What Are the Most Common SEO Mistakes to Avoid in 2020? 13 Ways that You Can Sabotage Your Own Website’s SEO Performance- Part 1

Have you seen a downfall in your website's ranking (and traffic)? What if you're to blame? What if you're making the all-too-common SEO mistakes to avoid in 2020?

Or at least some of them...

"But which are they?" you ask yourself.

This is precisely what I'll be pinpointing in this post:

The 13 all-too-frequent bad SEO habits that you, too, might be guilty of. And which are harming your website's SEO potential.

1. You're Optimizing for All the Wrong Keywords
2. You're Leaving Broken Images and Broken Links Lingering in There
3. You're Ignoring The Simplest Fixes to Your Site's Performance Issues
4. You're Not Including the Target Keywords in Your URLs
5. You're Using Automatically-Generated (Duplicate) Page Titles
6. You're Not Optimizing Your Site Pages' <Title> Tags
7. You're OK with Having One Internal Link and Even Orphan Pages
8. You're Ignoring Site Structure Issues That Are Hurting the User Experience
9. You're Not Optimizing Your Web Presence for Local Search
10. You've Updated Your Website But... Kept the Old URLs
11. One of the Most Common SEO Mistakes to Avoid in 2020: Improper Use of H1 Tags
12. You Have No Link Building Strategy
13. You've Overlooked to Add Your Sitemap to Your Robots.txt File

So, let's dive in:

1. You're Optimizing for the Wrong Keywords

And by "wrong keywords" I mean:
 

• short-tail keywords
• keywords that are "out of your league" (i.e. high competition keywords)

Instead, target long-tail keywords, that you can realistically rank for.

It's the "2-step" formula to success when optimizing a website for specific keywords.

Pro tip: if you're running an e-commerce website, target transactional keywords (they usually include terms like "subscribe", "for sale", "order", "apply", "reserve", "schedule" + the exact name of your branded product/service or general industry products/services)

2. You're Leaving Broken Images and Broken Links Lingering in There

One of the top SEO mistakes (since it's still so "popular") that you, too, might be making on your website:

You're being "sloppy" with your website's links and internal images.

In other words, you leave behind "residues" like:
 

• misspelled URLs
• images with no ALT-text
• images with poor file names
• image linking to files that no longer exist

3. You're Ignoring The Simple Fixes to Your Site's Performance Issues

Has your website started to... slow down? 

How about implementing the quickest fixes at hand to speed up things a bit in there? 

Here are 2 simple and effective steps you can take right away:
 

• minify your CSS and JS files
• enable a good caching plugin

4. You're Not Including the Target Keywords in Your URLs

"What are some common SEO mistakes?"

Sticking to a poor URL structure is one of them.

And why would you bother including keywords in your URL structure? Since users can still find your website, even if it doesn't have keyword-optimized URLs?

Because keyword-rich URLs make it easier for search engines to locate your website.

5. You're Using Automatically-Generated (Duplicate) Page Titles

Another one of the all-too-common SEO mistakes to avoid in 2020:

Generating your page titles dynamically instead of creating them manually.

Especially if we're talking about key pages on your website.

In this case, the risk of ending up with duplicate page titles, that will only confuse search engines, is very high. 

6. You're Not Optimizing Your Title Tags: One of the Most Common SEO Mistakes to Avoid in 2020

And this is one bad habit that's going to cost you your website's high ranking in the search results.

As a rule of thumb, keep in mind to always insert your target keywords in the pages' title tags, as well. 

And to stick to the proper length: less than 60 characters.

7. You're OK with Having One Internal Link and Even Orphaned Pages

"What SEO mistakes am I making with my website?"

You're underestimating the power of internal linking.

Or the negative impact that such a bad practice can have on your site's ranking if you want to put it this way.

In other words:
 

• having just one internal link on a page is not enough
• having orphaned pages, that are not linked to anywhere on your website, is... unacceptable
   

Source: searchenginejournal.com  

The END of Part 1!

These are the first 7 common SEO mistakes to avoid in 2020 from the list that we've put together for you. So, stay tuned for the second series of SEO bad practices...

Now, how many of them have you identified on your own website?

Are you having trouble getting them fixed? Or maybe just not enough time or enough SEO expertise in your team?

We're ready to land you a hand with that. 

Just drop us a line and let's identify and fructify all those missed SEO opportunities on your website.



Image by Andrew Martin from Pixabay