natureguy
BANNED
- Nov 28, 2018
- 75
- 32
A lot of attention: this post is a list of errors that you can commit or even be committing at this moment with your website and that could ruin your SEO positioning in Google. Therefore, take note and at the same time have your website open to make the necessary checks and improvements on the fly.
Even if you do not know much about SEO, do not worry. I'll explain everything in a simple and practical way so you can apply the corrections step by step. With this post I want to help you understand what we are talking about and then you can easily solve it.
Some of the errors or aspects that you must take into account are quite easy to commit. Others are less common, but you must know them equally to avoid falling into them in the future.
When you work on the SEO of a website, it is so important to take actions to position yourself as to avoid falling into errors that could penalize you or damage your positioning. But keep in mind that not everything that hurts you has to be a penalty. Sometimes there is a lot of confusion about it and there are people who think it's the same, when it's not like that.
A penalty is a punishment imposed by Google for having done something that you should not according to the algorithms that set the rules, such as the panda, penguin, etc. A simple SEO error is something that may be harming you, even if it is not directly related to a particular Google algorithm.
So ... How to know if you are making SEO mistakes?
The problem of making mistakes in SEO is that if you are penalized or lose many positions maybe the solution is not as easy as removing the error and that's it. Sometimes there is damage that can be difficult to repair, or it can make it difficult or slow in your positioning strategy. Therefore, it is essential to be clear about what mistakes you should not make:
1. Duplicity of content
The duplication of content can be with external content or with internal content.
External means that you have literally copied or plagiarized texts from other websites and put them in yours. This is something that Google pursues a lot and that you should avoid at all costs. Not only for Google, but also not to be crossed out as a plagiarizer, which could damage your prestige among the community of users and creators of content.
Internal is when you have the same texts in a good proportion between different URLs of your own website. If your website has many pages with the same texts, Google could consider that it is not necessary to show them all since they do not contribute anything new, and that would mean losing visibility in the search engine.
This usually happens when you have indexed pages of taxonomies, products with the same description, footers and siidebars with very broad texts, etc.
How does it hurt you?
Google analyzes your content through the Panda algorithm, and Panda does not like to fill in the Internet with URLs that do not provide anything original. In addition, duplicate content worsens the user experience by offering equal texts in different sections, which may be frowned upon by the user.
Now, on this there is debate ... does the duplicate content penalize? The truth is that not always, and also on equal terms in similar projects, in some cases it does and in others it does not. Therefore, why risk it?
How to know if you have duplicate content?
Enter the domain of your website in the Siteliner tool to know the percentage of internal duplicate content that you have throughout the site and page by page.
To analyze external duplicate content or plagiarized from one website to another, you have tools like Copyscape, in which you can enter a URL of a website and the tool will tell you where that content is being replicated in a textual manner.
How to solve it?
In the case of internal duplicate content, modify the content that matches between pages or add more text to lower the match, de-indexes taxonomies, decreases the amount of text in the widgets areas, disables pages that generate duplicity if they have no relevance or potential to position.
If it is external duplicate content, that is, you have content on your site that is already on other websites, remove it immediately if the content was previously published on another website. If it is the other way around, that is, if you have been plagiarized, in theory you should not be penalized for it. However, in case you do not have total security about it, it is better to review it well just in case.
2. Incoming toxic links
At this point we should already have super clear that we can not go around buying links without assessing in depth their origin and quality. Until a while ago, many websites lived on the purchase of links systematically, but the Penguin algorithm is increasingly accurate and can penalize you if you pass.
The linked toxic is the one that comes from penalized domains, that send massively links to other webs that are in other languages or that work a different language, with anchor texts too coincident or equal, of topics banned like pornography, bets, fake medicines, etc.
How to know if you have toxic incoming links? Check your website with tools like Ranksignals or Search Console and see if there are suspicious links. Analyze the content of these websites, see if they are in another language, look carefully at what topic they work on, count the outgoing links in case you are sending many links for each URL and pass them also Ranksignals to see who they link in case they are also suspicious domains.
3. Thin Content
Writing little content on your pages and entries is something you should avoid. Not only because of that classic SEO dogma that says: "Google wants you to write at least 300 words to position".
Also for another important reason: a rich content, which satisfies well the user's information demand with respect to the search that he / she has introduced, is a content that generates more time of permanence, less rebound and, ultimately, a greater retention of the user.
Google recommends that you make valuable content, rich and unique, with a sufficient extension to add value to users, which is actually the main goal of Google: to offer users the best possible content for each search intent.
How does it hurt you?
Websites that have many indexed sections with little or no valuable content dilute their authority among many URLs, which is not good for the site's global authority. In addition, they force Google to crawl irrelevant content and on very large sites can pose a crawl budget problem.
Pages with scarce and irrelevant content do not usually meet the user's demand for information, so they are abandoned before and receive fewer links, shared, even conversions.
How to know if you have thin content?
Observe the amount of content you have in your sections and entries and if they do not usually reach 300 words each is that you are well below the necessary amount of text to position well and satisfy users. Also, analyze the quality and the real value of your content.
Check with Google Analytics how the user interacts with your content. If in general there are low dwell times, too much bounce and few visits to pages per session you should ask yourself if your content is good enough or complete, that is, if it has the extension and quality enough to satisfy the user's search intention.
How to solve it?
Go write and better and more extensive texts, with more value, more epígrafes and headings h and desindexa all those pages with little content that have no relevance or potential to position, as contact pages that only have a map and form and things like that.
Also, every time you decide to work on a keyword, do it thoroughly, instead of trying to get out of step with any text. Think carefully about what the user really wants to be entering a search query in Google and give him all the information and possible value.
That is, do not work thinking about a keyword only for each URL, but in the intent of global search that can satisfy each URL. With which better to create complete, extensive, rich content and with synonymic and varied ways of expressing the keyword.
4. Absence of important labels (title, h1)
As you well know, the content on the Internet is encoded in HTML language. Within this language there are labels that are more important than others for Google.
The two most important labels and that you should never miss in each of your URLs are:
Title: Tells Google the main title of that URL. You must put a title by URL, not just one global level of the web. In that title the keyword must be yes or yes. It is the most relevant SEO label. It is written like this: <title> </ title>. By the way, all CMS like WordPress and others should put you by default in title what you write inside the title box at the top.
H1: It is the most relevant header label. In a page or entry you can have h1, h2, h3, etc., and the one that should never be missing is the h1, since it is the next one in relevance after the <title> </ title> tag. As in the case of the title, the main title that you write in the box above should also be placed in h1.
Apart from these two tags, it is not bad that you introduce other tags that are also relevant to your content and that you put your keyword or keywords related to the main search intention that you are working on your content (also tags, h3, h4) , h5, etc ...).
This helps Google understand your content and gives relevance to what you put inside these tags, in addition to giving your texts a much more hierarchical and scannable visual aspect.
How does it hurt you?
If you do not use relevant tags, Google can not understand the relevance of the keywords you use within them. That is, you would be leaving aside one of the most important elements to reinforce the relevance of your content around the keywords you use. In addition, your texts would have a very monotonous appearance and this could harm user retention.
How to know if you are missing important labels?
There should be a single title and a single h1 for each URL of your website. If you want to check at the code level that these tags are appearing correctly, go to your website and click on Right button> See source code of the page. There you can use the search command Control or CMD + F, to search for "title" and "h1" and see if they are and appear only once.
How to solve it?
In theory, if you use a good CMS (such as WordPress) with a good template and you have not touched anything weird, every URL of your site (pages, entries, products, etc.) should be showing in the code a title and a h1. If not, it could be because you have a template with the optimized code for SEO or, perhaps, the developer of your company has made a slip and left the web without relevant tags. In these last two cases, you have to touch the php code.
5. Over-optimization of keyword (keyword stuffing)
Not by writing your keyword in a repetitive and forced way in your texts you will position yourself better. To write a good SEO text you do not need to put the keyword again and again. Those distant times in which to position better had to put the keyword with shoehorn in each paragraph have passed, fortunately for the user who had to read unfriendly texts full of repeated words. Now that does not help.
What's more, if you overdo it, you are incurring what we know as Keyword Stuffing and Google does not like that because it moves away from the philosophy of writing organically thinking above all about the value you offer and the user's satisfaction.
Therefore, a tip: write always in a natural way, without thinking too much about repeating your keywords here and there. Use synonyms and richness in the use of language. Google will like it better ... and the user too.
How does it hurt you?
If Google detects an excessive and forced use of the keyword it can determine that your text has no real quality and does not offer a natural semantics, which could harm your positioning.
How to know if you are repeating the keyword too much?
With free tools like SEO Yoast (plugin for WordPress) or Keyword Density Checker, you can easily check if you are doing Keyword Stuffing.
Even if you do not know much about SEO, do not worry. I'll explain everything in a simple and practical way so you can apply the corrections step by step. With this post I want to help you understand what we are talking about and then you can easily solve it.
Some of the errors or aspects that you must take into account are quite easy to commit. Others are less common, but you must know them equally to avoid falling into them in the future.
When you work on the SEO of a website, it is so important to take actions to position yourself as to avoid falling into errors that could penalize you or damage your positioning. But keep in mind that not everything that hurts you has to be a penalty. Sometimes there is a lot of confusion about it and there are people who think it's the same, when it's not like that.
A penalty is a punishment imposed by Google for having done something that you should not according to the algorithms that set the rules, such as the panda, penguin, etc. A simple SEO error is something that may be harming you, even if it is not directly related to a particular Google algorithm.
So ... How to know if you are making SEO mistakes?
The problem of making mistakes in SEO is that if you are penalized or lose many positions maybe the solution is not as easy as removing the error and that's it. Sometimes there is damage that can be difficult to repair, or it can make it difficult or slow in your positioning strategy. Therefore, it is essential to be clear about what mistakes you should not make:
1. Duplicity of content
The duplication of content can be with external content or with internal content.
External means that you have literally copied or plagiarized texts from other websites and put them in yours. This is something that Google pursues a lot and that you should avoid at all costs. Not only for Google, but also not to be crossed out as a plagiarizer, which could damage your prestige among the community of users and creators of content.
Internal is when you have the same texts in a good proportion between different URLs of your own website. If your website has many pages with the same texts, Google could consider that it is not necessary to show them all since they do not contribute anything new, and that would mean losing visibility in the search engine.
This usually happens when you have indexed pages of taxonomies, products with the same description, footers and siidebars with very broad texts, etc.
How does it hurt you?
Google analyzes your content through the Panda algorithm, and Panda does not like to fill in the Internet with URLs that do not provide anything original. In addition, duplicate content worsens the user experience by offering equal texts in different sections, which may be frowned upon by the user.
Now, on this there is debate ... does the duplicate content penalize? The truth is that not always, and also on equal terms in similar projects, in some cases it does and in others it does not. Therefore, why risk it?
How to know if you have duplicate content?
Enter the domain of your website in the Siteliner tool to know the percentage of internal duplicate content that you have throughout the site and page by page.
To analyze external duplicate content or plagiarized from one website to another, you have tools like Copyscape, in which you can enter a URL of a website and the tool will tell you where that content is being replicated in a textual manner.
How to solve it?
In the case of internal duplicate content, modify the content that matches between pages or add more text to lower the match, de-indexes taxonomies, decreases the amount of text in the widgets areas, disables pages that generate duplicity if they have no relevance or potential to position.
If it is external duplicate content, that is, you have content on your site that is already on other websites, remove it immediately if the content was previously published on another website. If it is the other way around, that is, if you have been plagiarized, in theory you should not be penalized for it. However, in case you do not have total security about it, it is better to review it well just in case.
2. Incoming toxic links
At this point we should already have super clear that we can not go around buying links without assessing in depth their origin and quality. Until a while ago, many websites lived on the purchase of links systematically, but the Penguin algorithm is increasingly accurate and can penalize you if you pass.
The linked toxic is the one that comes from penalized domains, that send massively links to other webs that are in other languages or that work a different language, with anchor texts too coincident or equal, of topics banned like pornography, bets, fake medicines, etc.
How to know if you have toxic incoming links? Check your website with tools like Ranksignals or Search Console and see if there are suspicious links. Analyze the content of these websites, see if they are in another language, look carefully at what topic they work on, count the outgoing links in case you are sending many links for each URL and pass them also Ranksignals to see who they link in case they are also suspicious domains.
3. Thin Content
Writing little content on your pages and entries is something you should avoid. Not only because of that classic SEO dogma that says: "Google wants you to write at least 300 words to position".
Also for another important reason: a rich content, which satisfies well the user's information demand with respect to the search that he / she has introduced, is a content that generates more time of permanence, less rebound and, ultimately, a greater retention of the user.
Google recommends that you make valuable content, rich and unique, with a sufficient extension to add value to users, which is actually the main goal of Google: to offer users the best possible content for each search intent.
How does it hurt you?
Websites that have many indexed sections with little or no valuable content dilute their authority among many URLs, which is not good for the site's global authority. In addition, they force Google to crawl irrelevant content and on very large sites can pose a crawl budget problem.
Pages with scarce and irrelevant content do not usually meet the user's demand for information, so they are abandoned before and receive fewer links, shared, even conversions.
How to know if you have thin content?
Observe the amount of content you have in your sections and entries and if they do not usually reach 300 words each is that you are well below the necessary amount of text to position well and satisfy users. Also, analyze the quality and the real value of your content.
Check with Google Analytics how the user interacts with your content. If in general there are low dwell times, too much bounce and few visits to pages per session you should ask yourself if your content is good enough or complete, that is, if it has the extension and quality enough to satisfy the user's search intention.
How to solve it?
Go write and better and more extensive texts, with more value, more epígrafes and headings h and desindexa all those pages with little content that have no relevance or potential to position, as contact pages that only have a map and form and things like that.
Also, every time you decide to work on a keyword, do it thoroughly, instead of trying to get out of step with any text. Think carefully about what the user really wants to be entering a search query in Google and give him all the information and possible value.
That is, do not work thinking about a keyword only for each URL, but in the intent of global search that can satisfy each URL. With which better to create complete, extensive, rich content and with synonymic and varied ways of expressing the keyword.
4. Absence of important labels (title, h1)
As you well know, the content on the Internet is encoded in HTML language. Within this language there are labels that are more important than others for Google.
The two most important labels and that you should never miss in each of your URLs are:
Title: Tells Google the main title of that URL. You must put a title by URL, not just one global level of the web. In that title the keyword must be yes or yes. It is the most relevant SEO label. It is written like this: <title> </ title>. By the way, all CMS like WordPress and others should put you by default in title what you write inside the title box at the top.
H1: It is the most relevant header label. In a page or entry you can have h1, h2, h3, etc., and the one that should never be missing is the h1, since it is the next one in relevance after the <title> </ title> tag. As in the case of the title, the main title that you write in the box above should also be placed in h1.
Apart from these two tags, it is not bad that you introduce other tags that are also relevant to your content and that you put your keyword or keywords related to the main search intention that you are working on your content (also tags, h3, h4) , h5, etc ...).
This helps Google understand your content and gives relevance to what you put inside these tags, in addition to giving your texts a much more hierarchical and scannable visual aspect.
How does it hurt you?
If you do not use relevant tags, Google can not understand the relevance of the keywords you use within them. That is, you would be leaving aside one of the most important elements to reinforce the relevance of your content around the keywords you use. In addition, your texts would have a very monotonous appearance and this could harm user retention.
How to know if you are missing important labels?
There should be a single title and a single h1 for each URL of your website. If you want to check at the code level that these tags are appearing correctly, go to your website and click on Right button> See source code of the page. There you can use the search command Control or CMD + F, to search for "title" and "h1" and see if they are and appear only once.
How to solve it?
In theory, if you use a good CMS (such as WordPress) with a good template and you have not touched anything weird, every URL of your site (pages, entries, products, etc.) should be showing in the code a title and a h1. If not, it could be because you have a template with the optimized code for SEO or, perhaps, the developer of your company has made a slip and left the web without relevant tags. In these last two cases, you have to touch the php code.
5. Over-optimization of keyword (keyword stuffing)
Not by writing your keyword in a repetitive and forced way in your texts you will position yourself better. To write a good SEO text you do not need to put the keyword again and again. Those distant times in which to position better had to put the keyword with shoehorn in each paragraph have passed, fortunately for the user who had to read unfriendly texts full of repeated words. Now that does not help.
What's more, if you overdo it, you are incurring what we know as Keyword Stuffing and Google does not like that because it moves away from the philosophy of writing organically thinking above all about the value you offer and the user's satisfaction.
Therefore, a tip: write always in a natural way, without thinking too much about repeating your keywords here and there. Use synonyms and richness in the use of language. Google will like it better ... and the user too.
How does it hurt you?
If Google detects an excessive and forced use of the keyword it can determine that your text has no real quality and does not offer a natural semantics, which could harm your positioning.
How to know if you are repeating the keyword too much?
With free tools like SEO Yoast (plugin for WordPress) or Keyword Density Checker, you can easily check if you are doing Keyword Stuffing.
