3 Small SEO Mistakes that are Hurting Your SERP Ranking

SEO is a very complex area, which allows for a lot of room for errors. Despite hours and hours of effort to correctly optimize your website, you may be making simple SEO mistakes that are hurting your SERP ranking. Anyone can make these simple SEO mistakes, but most often, it's webmasters who don't fully understand the algorithm requirements, lack knowledge of proper white hat methods, or those who just have bad information in terms of SEO.

Here are some simple SEO mistakes you may be overlooking that are hurting your SERP ranking:

1. Duplicate Content
We all know you shouldn't post duplicate content because it essentially means you're competing with yourself. Plus, Google wants original and quality content. But, did you know duplicate content extends beyond duplicate blog posts and website content? Duplicate content also involves duplicate META descriptions, headers and page titles.

2. Lack of Content
A huge problem I see with many websites, especially e-commerce sites, is lack of content. Many webmasters are so focused on providing a clean and crisp look to their website, that they totally skimp on the content. Each website page should have roughly 250 words. By skimping on website content, you're not giving Google enough information to properly index your page. Plus, you're not giving your readers the information they crave.

3. Forgetting About Your Readers
Many webmasters spend so much time getting their website to accurately portray their business in order to produce sales that they forget about the readers. Your number one goal should be to provide a quality site your readers will enjoy and want to return to and share with others. Then, you need to focus on the SEO end and other factors.

Although they may not seem very important, these small SEO mistakes will actually hurt your SERP ranking. The best way to avoid making any mistakes that will hurt your SERP ranking is to become properly educated in terms of SEO or hire an SEO professional to get the job done right the first time.

What are some small SEO mistakes you often see that can hurt SERP ranking?

Comments

Unknown said…
Great article, and great info. Still working to correct some of the mistakes previously made on the site.
Alyssa Ast said…
Thank you. Websites are never truly finished. They are always a continual work in progress.