SEO Mistakes You Shouldn’t Make in 2019

 

SEO is huge. There are so many facets to a successful SEO strategy that it can be hard for any single person to keep track of everything. Getting something wrong — or not doing something perfectly — is inevitable. Everyone does things in a slightly different way which is why SEO is as much science as it is art.

That being said, there are some mistakes that are so big that no SEOer or business owner should be making. They can have a huge detrimental impact on your website and should be avoided at all costs.

 

Here are the top SEO mistakes that you shouldn’t be making in 2019.

 

1.    You publish ‘thin’ content

Thin content is a huge crime in the SEO world. You can think of your content like a sandwich filling. The less you put in the sandwich and the thinner you spread it, the worst it tastes. The less content on your page (the thinner it is) the worse it will perform in Google.

 

Thin content looks like you are trying to cheat Google and other search engines by creating pages without any value simply in order to rank. If you are going to create content in 2019, make sure you go deep or go home.

2.    You don’t fix broken links

You should fix broken links as soon as you spot them. Broken links on your website create poor user experience and mean that link juice isn’t flowing optimally. This can also create problems when Google crawls the website.

 

Fixing broken links is easy when they are on your website. But it is a whole lot harder when they are on other people’s website pointing towards yours. These are perhaps the most important links to fix, however, and you should do everything you can to fix them.

3.    You optimize for the wrong keywords

The problem with a lot of business owners doing their own SEO is that they optimize for the keywords that have the highest search volumes. Even if these keywords are hugely competitive and there is no way that they are going to rank for them.

 

This is a complete waste of time and can lead many business owners to give up on SEO completely because they don’t see results quickly. Instead, business owners should target low volume, low competition keywords.

4.    There is duplicate content on your website

Just like thin content, duplicate content is another big no-no. In fact, a lot of the time thin content will also be duplicate content. This happens when website owners try to optimize multiple pages for the same or very similar keywords. Unfortunately, this can lead to keyword cannibalization and Google penalties, both of which are bad for business.

 

These kinds of penalties won’t just affect certain pages, either. They can impact your entire site and cause you to disappear from search engines.

 

If you can avoid all of these mistakes, your SEO efforts should take you far this year.