Common SEO Mistakes To Avoid in 2024

Throughout my professional journey, I have noticed that all businesses want to make a strong online brand presence to stay ahead in today’s digital era. 

Around 68% of online user experiences start with search engines. Also, above 92.96% of worldwide traffic comes from Google Search, Google Maps and Google Images. Also, reports show that SEO drives over 1,000%+ more traffic than organic social media. All these numbers give us a clear statement of how much SEO is important for today’s business. SEO is the most genuine and organic way to increase visibility and improve rankings.

Top SEO Mistakes to Avoid in 2024

Missing the proper optimization and ignoring the technical issues can negatively impact your website's search engine results. In this blog, I'll list the critical SEO mistakes you should avoid. It is based on my experience and SEO knowledge gained over the past years. You can use this list as a starting point if you're looking to do SEO for any website. As always, don’t just go by my list since this list is prepared purely based on my SEO observations, understanding and  

Lack of Quality Content

I would say that the lack of quality content on the website is the first and foremost mistake when it comes to SEO. By focusing on unique, high-quality content that shows genuine expertise, you not only improve your site's visibility but also build credibility with your audience. I strongly recommend avoiding duplicate content on websites. Adhering to user-engaging and informative content that is built purely for the users can significantly enhance your site's SEO performance.  Check whether your content aligns with E-E-A-T protocols to prove the experience, expertise, authority and trust factors of the content and the organisation. And, I have found that content plagiarism issues can ultimately reduce the visibility of your web page on search engines. So, be cautious about publishing content with plagiarism issues, especially if the original material comes from sources outside your organisation, as it can pose risks.

Keyword Stuffing

Keyword stuffing is another common mistake made when businesses try to make their content SEO-friendly. Keep in mind that search engines catch unnatural placement of keywords. You cannot escape from its algorithm. It can easily view and find out keyword stuffing. Search engines can penalise your website in an attempt to manipulate the search engine rankings. Your site credibility will be lost. Also, not only search engines, readers even can easily find out awkward placement of keywords. And, they may leave your site without exploring. I recommend conducting thorough keyword research to find the right long-tail keywords to rank your site.

Lack of Mobile Optimisation

Reports show that mobile accounts generate above half of the web traffic worldwide. And, mobile devices alone generated over 58.67 % of global web traffic in the last quarter of 2023. So, if your website is still not mobile-optimised, you are making a great mistake. I consider it one of the major SEO mistakes to neglect the fact that users frequently access your content on mobile devices. To ensure an exceptional user experience, your content must be easily accessible across all formats. While it might require extra effort to ensure a smooth transition from desktop to mobile, the improvement in your rankings will be worth it.

Slow Website Speed

Have you felt frustrated waiting too long for a site to load? The same goes with your viewers who find your site slow. If the viewer feels your site is slow, your website traffic rate will simultaneously decrease. If your website takes too long to load, users are more prone to leaving the page. This will lead to reduced conversions and higher bounce rates. I suggest you figure out what factors are contributing to the slow loading of your site and take immediate action. Mitigate CSS and JavaScript files, enable browser caching, and switch website hosts.

Un-optimised Meta Tags

Meta tags, meta descriptions and alt texts are important metrics for ranking. The meta tag is what search engines such as Google display on their results page along with the meta description. Meta tags are crucial because they influence how your site is displayed in search engine results pages (SERPs) and determine how likely people are to click through to your website. Unoptimised meta tags can result in poor search engine rankings and reduced click-through rates, as they may fail to effectively convey the page’s content or attract user interest. I recommend you keep your meta title tags between 50-60 characters. Make sure it is incorporated with relevant keywords and describe the content.

Insufficient Internal Linking

The most frequent SEO issue is the lack of a thorough and organic link-building strategy. Internal links signal to search engines like Google that the pages on your website are important. This aids in faster ranking of your site. I must say that failing to incorporate both internal and external links can hinder search engine crawlers from discovering and indexing your content. This will ultimately degrade your website’s authority.

Lack of Local SEO

Usually, businesses forget to make their site local SEO optimised which turns out to be a big mistake. So, when you are developing SEO campaigns for your businesses, you must take advantage of localised SEO services to drive your brand recognition and visibility online. If you miss the implementation of the local SEO, your target audience may not find your page. Also, they may need to find out where they can get access to your services. So, I will suggest you implement local SEO strategies using relevant keywords.

Unorganised URL Slug

Hiding in plain sight is the most common technical SEO issue. A URL slug is considered as the last part of a URL. Moreover, it serves as the address for a particular page. Integrating lengthy or non-descriptive slugs confuses search engines. This makes it difficult to understand the content’s relevance while determining ranks. Do you know how to fix this problem? Simply create clear and descriptive slugs. And, try to match the URL slug with your target keyword. It will guide the search engine to quickly figure out what the web page is trying to rank for.

Technical SEO Issues

Adding too many on-page links is the biggest technical SEO mistake you will ever make. When you find that your site has over 100 on-page links that means it immediately needs a better structure. Low Text-to-HTML Ratio is another big mistake. Your website's text-to-HTML ratio may be out of balance, with excessive HTML code compared to the actual text. Search engines may view it as thin content when a web page contains more HTML than content. Here are some of the major technical SEO error issues that I always recommend to avoid while doing SEO for websites:

Broken links (404 Errors): Broken links or pages that render 404 errors can negatively impact search engine rankings. If there are proper alternatives for the wrong URLs, redirect them to the correct ones or remove outdated or irrelevant links to keep your site working well.
Missing or Misconfigured sitemaps: Make sure that the sitemap is formatted appropriately and is updated frequently to identify changes on your site. An incorrectly configured, outdated, or invalid sitemap may limit search engines' ability to effectively index your website. An XML sitemap helps search engines find and index the content that is relevant to your site.
Incorrect use of canonical tags: A web page or URL is identified uniquely by its canonical tags.  Incorrect canonical tags can lead to duplicate content issues or the wrong pages being indexed.
Crawlability issues:  Broken links, long server response times, restricted pages via robots.txt or no-index tags, and other issues may prevent search engines from properly indexing your website.
Mobile Usability Issues: The recent algorithm updates show that mobile-friendly is essential to support mobile-first indexing. Unresponsive design and poor mobile page speed can adversely affect your rankings.
SSL Certificate Issues:  The websites must be SSL certified to rank well on SERP.. SSL certificate issues, such as misconfigured or expired certificates, can affect rankings and result in security alerts.
Improper Use of Redirects: Redirections are usually done to help users and search engines navigate from old URLs to the right new ones. Too many or improper use of redirects can cause a loss of link equity or indexing issues.
Thin Content: Search engines might consider pages with thin content to be of low quality, and people may find them to be of little use.
Noindex Tags Misuse: Accidental usage of no-index tags can lead search engines not to index a page or a website. Make sure that your website does not misuse noindex tags.
Structured Data Errors: Improper usage of structured data can cause search engines to misinterpret, leading to a loss of ranking and visibility on the SERP.
Orphan Pages: Pages that have no links to other pages on your website are known as orphan pages, and search engines find it challenging to identify and index them. This may stop relevant content from showing up in search results.
Excessive Use of JavaScript: While JavaScript can enhance user experience, excessive or poorly implemented JavaScript can slow down your site and hinder search engine crawling.
Missing or Duplicate Meta Tags:  Missing or duplicate tags and meta tags that exceed the character limit can lead to reduced visibility in search results.
Unoptimized Images: Large, unoptimized images can slow down your site, affecting user experience and rankings. Adding compressed and properly sized images with suitable alt text is crucial in SEO.

Final Thoughts

While doing SEO for a website, you need to make sure that you follow the right strategies and algorithmic changes in Google. Avoid all the common SEO mistakes that I have discussed above. Each of the mistakes has an immediate solution. Finally, keep an eye on these common mistakes while optimising your website and fix them quickly. Avoid SEO mistakes to let your site flourish online and implement the right strategies to generate more quality leads for your business. You just need to get help from an SEO expert to guide you.

SpiderWorks, as a leading SEO company in Kerala can help you with the best SEO strategies that suit your business. Get in touch with us.

Also Read: 9 Reasons to Invest in SEO Services