18 Frequent SEO errors (Instructions on how to fix)

SEO beginners also often make mistakes because they are not aware of the basic SEO best practices or because they do not understand them correctly.

SEO is a rapidly changing field and what works a few years or months ago may not work right now. Therefore, it is important to maintain learning and keep informed of the latest SEO changes.

In this post, you'll read about the 18 most common SEO errors to avoid and you know what to do when you encounter them.

This is the Menu content of this article:

1. You do not use keyword research tools
2. Your page title and description are not unique
3. You are not active in social networks
4. You are not actively promoting the article
5. You do not use Google Search Console and other webmaster tools
6. You do not follow a consistent publishing schedule
7. Your content is not of high quality
8. You do not best practice on internal linking
9. You have a slow loading site
10. You are building links too fast
11. You are building low quality links
12. You are creating the page for SEO purposes only
13. You are using press releases to build links
14. You only target keywords with high traffic
15. You have separated SEO from your overall digital marketing strategy
16. You are not using the h1 tag correctly
17. You do not format your content
18. Your image is not optimized

Let's begin to come and understand each of these errors

# 1 Do not use keyword research tools

The fact that I think most of you are not right about it is the use of keyword research tools to find phrases and phrases and impose them around in the content of the keyword. friend. This is very wrong in SEO if you abuse it.

A keyword research tool like SEMRUSH (Paid) or Google Keywords tool will give you a signal about the queries people type into the Google Search Box.

A good practice is that you should include those keywords in the content of your article or page, you make the content more relevant to users and easier to understand for search engines. Instead of you just insisting on making one part of the search engine that you give away the appropriate job, making users feel happy, happy to receive content from you.

# 2 Page titles and descriptions are not unique

This is probably the biggest SEO error and although search engines like Google, Bing, etc. have repeatedly emphasized this issue, there are some webmasters who do not provide unique titles for per page.

The title of a page is a very important SEO signal. This is what search engines and users read first when they try to understand the content of the page.

If you don't give them a title that makes sense to both (crawl tools and users), you'll minimize your chances. rank high on Google (and other search engines) and in addition, you make visitors leave your site.

The most common errors are:

• There are many pages on the web with the same title
• Include site name in the page title (it is suitable for the homepage but it is not necessary for the rest of the pages)
• Make the page title longer than 65 characters

How to write SEO-friendly titles:

• Titles should be at most 60 characters.
• They are natural and provide an overview of what the page says.
• They should include keywords but not keyword stuffing.
• They must be unique for each site.
• Headlines are displayed in the SERPS (search engine results page), so they also need to attract users to get more clicks.

Not a search description (Meta description) only

Another SEO error is not to provide a unique search description for each page.

A good meta description can increase your clickthrough rate (CTR) and if your content provides what is promised in that description, it is more likely to increase your conversion rate.

The description must be unique (in the range of 150-160 characters), without keyword stuffing and engaging with users.

Suggested readings: My writing is for people beginner about SEO will help you better optimize your page title and description

# 3 Does not work on social networks

Social networking is one of the best and most effective ways to promote your new website or content.

It will be a big mistake if you are not active in at least one social networking platform.

Most SEO experts agree that social network signals are increasingly becoming a ranking factor, and besides the silent benefits for SEO, social networking is also a source to help you get more good access.

You are not an active person in all social networks or spend a lot of time operating on it with no purpose.

You need to find the platform that best suits your audience and try to build your power on it and strengthen your trust by following the best people in your field and sharing content. informative and helpful.

# 4 Not actively promoting the post

Don't expect it because you've written what you think is a good article, people will start sharing it on Facebook or tweeting about it.

This will not happen in the first place until you build a good audience (including hundreds of email subscribers, thousands of Facebook followers and dozens of twitter followers).

Promoting your work in the first place is not a mistake and it is not something you should be afraid of.

I know it will take a lot of your effort, good content, and perseverance to let others share what you do, but once you reach this point, everything else becomes easier.

How to promote your blog posts? There are many ways but the most effective are:

• Publish it on your social networking sites (both personal and business)
• Share it with your followers (both individuals and businesses)
• Use Facebook Ads to advertise your post to a predefined targeted audience (based on your visitor's profile)
• Write a summary of the post and publish it on LinkedIn (using the LinkedIn article publishing platform for long articles)
• Send it to your email list
• Link to it from older posts (internal links)
• Write a post on a highly reputable website and link to your article.

# 5 Do not use Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster tools

Your website is not registered with Google Search Console and Bing's webmaster tool is like driving with your eyes closed.

Both Google and Bing create webmaster tools as a way to help website owners learn more about their web properties.

There is absolutely no reason for you to explain why you shouldn't register your site with them.

There are many benefits to doing this and the process is quite simple and even a beginner can do it.

Instead of predicting what you do may be wrong and you do not receive a lot of traffic from search engines, register for those administration tools and receive feedback and notifications about the status of your website.

# 6 Not following a consistent publishing schedule

It would be good if you publish new content daily, once a day or once a week; What is more important is having a consistent publishing schedule.

Decide in advance the number of times you plan to publish new content (and when) and stick to it

What I usually do to make sure I don't miss my plan is to prepare a few blog posts in advance so I have a week to 10 days to get time and create new content.

Consistency has an SEO value and it brings more traffic.

This is also something I can not do on this website vietnetgroup.vn because there are many reasons. But the client's project websites, our team has a content plan for a clear schedule. And through that we realize the progress of the project.

# 7 Content not of high quality

The latest trend in SEO is about authority (Authority) and trust (trust).

Your goal is to build trust between your website and users and authority between your site for search engines.

One of the ways (it's not the only way) to build authority is to constantly publish high quality content.

It has a huge SEO bug that is focusing on other things but forgetting the importance of the content.

Instead of trying to have multiple articles published, try to build authority and trust through the quality of your content. It will bring a lot of benefits, not just a high rankings.

What is authoritative content? The content has the following characteristics:

• Information and useful to users
• Exactly
• Deep
• Analysis
• Unbiased

# 8 Do not practice good on internal linking

Linking your pages together is necessary for three reasons:

1. Help search engines discover more pages from your site
2. Linking to internal pages is a signal to search engines that this page is important to your site
3. Help users learn more about a topic they care about.

Most website owners do not want to create internal links because they think it is a waste of time or because they do not know the internal links are good for SEO.

What is internal linking?

Internal linking is when you link from one page to another on the same website.

Internal links are great for SEO because they allow you to create your own small web by linking your pages together. This helps search engines discover or revisit pages from your site and also provides additional information to users on a particular topic.

The most common errors many webmasters make with internal linking are:

• Do not use internal links at all
• Using too many internal links
• Do not use descriptive anchor text when linking to another page

Best practices for internal links are:

Google has repeatedly mentioned that webmasters should pay attention to internal links because it helps them navigate a website better.

• Create link descriptions and avoid using anchor text anchor like "here", "click here", or other words that do not help Google and users understand what the link page is about.
• Do not use pointless tags - this is a bad practice of internal links (Read this: Categories and Tags in WordPress)
• When possible, add internal links in the main text of the page (and not in the sidebar)
• Do not always use keywords in anchor text but use natural text in your content.
• Don't just link new pages to older pages but you need to go back and link old pages to new ones. I know this is difficult but you have to add this task in your work schedule.
• Make sure the pages you want to rank higher in SERPS have the most internal links. You can see it in the report at the link section in Google Search Console.
• Set goals for 2-10 internal links on each page (depending on the length and type of content).

# 9 The web site has slow loading speed

It is really a huge mistake if you do not take advantage of page load speed as a ranking factor. If there's one factor we know for sure that it greatly affects your ranking position, this is the speed of the page.

Google and Bing want to make the web faster and they are doing everything they can to do this.

From my experience talking to customers about trying to improve website load time is not the easiest thing to do but it is a big mistake to ignore it.

A faster site will bring in more traffic (due to higher rankings), which will generate more sales and more page views.

If you're running ads on your site (like AdSense), a faster site will also generate more ad clicks and revenue.

How to improve your website loading time?

Basically you have 2 options. The first way is to hire this task to a professional team and let them find the optimal path for the file size, the system and the other way is to do it themselves.

For the first option, you can hire a website development unit.

For the second solution, you can start by analyzing your website through the Google PageSpeed ​​Insights service and following their instructions.

If you are using the Website on WordPress platform, you can read the tutorial: How to optimize WordPress website speed this mine.

# 10 Building links coming so fast

I'm not a fan of the term "link building".

However, the reality is so. Whether you call it link building or Offpage SEO, it's one of the most important SEO processes, if you want to achieve high rankings.

When building links avoid making these SEO errors:

1. Do not build too many links too fast. The whole process needs to be natural and not naturally a 3 month site has dozens of links pointing to it. Go slow and steady.
2. Do not use link keywords in anchor text. Previously, anchor text links with exact keywords were important for rankings, but now if you do repetitive keyword presses on text anchors, you can be penalized.
3. Do not direct all your links to the homepage. Diversification is a better practice.
4. Do not buy or exchange links with other bloggers and do not participate in any affiliate program (free or paid).

If link building is a new concept to you, read my previous tutorial: What are backlinks

# 11 Link building is low quality

If you ask anyone not active in the SEO industry a question: "What is SEO", Most likely they will tell you:

• You need to create a page
• Add the keywords you want to rate
• Build links to those pages.

While this has been a popular SEO tactic in the past, it's not the way to get a page at the top of Google today.

The problem with using such techniques is that Google no longer forgives link building with no value other than taking the number of links pointing to.

Google's updated quality guidelines also state that any type of link built for this purpose is contrary to their guidelines and may result in penalties.

Specifically they talk about:

• Post with multiple text links containing many keywords
• Let guest post rampant on article category
• Bookmarking website links (There is a list of linked websites)
• Comment forum with links for optimization purposes (in post or signature)
• Paid advertising or advertising
• Cross linking or link exchange

Does this mean that link building is dead? Absolutely not. Google is the first search engine to come up with the idea that a link is a trusted "vote" and sites with the highest number of links will rank better than sites with less links; And this works very well for them for many years.

They actually did some testing to get rid of the fact that links were an important ranking factor but they concluded that the quality of the better results would be considered.

Besides Google, Yandex also started using links as part of their ranking algorithm. So does Bing and Yahoo.

So how do you build important links without hassle?

First, you need to ensure that your website and content are of good quality and professional.

Good, trusted websites are not affiliated with any website so before trying to find link building opportunities, make sure you are proud of your website and content.

Second, brand your personal social network. When you sign up and want to be able to approve your post on major websites, one of the things they look at is your social media profile.

You are more likely to be accepted if you operate on a social network with a good following instead of a poor social presence.

Third, create connections with people who can help you get that post. It is easier if you are recommended by someone who has published the content on that page than it is applied alone.

Fourth, you need to display your published content writing templates on other pages (next to your blog). If you want to publish your content on good websites, you'll have to show them examples of your work published on other websites.

# 12 Create pages with only one SEO purpose

Websites that have more pages in the index (indexed) rank higher than sites with fewer pages, right? Unnecessary.

Sites with many quality pages that are indexed will rank higher.

Pages with thin content, duplicate content or repetitive content do not add value to the site, they actually harm the SEO performance of the entire site.

If you are targeting getting as many pages indexed in Google, you may have to stop and modify SEO strategy mine.

In some websites, categories, archives, tags and pages with no unique content should be set to "noindex".

This will most likely reduce the number of pages that are indexed but it is a more optimal approach and will help your site in the long run.

Instead of trying to copy your pages, focus on creating pages with valuable content for more ranking opportunities.

# 13 Use press releases to build links

I did not mention the press release above, because I wanted to make it more noticeable with the number 13.

Some people still believe that adding links to press releases and distributing them through different channels helps SEO.

This is a bad tactic to avoid. Google with the latest Panda version wants to convey that message Press releases do not help SEO and they did it in the most obvious way.

Should you stop using press releases? Absolutely not, there are benefits to using press releases as an advertising channel, but you need to ensure that any links in the press release are "nofollow".

# 14 Target high-traffic keywords only

The first thing that much SEO expert Do when trying to optimize a website is keyword research. The wider the better.

The mistake they are making is that they only consider keywords that get a lot of searches because they believe that this way they will get more traffic.

Keywords with high traffic are highly competitive and if you start right now (or have a relatively new website), you will never get ranked for those keywords, at least in this short amount of time.

Maybe I'm exaggerating to give you an idea of ​​how difficult it is to get high-traffic keywords with a ‘normal” website.

What should you do instead?

There is a lot of traffic easier when you target long keywords.

Keywords as long as their names imply that search queries have more than 2+ words. For example, this is a high-traffic keyword learn SEO and a long keyword Learn SEO for beginners.

To use this technique, you need to know how to find long keywords, but it is definitely a well-functioning method and can generate traffic for all types of websites.

# 15 Separate SEO from overall digital marketing strategy

For SEO to succeed today, you need to do more than just SEO. SEO needs the help of social networking, content marketing, mobile marketing and all the other tools available in a digital marketing set (Digital marketing).

If your strategy is to focus solely on SEO, you won't go long.

Need to go beyond SEO and create a digital marketing strategy instead of just an SEO strategy.

Use the SEO techniques traditional to optimize your site and content but for advertising purposes, think of external campaigns and don't be afraid to try everything.

Don't try to think of ways to get more links but think of ways to get more traffic and natural links will increase accordingly.

# 16 Do not use the card

exactly

This is a bit technical but easy to understand. When Google's crawler is reading a web page, it uses several techniques to interpret the content of a page.

The Title tag as I mentioned is a great signal, H1 tag also.

The mistake that many websites make is that in a given page, they use more than one H1 tag.

This may be because the website theme is not SEO optimized or programmed well, but the bottom line is that this is confusing for search engine bots.

The easiest way to check if your website has this problem, visit a page on your site and select VIEWSOURCE from the browser menu.

This will show you the HTML of the page and then you can search in H1 using the FIND menu.

If there are more than 2 opening times of H1 card (

), this means you have a problem.

In case you have more H1 tags and don't know how to fix it, you can ask a programmer to make this change for you.

# 17 Do not format content

This is also a fairly common error when you do not pay attention to the format of the content beautifully using the title (large font size), list format, use italic, bold ...

This is not only bad for user experience but also something that search engines can understand and if this is a repeat phenomenon, it will lead to a loss of quality of the site.

When you publish text on a web page, don't just paste the text (even if it's unique and original) on the page, but try to make the page look good by using headings (H2, H3), Bold and italic to help users read and interact with the page.

Many people think that this is not important because Google cannot view each page individually but it is also important for them.

In a Google article published in 2011 talking about Build high quality websites, they mentioned that presentation style, quality control and editing were an important factor when trying to distinguish between high and low quality websites.

# 18 Do not optimize images for SEO

Images make pages more engaging to read and share.

Common errors associated with the use of images are:

• Use images with too large file size - this makes the web page load slower, especially on mobile devices (not to mention the bandwidth required to download large images on mobile devices).
• Using too many images - Unless you are a fashion news website, using too many unnecessary images will make the site overloaded, confusing the user.
• Do not use ALT text - ALT tags help search engines understand what the image is about and do not use alt text that makes their job much harder.

Best image SEO practices

Optimize your image file size before publishing. Nếu bạn có một hình ảnh lớn (tức là 2400 × 1200) thì hãy suy nghĩ trước khi xuất bản nó.

Sử dụng bất kỳ phần mềm chỉnh sửa ảnh nào để cắt hình ảnh thành kích thước hợp lý, tức là 800 × 600, sau đó lưu file ảnh đó cho web, để kích thước tệp được tối ưu hóa.

Bất kỳ phần mềm chỉnh sửa ảnh hiện đại nào như photoshop hoặc pixelmator đều có nhiều tùy chọn để giảm thiểu kích thước tệp hình ảnh mà không làm giảm chất lượng.

Nếu bạn cần sử dụng nhiều hình ảnh trên một trang, đừng thêm chúng với kích thước đầy đủ nhưng sử dụng hình thu nhỏ để hiển thị các phiên bản hình ảnh nhỏ hơn và nếu người dùng muốn thấy phiên bản lớn nhất, họ có thể nhấp vào hình thu nhỏ.

Trước khi thêm hình ảnh vào trang, hãy đảm bảo rằng bạn sử dụng văn bản ALT để mô tả.

Văn bản thay thế không cần phải phân tách bằng dấu ‘-‘ nhưng bạn có thể sử dụng văn bản thuần túy. Để làm cho văn bản ALT của bạn được tối ưu hóa SEO hơn, hãy đảm bảo nó bao gồm một số từ khóa chính của bạn nhưng không nhồi từ khóa.

Thảm khảo thêm bài viết của tôi trước đây nói kỹ về cách tối ưu hình ảnh

Còn nhiều lỗi SEO hơn nữa

Đây là những lỗi SEO hàng đầu mà mọi người mắc phải nhiều lần.

Điểm mấu chốt là hầu hết chúng đều rất dễ tránh. Tất cả bạn phải làm là đi qua danh sách và thực hiện các việc sửa cần thiết.

Những lỗi SEO nào ở trên là phổ biến nhất? Còn lỗi SEO nào thường gặp bị thiếu trong danh sách tôi kể ở trên không? Hãy giúp tôi bổ sung nội dung này.