You may have done everything right when it comes to optimizing your website but there can be some areas where you may go wrong. We are talking about some unintentional SEO mistakes that can hurt your website badly. These mistakes can add you in bad books of Google and penalize your website heavily.
Let’s have a look at them:
1) Purchasing links
Beware of websites that promise buying links to quickly boost your website’s ranking. Having absolutely worthless backlinks are not helpful and in fact, are dangerous to your positioning. Google analyzes the relevance of backlinks and if any questionable backlinks direct to your home, it may penalize you.
Including backlinks in another language than your website is also technically counted against you. It’s better to focus on 100% natural backlinks.
2) Keyword stuffing
This is one of the important aspects and we have discussed about this over time and again. Keyword Stuffing means using a keyword over and over again in the content to get a better ranking in search engine result. When the whole content is filled with keyword all over that it becomes so unnatural to read, it is called keyword stuffing. Google is very strict about keyword stuffing and if you just post content to stuff it with keyword all over the text, the search engine giant can penalize you.
3) Internal Linking to 404s
Internal linking is undoubtedly a good practice to improve SEO. On other hand, it can hurt you when not done in the right manner. For example, you place internal links of articles few years back and now those articles got deleted. But, when users click on them, they will be directed to 404 error page. This could create problem for you. Google will take it seriously as the users are not getting the information they are looking for. And, you are even misguiding them due to clicking 404s. So, it is essential to avoid this mistake.
4) Not producing enough content
A website content that sounds shallow, search engines drop it in rankings. Pages like “Coming Soon” or “Under Construction” are treated as spam techniques. The aim should be to provide quality content at the regular intervals of time. Search engines love fresh content and a well-conducted content strategy helps you in distinguishing yourself from the crowd. The articles should be optimized and published on a regular basis.
5) Joining wrong link directories
Link directories were considered as an essential piece of campaign for a new website. It was considered essential to submit your blog to link directories to get a quick boost in search rankings. But, as anyone can submit their website, most link directories become just a repository for junk. This does not imply that all link directories are bad. When you are submitting your blog to a highly targeted link directory that is relevant to your business, you might get some benefit from it.
6) Broken links
Though it is difficult to keep an eye over broken links but still have to do that. Search engines on finding broken links; assume that you don’t care about user experience. If you find any broken links, make sure you create a permanent redirect.
7) Overuse of Anchor Text
Anchor text was considered as one of the easiest way to make Google understand the relevancy of your website but with time, it is essential to understand that its overuse can penalize you. Anchor text should be optimized correctly.
8) Overuse of affiliate links
Google is not opposed of affiliate websites but its overuse can harm you. You should use a trusted affiliate relationship provider and great a dedicated landing page for large affiliate providers. It is also essential to test such affiliate links over time and again to make sure that they are functioning properly.
So, these were the top SEO mistakes that webmasters make and get penalized by Google. If you have more recommendations to make, share them with us in the comments.