We are almost midway through 2024 and in the era of advanced SEO, but businesses are still struggling with common SEO mistakes. SEO services are employed to give you an edge over the competitor’s website by ranking at a better position on SERP.
A large number of websites are not able to secure top positions on search engines despite offering the most useful content for the users. Why? Due to silly SEO mistakes that must be avoided. In this article, you will learn about the most common SEO mistakes to avoid in 2024 if you are serious about your business and the best SEO practices.
Most Common SEO Mistakes to Avoid in 2024
Not only beginner SEO executives but also a great number of established and professional SEO experts fail to tackle common SEO mistakes. They either ignore these mistakes (misinterpret them as trivial issues) or they don’t know the solutions. Even though these issues may be trivial, collectively, they harm the websites. Let’s discuss them along with resolution –
Keyword Stuffing
To be straight, keyword stuffing leads to poor content quality even though it is written with extensive research. Keyword stuffing means writing the target keyword repeatedly to rank in the search engine but it does more harm than good. It also discourages visitors to back to your pages again. Even giant search engines like Google don’t recommend the keyword stuffing practice.
How to avoid – Always try to answer the public questions with your content rather than solely writing for search engines. Though there are no set criteria for keyword density, it is recommended to have a max of 2%. But ultimately, you have to take care of user experience.
Large Number of Duplicate Content
Duplicate content could be intentional or unintentional but most SEO experts fail to handle it. Unintentional duplicate content is those having multiple URLs targeting the same content which significantly hurts the SEO. On the other hand, intentional duplicate content is copied and recycled content from other websites to get the traffic benefit of high-volume keywords.
In the Google Central Blog, Google strictly warned publishers who indulge in the unethical practice of duplicate content and their businesses may be punished. You can read more details in the blog.
How to tackle – The best way to fix this is to avoid producing duplicate content which should not be a long-term goal. However, if duplicate content is not intentional, you have to fix it. The easy way to do this is to add 301 (permanent) redirection to the original content.
SEO without Strategy
Instead of a common mistake, it is a blunder that most SEO partners struggle with. As we have discussed, a long-term plan is necessary for SEO, and if you don’t have one, your likelihood of success will be lowered. This is often known as headless SEO and must be avoided if you want to be successful in the SEO industry. However, if you are inexperienced and unable to curate your SEO strategy, hiring an SEO agency to manage and grow your business is better.
How to avoid – Before working on any SEO tactics, make a comprehensive plan or schedule on how the SEO will proceed in the upcoming weeks or months. If you are not competent enough, hire an SEO company, and let them know your requirements. They better know how SEO and related industry works and how to grow a business quickly by ranking them in top positions.
Not Optimizing Site for Mobile
Another most common SEO mistake to avoid in 2024 is mobile optimization as Google highly prioritized mobile-friendly business websites in 2024. In Google’s own words – “After July 5, 2024, we’ll crawl and index these sites with only Googlebot Smartphone. If your site’s content is not accessible at all with a mobile device, it will no longer be indexable.” So, now you can understand, how important it is to optimize your site for mobile.
How to avoid – Optimize your business website for mobile by improving site speed and layout according to mobile users. The more your website is mobile-friendly, the higher the chances of consistent indexing and ranking.
Excessive Internal Linking
Undoubtedly, internal linking is a major ranking factor for Google to determine the website structure and type of content. Internal links boost your visibility on the internet and if used strategically, can improve the page authority. But instead of using vague URLs directly, you must include anchor text and too in a natural way. However, most of the users add non-related internal links which neither pass any authority nor improve user experience.
How to avoid – Only add the internal links of the pages that are really important and offer any value to the current page. It not only helps improve the traffic to the other pages but also helps to rank higher the current page.
Neglecting Site Speed
The biggest mistake SEOs make is the negligence of site speed as many think that content and link building is the only matter. Site speed is a big factor that overall diminishes the website visibility. When your site loads slowly, it is frustrating for visitors, and they leave the site before it loads fully increasing the bounce rate. Also, Google prioritizes the website on search results with good speed and offers the best user experience.
How to avoid – Reducing image size, choosing the right image format, enabling caching, reducing unnecessary codes, and non-critical javascripts are the few ways to improve your site speed.
Not Focusing on Link Building
Link building is a top SEO and ranking factor that has been crucial for websites since the inception of search engines and is still valuable. Many beginner SEOs make the common SEO mistake to ignore this big factor. Links are regarded by search engines like Google as an authority and trust signal. It is a sign of credibility and value when other websites connect to yours. Search engines will view your website as more credible the more high-quality backlinks it has.
How to avoid – Experts in search engine optimization use diverse marketing techniques to obtain connections from relevant web pages. It can be done via guest blogging, profile creation on related websites, link-building techniques, and regular backlink analysis.
Ignoring Local SEO
Ignoring local SEO is the most common SEO mistake to avoid in 2024. Nowadays, most SEO experts already started focusing on local SEO as it attracts and helps local audiences. For businesses, it is an even more critical factor and must be rendered. Ignoring local SEO means losing a large chunk of traffic that your website can get when optimizing for local SEO.
How to avoid – Create a Google Business Profile which is free to create and list your business by entering your business name, address, and contact number. Next, identify keywords with local intent like best [business] near me, best [services] near me, or best [business] in [location]. Also, ask people to leave positive reviews for your business that again boost local ranking.
Not Fixing Technical Issues
Technical issues severely affect the crawling and indexing of any website ultimately leading to a significant traffic drop. When your site has technical issues like non-indexing, search engine bots are unable to find your content, leaving the question of ranking.
Similarly, not having a mobile-friendly website, page speed, multiple redirections, incorrect structured data, internal links, wrong meta tags, etc are a few technical mistakes that must be avoided.
How to avoid – The first step is to audit your website with audit tools like Semrush or Ahref and find the potential technical error. Now, try to find and fix each error separately. If you are not able to understand how to fix them, book a consultation with Profito Interactive, and resolve the issues instantly.
Not Implants 301 Redirections
Suppose, you are searching for a particular keyword on Google or other search engines, and the top results are 404 errors or lead to nowhere. This happens when the site owner does not use 301 redirections on a page that does not exist. In this case, visitors will see a 404 error instead of the answer to their query and they leave the page suddenly. This is not only bad for user experience but also negatively affects SEO and if not fixed on time, it drops the site ranking.
How to avoid – Redirecting outdated URLs to new URLs is the most recommended course of action. Redirects notify users and search engines that the material has relocated. In addition to saving customers from being annoyed by broken links, this helps preserve the SEO advantages of the previous URL. If you do not have a replacement URL then you can create a customized 404 page.
Conclusion
These are the most common SEO mistakes to avoid in 2024, whether running a business website or doing a hobby blogging. Though these mistakes are well known and can be addressed easily, most of the SEOs fail to do so due to not having a clear strategy. This article may help you to understand these mistakes and how to avoid them to stay ahead of your competitors and maintain a top ranking on search engines.
