Blogging Esque

Does it feel like you have put a lot of thought and time toward optimizing your website but the results are nowhere to be seen? That’s because you are probably making some of the most common technical SEO mistakes out there. Your SEO strategy shouldn’t be all about keyword research, blogging, and content optimization. All the technical elements need to be in place and, in order for that to happen, you’ll have to avoid the following mistakes before they ruin your traffic to the point of no return.

1. Your site loading speed is in dire need of improvement

Let’s kick things off with an interesting fact that every website owner should know – if your page loading speed is over 3 seconds, as much as 40% of users will leave your site and bring the traffic to your competitors. That’s right – even if you have the most stunning and aesthetically appealing website, and you manage to write persuasive web content, it will mean nothing if it turns out to be a slow loading one.

Since there are many ways that a slow loading website will detrimentally affect your business, you really need to work on ensuring your site runs at an optimal speed. Otherwise, it will lead to a loss of organic traffic on your blog, as well as unsatisfied users.

2. Not optimizing for mobile searches is one of the worst technical SEO mistakes you can make

These days, the majority of people browse the web on their mobile phones. In fact, smartphone searches have already exceeded desktop searches! With mobile users making a large portion of all users, you really can’t afford to make the mistake of not making your website mobile-friendly. After all, why would a person wait for your page to properly load when there are a bunch of your competitors who went above and beyond to make their websites convenient for mobile users?

So what can you do to optimize your website for mobile searches? You can work on having a responsive design, a fast loading time, a good font size and touch elements, as well as conciseness of your website. This way, you will have a responsive mobile site and won’t have to worry about losing precious organic traffic.

3. You don’t pay enough attention to local searches

What do you do when you want to find a bar in a neighborhood you have visited only once before? If all you know is the name of the bar, then you will open up Google Maps and try to find an address. So bear in mind that people will do the same when it comes to your local business. Local SEO has to be in place if you want your potential customers to find your business. Otherwise, you can work on organizing your business to boost your profits as much as you want, but it won’t mean a lot if your customers aren’t able to find you.

Which localization SEO strategy you will choose is completely dependent on your business. But some of the local SEO elements you should take into consideration include having a Google My Business account, producing local landing pages, introducing location and contact details on your social media accounts, etc. What’s for sure is that you will avoid one of the worst technical SEO mistakes by focusing on local searches, which will be enough for you to see an increase in local traffic.

4. You allow search engines to index the wrong pages

This is probably one of the most detrimental SEO mistakes you can make! If you forget to block robots.txt in the dev environment, bots will have complete access to your website, including all of its pages and test pages. And if you allow this to happen, you can expect to see three major consequences.

For starters, search engines will index non-optimized and incomplete pages that weren’t ready to go live just yet. Then, you can expect the search engines to treat your completed pages as the duplicates of the test pages. And thirdly, you can rest assured that the new page won’t rank well because it is considered to be a duplicate. So if you happen to be redesigning your website, don’t forget to set the robot.txt directives. Otherwise, the problems will start piling up one by one.

5. Don’t make the mistake of forgetting to unblock search engines for crawlers

When it comes to related technical mistakes in SEO, this one relates closely to the previous one. Allowing crawlers to index the wrong pages is bad – but so is forgetting to allow them to index the right ones. Usually, the developers will block robots from crawlers when the website is in the development stage. This is done as a precaution so that the above-mentioned scenario doesn’t happen. But once your website goes live, you shouldn’t forget to unblock search engines for crawlers.

If you do forget, your pages will not be ranked properly and they might not even be indexed at all. That means you will have little organic traffic, and we all know the importance of organic traffic by now. Avoid the risk of being completely invisible for crawlers and users and set crawl directives for search engines.

Overview of the worst technical SEO mistakes you can make 

• Having a slow-loading website
• Not focusing on having a mobile-friendly website
• Ignoring local searches
• Letting search engines to index test pages
• Not indexing the right pages

Bear in mind that there are many other technical SEO mistakes one can make. These are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to all the technical things that could go wrong. That’s why you can’t focus all of your efforts on keywords and blogs – you need to ensure your overall SEO strategy is working like a well-oiled machine. And for that to happen, you will have to pay attention to the technical aspect, as well. Think of this article as your starting point when it comes to learning all about SEO mistakes and how to avoid them.