainly, this list does not exhaust the topic of inappropriate positioning activities, but it points to the most important ones. You may notice other weaknesses when conducting an SEO audit - important to minimize the risk of their occurrence.If you avoid the mistakes we have presented, you can count on your website to improve its position in search results.