Everyone who has an online presence wants to get on top of the search engine results. But, there are 8 issues that can prevent this from happening for your business. Here are tips to fix these 8 common issues:
- Your website has a lot of duplicate content
This is not limited to content from other websites. It is a good idea to have unique content on each page of your website. If not, you get penalized by search engines. To maintain a good online reputation, make sure that you check your content using tools like Copyscape.
- Recurring 404 Errors
Any broken link will generate a 404 Error. If this error is displayed in a tacky manner, you will drive traffic away. You can check all your backlinks such as SEOSiteCheckUp.com. If the error is inevitable, make sure that the pop up is presentable.
- Presence of duplicate tags
The title tag as well as the Meta tag should be unique for every page. You can check these tags using Google Webmaster Tools. If you have a large website, the duplicate tags should not be more than three.
- Page loading takes too long
A delay of 1 second causes loss of 11% of traffic according to statistics. Make sure that your website is free from heavy files, any server issues or other factors that are slowing it down. Reducing page elements, using compressed pages, browser caching, optimizing images and reducing plugins will help immensely.
- The content is of poor quality
Bad content includes broken links, duplicate content, irrelevant content, very low word count, high bounce rates and overused keywords. The best way to rectify this is to physically go through every piece of content on your website and rewrite it as needed.
- The mobile version of your website is poor
If the user needs to zoom to navigate through your content or sees a skewed version of the website on the mobile, you automatically lose SEO points. Make sure that your website is optimized not only for mobile phones but also other mobile devices like tablets.
- You are still using black hat backlinks
Black hat links include backlinks to websites that are not relevant to your website. This is a method used to generate greater volume of backlinks. This can lead to penalties and can even have your website shut down permanently. Hire a webmaster to help create relevant backlinks that will help you get a good online reputation.
- Alt tags have been omitted
If you want the search engines to be able to crawl through images as well, alt tags are a must. These tags tell the search engine what the image is about. Use tags that are descriptive of the image instead of numbers and codes. This can also give you great rankings as these tags can act as keywords for the images that you use. Keep the alt tags simple and descriptive. Also make sure that the image is always place in a relevant position with appropriate text.
