Top 14 Common SEO Mistakes To Avoid In 2023

1. Slow Website Speed

When visitors attempt to access material on your page, a slow site speed may discourage them. The SEO issue of slow site speed would inevitably cost you valuable SEO traffic. It is essentially useless to spend time and effort driving traffic from SERPs if the page loads slowly.

Page Load Time

This measures how long it takes for your page to fully load and render after the browser delivers the message to the server. Your SEO company can concentrate on the following elements to gauge page load time:

The first one of the metrics is monitored in the performance part of a Google Chrome report. It counts the number of seconds that pass after a user navigates to your page until your browser renders the first piece of Document Object Model content.

Interaction Duration

The Time to Interactive metric measures the speed at which a website loads. TTI, then, is a measurement of how long it takes a page to become fully interactive. On the basis of information from the HTTP archive, the TTI score is compiled. Your SEO agency can use this score to improve interaction duration.

Time To First Byte

The interval of time between sending a request to a server and having the first data byte delivered to the browser.

Your SEO services will run your website through Google PageSpeed Insights to evaluate its performance and learn more about how quickly your site loads.

Several factors could cause a delay in the time it takes for your page to load, including:

• Image Format and Size: The SEO company you hire knows the use of photo editing software and image formats like JPEG XR, JPEG 2000, and WebP, they may reduce the bandwidth consumed by photographs by setting the image size to 72dpi.
• Redirects: If certain redirects cannot be avoided, your SEO specialist will correct them and speed up serving. Complete a site audit to identify all internal URLs that are the source of the redirection, eliminate SEO problems, and fix them.
• JavaScript and CSS: To reduce the size and speed up loading, your SEO services will compress CSS code and JavaScript by giving variables shorter names.

2. Google My Business Verification Code Error

It's rather typical to experience problems with the confirmation PIN you obtain for your Google My Business account as this is a common SEO problem. 

Try switching your "private" profile to "public." If this does not work it is recommended to request a new PIN. After you modify your NAP (Name, Address, and Phone Number) information, the issue can occur. 

Now the question is how to fix SEO pitfalls.

Image Reference—How To Fix SEO Pitfalls?

Make sure you hire an SEO consultant that can mention all contact details consistently with your listing to prevent this. 

Your SEO services will frequently check SEO errors to target location-specific web pages for their content.

3. Bad or Fake Google Reviews

There will be both favorable and bad reviews of a product or service, therefore one should anticipate both while evaluating SEO mistakes. The total amount of reviews, however, boosts your company's social proof and influences localized search ranking elements. 

As per SEO services having just good reviews makes your website appear very suspicious, even though they help your website's trustworthiness. Several customers voicing their displeasure with your website at the same time may potentially discourage visitors and cause an SEO issue. 

You can use unfavorable evaluations to strengthen your bonds with your clients, better understand your audience, and attract new clients with the assistance of your SEO company. 

Your website will get more credibility if you post on social media about different types of SEO problems encountered and the solutions implemented.

Additionally, you can encourage individuals to publish evaluations about your services on social media and industry-specific review websites. Besides, your SEO company proposes that you can readily answer their inquiries to come across as a sincere person.

4. Plagiarized Content

Content that is identical to or similar to some other content piece on your website is referred to as duplicate content. Even while duplicate material is not punished by Google, it is quite likely to have technical SEO issues and an impact on your website rank. 

As per SEO services search engines rarely display identical versions of two pieces of material in the SERPs, they opt for the one that the readers find more pertinent.

Your SEO agency will prioritize content as it is the king for websites, having original content that enables audiences to learn all there is to know about your goods or services will assist you to emerge as a pioneer in the industry. 

To correct this SEO issue, make sure that no material on your website has already been published elsewhere before doing so. For instance, you can look for copies of your webpage on the internet using tools like Copyscape, to get rid of SEO mistakes and duplicate content.

5. Discarding Location-Specific Pages

A Google Report indicates that searches containing "near me" and location-specific keywords have increased, particularly among mobile users. 

In addition, 76% of consumers who use their mobile devices to look for local businesses do so within a day or so, and 28% of those searches end in a purchase.

As per SEO services, the number of mobile consumers has grown, making local presence crucial for many firms. High-quality, location-specific, or regionally optimized content is a crucial part of both global and local SEO.

Your position in the local search results ought to be a lot more approachable if people can recognize your brand as having a local presence. Having properly optimized, location-specific, unique pages will help you enhance your rating in local SERPs and potentially rectify this SEO mistake. When you have a single website, precise location signals are inevitable.

6. Outdated Content On Your Website

Your SEO services will point out that your website's outdated content may reduce its authority. For a given query, there are many search results on the SERP, but not all of them are pertinent to the readers. 

Your website will be filtered out by the search engine if it determines if your content is no longer relevant or up to date. 

A skilled SEO consultant knows indexing and crawling sites that are irrelevant will be a waste of your site's crawl quota. Your website's traffic may even suffer as a result because such pages may see a sharp increase in bounce rates.

Make sure the data you upload contains relevant and high-quality information to address this SEO problem. Your SEO company will ensure that you provide the most relevant, well-optimized material possible to search engines.

7. Missing Alternative Texts And Images

SEO services concentrate on alt tags, also known as alternative tags, which are HTML characteristics of photographs that aid in the content description. Alt tags should be fixed in terms of on-page SEO issues. 

There are times when the image element of your website renders poorly because the filename, file location, or extension was incorrect which is among 5 common SEO pitfalls. 

In these situations, the image's alt tag will indicate its contents and how it will be used on the page. Additionally, it strengthens the target keyword by facilitating crawlers' understanding of the content on the page. 

Common SEO mistakes include missing or broken alt tags.

Alt tags are quite easy to use for your SEO agency. Identify the image component in your HTML code and give it an alt tag. Here is an illustration of one such image source:

Images with the src="image.jpg" with the alt and title "image tooltip"

If you have a WordPress blog, you can easily add them to your photographs.

8. Skipped Mobile Optimization

Several users use mobile devices instead of PCs because they live in a mobile-first society today and your SEO company will notify you about this fact. Given that mobile-friendly websites account for more than half of Google's search results, there are several benefits to having them. 

At the same time, if your page is not mobile-friendly due to common SEO problems, you will probably lose visitors. 

Your website is also lacking the most cutting-edge forms of design if you haven't used this feature.

You can fix SEO problems and rank higher on SERPs by having a mobile-friendly website. A website that is optimized for mobile devices has the most innovative design. The website will fully restructure itself for different devices due to mobile optimization. When your SEO company optimizes your site for mobile, both design structure and website speed are enhanced.

SEO services use the mobile-friendly test tool to see whether or not your page is mobile-friendly. If you discover that your website is not mobile-friendly, do the following steps: 

• Pick a reputable web host
• Accelerate the loading of your site
• Activate Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
• Rebuild your pop-up windows for mobile

9. Broken Links

SEO services believe that a 404 error creates a negative first impression when consumers who have found your website through a search engine do so. Broken links on your site will even reduce the number of times Google bots will crawl your web page in a particular period of time or your crawl budget. 

Some of your crucial pages won't be indexed or crawled if search bots meet numerous broken links due to an SEO issue and go on to other websites. Additionally, SEO services know this harms the domain authority of your page.

Your SEO consultant may find out which pages on your site are returning 404 errors by using Google Search Console's crawl stats report.

Even broken links can be found using Ahrefs. You can use Ahrefs to discover broken links by following the path shown below:

Site Explorer > yourdomain.com > Pages > Best by Links > Add an HTTP response filter for "404 not found"

To boost your SEO, the damaged web pages should be fixed as soon as possible. How to fix an SEO issue can be a challenge, you can modify or recreate the page's content to address broken links.

Use 301 redirects to point visitors to information that is similar to your website.

You can redirect visitors to the website for a fast remedy regarding external links. You can simply delete the domain or substitute another source if it is no longer useful.

10. Inactive Contact Form

Only 49% of the 1.5 million users who see a form complete it, as per a recent study. Furthermore, just 16% of those watchers finish it. There are a number of factors that can prevent contact forms from converting, including:

• A surplus of form fields
• Unreadable or inoperative submit button
• The dropdowns either have too few or several selections
• Make your contact form interesting to fill out to maximize its effectiveness. Reduce the number of form fields you offer to avoid another SEO issue that will increase conversions.
• Ensure that your contact form is straightforward and only requires five fields.
• Aim to align the form.
• Use a memorable CTA that stands out.
• Test your form's design with A/B comparisons for elements like position, color, size, mandatory fields, etc.
• Google has an autocomplete plugin that can be used to enable auto-fill for your form.
• Make sure your form is mobile-optimized.
• Avoid using CAPTCHA

11. Unindexed Pages

An SEO specialist can explain that indexing entails adding your websites to Google's list of searchable web pages. What Google's bots do not crawl cannot be ranked which means there are technical SEO issues. Your pages may not be indexed for a number of good reasons, including:

• 404 Not Found
• Where your sites contain meta tags with the source code META NAME=" ROBOTS" CONTENT=" NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW">, those instances are highlighted. won't be indexed.
• You don't have an updated sitemap
• Duplicate content
• Poor standing or power

Google Search Console is the finest tool for resolving Google indexing issues. You may check whether a URL is indexed when you send a URL inspection. There may be a possibility that there is an SEO issue. 

You may mimic how SEO services use search engine bots to scan your website with the Deepcrawl tool, a thorough website crawler often used across industries. Without compromising website performance, your digital marketing service provider can delve deep and obtain an exhaustive report of each URL.

Enabling pages in the robots.txt file. After completing this, give Google bots some time to crawl your pages once more. 

Use the Screaming Frog tool to have "Googlebot," "Slurp," "Bingbot," "DuckDuckBot," "Baiduspider," or "YandexBot" crawl your website. Your SEO services understand and can leverage these tools better to fix your SEO mistakes. 

Verify that any page that is currently not included in the index can be included by looking at the "Indexability" column.

Make sure your XML sitemaps are optimized so they don't contain too many broken or misdirected pages.

12. Text To HTML

Another SEO error that won't receive much attention is this one because it has more to do with technical SEO. Despite the fact that the content on your website is presented in text form, it is the HTML code—which includes headings, links, JavaScript, graphics, and other elements—that powers it. 

From what the search engine learns on the same website, text to HTML compares the proportion of textual information to that of the HTML code.

An ideal text-to-HTML ratio, according to an SEO specialist, is between 25 and 70%. Because Google also utilizes this statistic to determine if a web page is relevant, a low text-to-HTML ratio is a sign that your website has serious on-page technical SEO issues.

Low ratios could mean:

• Websites that take a long time to load because of too much code
• Hidden text is a search engine robot red flag
• Flash, inline style, and JavaScript usage in excess

Your SEO services will ensure that an HTML-heavy webpage can negatively impact loading times and user experience, hence a low text-to-HTML ratio is a crucial indicator to enhance page load speeds. 

To correct this SEO problem, add pertinent on-page text when required, transfer inline scripts to different files, and get rid of extra code. To keep the content of your webpage as little as possible, your SEO company utilizes plain text whenever possible.

13. Messy Never-Ending URLs

A web address that identifies the whereabouts of a web page in the digital space is known as a URL or universal resource locator. 

To avoid Google truncation or for URLs to display properly across all browsers, your SEO company will prefer URLs no longer than 2083 characters, or 512 pixels.

By enhancing user experience and increasing search exposure, URLs can help SEO.

The following are some key elements that reduce the readability of your URLs and discourage your audience from clicking on your link:

• Overuse of connections or stoppers
• Including space>, %, and # special characters
• Using HTTP rather than HTTPS
• Including more directories in your URLs beyond two
• Your links on social platforms may be more clickable if they have readable URLs.
• Longer URLs tend to rank lower than shorter ones, which promotes direct traffic.
• The safe variant of HTTP is called HTTPS (HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure). This indicates that data on a domain is encrypted, greatly enhancing security.
• URLs must have pertinent keywords.
• When separating terms in the URL, use hyphens instead of spaces.
• The URL's characters have to be lowercase.

14. Inappropriate Meta Tags And Description Lengths

The title of a website page is specified by the HTML element known as the meta title, sometimes known as the title tag. The meta description is a tag that gives a brief overview of the subject matter of your website. These are shown for each result on the SERP.

Meta Title

The best way to write a meta title is to use the following format: primary keyword, secondary keyword, and brand name.

The ideal meta title length is between 50 and 60 characters, depending on the character width. Anything above this character limit can lead to an SEO issue.

Meta titles are visible not only on the SERPs but also on the internet browser and on media platforms.

Meta Description

A meta description should be between 50 and 160 characters in length. Although meta descriptions don't directly become an SEO problem, they do have an impact on CTR and subsequent ranks. 

In other terms, meta descriptions may have an indirect effect on SEO.

Among the issues with meta descriptions are:

• Redundant meta descriptions
• Long meta descriptions that miss intended keywords
• Filling out your meta description with alphanumeric characters

In your meta description, use unambiguous CTAs. To prevent the loss of keywords due to Google truncation, use your chosen keywords and make sure the meta description and title tags are within the recommended length.

Avoid stuffing title tags with SEO keywords. Your title tag's keywords should be separated by pipes (or vertical bars). Make sure your titles make sense to the audience and aren't just a list of meaningless keywords.

The initial text found on your website may be registered by social sharing services even if you don't use the meta description tag, which might not improve the user experience. Additionally, ensure that all of your title tags and meta descriptions are distinct.