Top 10 things that can ruin your SEO and degrade your website rankings

Top 10 things that can ruin your SEO and degrade your website rankings

Toronto SEO Consultant
If you want your website to nail the Google rankings, your SEO has to be up to the mark. Even a slight mistake or negligence in your website SEO strategy can derail your website rankings. And if your website rankings get derailed due to poor SEO techniques, making a comeback will be a tough nut to crack for you.

This forces you to be meticulous while devising an SEO strategy for your website. And executing the devised strategy with perfection becomes even more important.

People usually tend to focus on Do’s of SEO while devising a strategy. Some of them are not aware of the Don’ts. As a result, they incorporate them too in the execution and thus create a mess for their websites.

SEO Factors that can ruin your website rankings

If you are here to find the SEO factors whose execution has the capability of ruining your online presence, you are at the right place. Below we list the SEO factors which by no means can incorporate into your website. Have a read.

1. Keyword Stuffing & Not Doing Correct Keyword Research: The more, the better! But not with keywords. Keyword stuffing is one of the worst things you can do with your website SEO. Overuse of keywords makes Google believe that your website is spam and don’t take a moment before penalizing the website.

The ideal density of keywords in your website is 1.5-2% of the total word count length. Anything more than that, yielding the desired results is going to be a tough nut to crack for you. Efficient use of keywords also becomes important to ensure you don’t mess with the same.

Using the right keywords demands accurate Keyword research from your side. Here are some tips & tools to research your keywords.

2. Poor Mobile Optimization: Most website owners often tend to ignore the mobile flexibility of their website. While most of the visitors to the website will be from a mobile device, poor mobile optimization can kill the chances of the website’s success.

As majority of your web visitors will be from a mobile device, poor mobile flexibility will simply turn them off. And this makes your website lose a large amount of traffic and thus giving Google a negative signal. Taking a mobile-friendly test is highly recommended. Also, if you are using WordPress, you can get a preview of your website for all 3 devices, desktop, mobile, and tablet.

3. Poor Content: You might feel that content has nothing to do with SEO. But Content is one of the most important aspects of ensuring a successful SEO campaign. After all, why would a user prefer to stay on your website if your content is not delivering him any value?

Good content is a thing that can make the user stay on your website. And the more the user will stay on your website, the less will be the bounce rate. And less the bounce rate, the more Google receives the positive signals. Thus, if you are designing a website, never compromise with unique, SEO-friendly, and of course, value-delivering content.

4. No Link-Building or Spamming: Link building not done or done too much mean the same. It’s about striking a balance. Numerous website owners ignore the backlink factor completely. After they make their website live, they never make efforts on inviting high-quality links, or guest posting. Ultimately, it soaks the success chances of the website to a great extent.

While a major class of website owners try to earn a large number of backlinks in a very short period. And how they do it? By spamming other websites. They practice the method of posting or commenting on other websites and thus including their website link in the same.

If you are spamming websites, your website deserves to be penalized. It’s just a matter of time before Google recognizes your technique and penalizes you in terms of website rankings. So, if you are really craving long-term results, avoid spamming at all.

5. URL Structure: Avoid going with the flat URL structure. It gives the search engine an ambiguity regarding the specification of the page. Rather than going with the nested URL structure is always advised to follow the best SEO practice.

For instance, www.site.com/page/ always gives the search engine an ambiguity which makes it treat every page of your website equal. While the nested URL architecture like www.site.com/page1/topic1 gives the search engine clarity about the importance of each page of your website. Search engines not getting enough clarity about the page importance might play a negative role in terms of the website rankings.

6. Over-Optimization: Anything in excess works like poison. The same goes for the optimization of your website. Remember to keep your website natural and don’t over-optimize it at all. Over-optimization will kill the natural beauty of your content and thus work against you. Common examples of overoptimization include an unnatural meta title with repetitive keywords or using non-relevant keywords for title & description or using more than one h1 tag.

Keep your website simple, easy to access, and ensure you don’t overoptimize.

7. Not Using Schema Markup Code: Schema Markup Code is the most underrated tool to enhance the SEO quality of a website. This powerful tool helps the search engine to deliver more specific results to the searcher. If the content you markup matches these “specific results”, the chance of your visibility increases.

The efficient use of the Schema Markup code guarantees success. Read our article to know how to use Schema Markup Code.

8. Bad Redirects: Firstly, what does redirect mean? When a user visits your website but is intentionally taken to the other website, it is termed as a redirect. Mostly when the website developer desires to make any major and time-taking change to the website, he redirects the visitors. So, how can it be bad?

Let’s assume a visitor visits your website with the hope of gaining some knowledge on “Latest SEO Courses”. But, as your website is under work, you redirect him to the website which is completely irrelevant. This implies he won’t get any knowledge about Latest SEO Courses there. This is a bad redirect. Ultimately, chances are less that he would visit your website again. So, how do you avoid it?

Whenever you redirect a visitor, ensure the website you are redirecting him to is completely relevant and delivers the values at the same level as your website does. This will make your website earn the trust of the visitor and he won’t hesitate to visit your website again.

9. Not Focusing on Title Tags & Meta Descriptions: Title Tags & Meta Descriptions are a couple of things that will be the first things users will notice before visiting your website. Thus, it becomes important for you to keep them unique, crisp, & specific.

A bad title tag or a poor meta description is capable of making things difficult for your website. These are the things that give the search engine a context of your website.

10. Not Focusing on Website Security: To make the searchers click your website, giving them assurance of the security has to be an aspect of your to-do list. And how do you give them the assurance of security? By using the “HTTPS” tag, and not the HTTP tag.

By no means, there should be a label “Not Secure” on the leftmost side of your website address. Thus, keep your website SSL certified. It will give both, the search engine, and the searcher a reason to trust your website.

These were some factors that might be your mistake if your website is not doing well enough. Read them out, analyze your website and if you figure out the prevailing issue on your website, work on the same to ensure some positive results.

You can also reach out to Pat’s Marketing, Toronto’s top SEO Consultant to figure out where your website lacks and thus provide you with the best guidance. Contact 888-488-7287 (toll-free) to connect with us to discuss about SEO challenges you are facing.