6 Common SEO Mistakes To Avoid 2020

Have you ever tried all of the known SEO strategies but your page isn’t still reaching the first page?

Well, you are not alone!

A lot of people are now aware of search engine optimization and its importance. So I’m not surprised about most of the people doing SEO on their own.

But, like the hype of SEO in the digital world, a lot failed to make their website rank up and end up disappointed.

So sorry about it.

I may not know you, but let me guess why are you reading this.

Yep, I know, you want to know the 6 common SEO mistakes to avoid in 2020. Because I am sensing that your site is still not at the peak of Google's directory despite working hard for its SEO, lol.

Okay, before I tell you my list, let me tell you first about search engine optimization and its importance.

What is SEO and its Importance?

SEO is very important for small businesses. SEO has been a crucial fundamental of digital marketing since day one. As I always say, your website is nothing if it cannot be seen by viewers and doing its purpose.

No matter how stunning your website’s interface and engaging your product descriptions and images, if it cannot be seen by your target market, it will not give you any benefit. Instead, all it can give you is more bills to pay.

Where do people go to search for something? Yellow pages? Radio announcements? TV commercials?

Nah! Maybe before when I was a baby but not anymore!

Based on an obvious observation, 80% of people look over the internet over the stuff that they want or like. They go to search engines like Google, Bing and Yandex and type in what they are looking for.

So, in order to potentially make those 80% your viewer or customer, you have to put your product on the internet.

Okay! It got you convinced and now you have your own page and indexed it to the search engines. But, in every industry, you have MILLIONS of competitors that are also selling products similar to what you sell or have blogs similar to your concept.

And google’s page can only show 10 URLs, so obviously it can’t fit you all to get noticed if being searched for a certain keyword. So, the only way to get noticed is to make your page reach page one of Google.

How do you do that?

That is where SEO goes in.

Hence the meaning behind the abbreviation, Search Engine Optimization is a type of digital marketing strategy in which a website has been optimized to make their page on top when being search by certain keywords.

Now that you’ve already known the importance of SEO, it’s time to tell you why a website isn’t reaching the top pages despite doing it.

6 Common SEO mistakes

If your webpage isn’t still reaching the first page, then YOU ARE DOING SEO WRONG! I’ve listed here my list of common SEO mistakes in 2020 and see if you are doing some or most of this.

Keyword Stuffing: The old school SEO trick.

Just because keywords are an important factor for SEO, doesn’t mean the more your content has it the merrier. Keyword stuffing was effective during the early times of Google. But as Google gets smarter, this medieval trick is already out.

Search engines created smart algorithms like Panda and Hummingbird in order to serve their users the best service. One of the algorithms made is to detect if the site is full of keywords that can affect the quality of the content.

Plagiarism

Some people might say “Why should I put an effort to create unique content if I can just copy and paste someone’s work?” Well, this is why.

Search engines are very strict when it comes to plagiarism. If a page is known to plagiarize there’s a horrible penalty that you’ll face. Google’s pirate is the algorithm that is responsible for detecting copyright infringements.

Google will automatically remove your indexed URL if that page of yours were proven to be someone else’s work.

Low-Quality Link Building

Bloggers and companies that try to buy links, use link baits and any other crappy off-site SEO think they are outsmarting search engines.

Well, apparently, they don’t!

Search engines penalize websites that have low-quality backlinks. If you link into link farming sites or spammy ones, this will reflect into your website itself and will tell search engines about your site's reputation. The spammy your backlinks are, the lower your rankings will be. So you better be careful when building backlinks for your site.

Note: recently, Google just announced that they based their rankings by the relevance of the backlinks to your site, so technically, if you try to create a backlink about a certain breed of a dog to your shoe store website, that will be a problem.

Your website isn’t Mobile Friendly

This is one of the important things you should consider. If your website isn’t mobile-friendly yet, you have to do this immediately.

70% of the people who search on Google are using mobile phones, so if a website isn’t mobile-friendly yet, this will significantly affect the rankings of your website.

The Quality of a Website

Most of the website owners don’t consider their website performance as a factor for ranking pages at search engines but this is very important.

Google measures a site’s performance to determine its rank. Website performance such as page load time, image optimization and alt text is important, so one should do a great on-page SEO.

Generic, Thin Content

Yep, you read it right. Search engines now can determine if your content is useless. That’s how smart they are now.

Google has a new perk called Google RankBrain. RankBrain is a part of Google's search algorithm. It is an artificial intelligence machine that determines a page’s quality. One of its ranking factors is by measuring the session duration of the viewer.

The longer a viewer stays on your page, the better. It will tell RankBrain that your page has great content and it’s very useful.

So, better create content that is informative and engaging. Don’t just focus on the keywords!

My Brief Explanation

Again, I have to tell you that SEO is not dead. The only thing that it is not working is because you may be doing it wrong. Search engine optimization is a complex part of digital marketing and only the best SEO expert can make your site rank up.