SEO is crucial for getting your website ranking high in search engine results, and you need a campaign that is extensive to get the best results. However, even the finest SEO campaign can’t survive leaving mistakes like we outline below unchecked.
If you’re not seeing the results you think you should be from your SEO campaign, here are five of the most common and complex SEO problems, and how you can fix them to get back on track.
1. Having The Same Keywords On Multiple Pages, Causing Competition With Their Rankings
When your content is too similar across many pages of your site, you tend to use the same keywords as targets. This results in your own pages competing for the same keyword rankings, effectively harming the chances of any of those pages ranking at all.
This is probably the most complex issue, and perhaps the most urgent as well. Use a keyword mapping tool to help you fix your website’s content, whether it’s changing the targeted keywords for each page or even consolidating similar pages into one.
Your business already competes with others in your niche for rankings – don’t compete against yourself as well!
2. Revamp The Internal Linking Structure Of Your Site
Many of us tend to focus on the basics of internal linking in regards to having our website be functional and simple to navigate, with clear links back to the homepage and access to links that lead to any other page on the site from the current page.
For improving your SEO, however, you need to go deeper. You cannot just focus on your core pages, only putting internal links on these pages and ignoring others. Your ‘extra’ pages need to be worked on too; they provide ample opportunities for increasing your number of internal links. If you don’t have many supplementary pages, then create them – just ensure they provide value to users.
3. A Page Is Incorrectly Structured For The Topic
Google puts a large emphasis on user experience, which means that pages are also ranked on how they present certain content to users. Writing a long article about a topic and including a huge amount of backlinks isn’t going to get you ranking higher, for example. It’s about providing users with quality, useful information in the correct structure.
If you’re unsure of how to change the layout of your content, look at your competitors and see what they are doing differently to rank higher, then emulate them. Google rewards those pages who give visitors the answers to their queries in concise, easy to read formats. It’s time to review the structures of each of your pages that are ranking poorly, and see if there are things your competitors are doing that you aren’t.
4. Slow Page Speeds, Particularly For Mobiles
Google uses the speed your page loads as one of their ranking factors, and has done for a fair amount of time. This is one of the most common things that people forget when performing SEO on their pages – if the page takes too long to load, you won’t just rank lower, you’ll lose many visitors who won’t return to your site!
With a majority of people searching on mobile devices, this is one area you just can’t afford to ignore. Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool is great to get an overview of whether a page’s ranking is being affected by its speed, then perform the most suited optimisation to increase the loading time.
5. Page Indexation Issues
Google’s bots crawl through websites, gathering information to determine each page’s ranking. If you haven’t correctly indexed your pages, however, then they won’t even be noticed by Google’s bots. This means no ranking at all!
Using the Google Search Console will help you identify any issues with your indexing. Look in the Error column to see what is causing the problem – it could be as simple as a 404 error or a ‘noindex’ tag. If it is this tag, you can manually remove it and then wait for the bots to recrawl the page again. The same goes for a 404 error; fix this and then give it a little time for the bots to crawl through.
SEO Is A Vital Part Of Digital Marketing Success
If you would rather leave your SEO in the hands of experts, then you need MacZin Digital Marketing. We perform extensive, thorough site audits to identify what is harming your website’s ranking, and fully optimise your pages for success.
For a no-obligation discussion about your website and what you need assistance with, use the contact form below or email us now.
