Common Problems That You Can Run into Using SEO

Search Engine Optimisation is a great tool for any business that wants to improve their ranking on search engines, such as Google. Here are some common problems that you could run into using SEO.

Duplicate Content

Duplicate content is seen as the top technical concern by many professionals in SEO. If the content is too similar or an exact copy of an existing webpages content then this will be flagged up.

Poor Mobile Experience

In this day and age – where everyone wants everything now – if your website works poorly on smartphones and tablets and loads slowly, the visitors to the site will be more likely to click away.

Shady Link Building

Links must come from reputable and trusted web pages. Unnatural, spam-like and irrelevant back-links will all be flagged up to Google, and this can cause a fall in the websites ranking.

 

Poor Navigation

Visitors won’t engage in your site if it is difficult to navigate. It must be user-friendly and easy to use.

Images That Are Not Search Friendly

Many websites these days have amazing visuals. Pictures can say a lot about a company, especially if they are of a high quality. This is great for consumers to view and get a taste of the product range. However, images that are not search friendly could, in fact, hinder your website rather than help it. Google cannot read an image, which can essentially make it blind to a lot of a website’s content if it contains a lot of images. By adding in alt text, and headings to a photo, it makes it easier for Google to actually read the images and rank your website.

Messy URLs

Sometimes blog platforms can create awkward and messy URLs when you post new content. URLs that end in things like “index.php?p=283581” are deemed as messy and can hurt your websites credibility and consumer trust. To help optimise your website, tidy up your URLs and try and include a keyword that explains what the page is about. URLs should be easy for both search engines and users to read.

Keyword Stuffing

Keyword stuffing is a common issue that many companies trying to use SEO encounter. If a selected keyword is used too many times, it’s seen as spam by Google and this can affect your ranking negatively.

 

Keyword Cannibalisation

This is similar to keyword stuffing, the difference is that keyword cannibalisation occurs when you try and use the same keyword for too many pages on your site. This also gets seen as spam as Google knows that you are deliberately trying to boost your ranking.

 

Localisation Issues

Another issue is when a website has multiple languages. And whilst this might be great for a company looking for international coverage. It can be a nightmare if it’s no set up correctly. You need to setup HREFLang to ensure you get the right location code so that search engines don’t get confused.