5 Notable SEO Practices That Will Make Google Hurt Your Site

A website can be one of the most valuable assets of a business these days, especially if the business runs primarily on the Internet. There are quite a large number of internet-based businesses. While they are run by real people who manage the business from an office or from their own homes, the website that represents their businesses is like a virtual storefront where customers can find information about what they offer and buy services and products from them.

Search engine optimization is one of the most effective ways to generate more traffic to a website, which can be converted into customers. This technique, commonly known as SEO, allows companies to rank their websites in Google and other search engines based on keywords related to their niche, their brand and, of course, their products and services.

A well-planned SEO strategy would include original, quality content that offers visitors valuable information and an appropriate link-building strategy and social media outreach. This combination of strategies allows a business to get higher rankings in search engines while driving traffic directly from other blogs and social media channels to their online property.

The problem, however, is that not everyone that runs a website is experienced in SEO and learning how to rank a website in Google can take some time. Several agencies can be utilized to assist with ranking a website higher in search engines, but many are not experienced enough or skilled enough to deliver promising results.

Common SEO Mistakes That Google Hates

In this post, we are not going to tell you how you can rank higher in Google by building links, writing original content and sharing your posts on social media channels. Instead, we will focus on a different topic that also affects your search rankings – the most common mistakes that website owners make when they implement SEO strategies into their online business model.

These mistakes can affect a website in numerous ways, such as pushing it down in Google and preventing the website from ranking for keywords that would help the business convert visitors into customers.

1. Publishing Duplicate Content

Writing content for your website takes time, effort and skill. Not everyone is good at writing, so there is a good chance that many people reading this post cannot write content for their websites.  Unfortunately, content is one of the primary strategies that should be utilized to gain better rankings in Google.

Apart from its impact on SEO, Scrunch reports that good content also increases engagement, allows a business to generate new leads, and adds to the value of a product or service being discussed on a web page.

When a person does not have the skill or time to write their own content, they may outsource the task to a freelance writer or an agency specializing in content production, which can cost a lot of money. Many website owners opt for the alternative option is publishing PLR articles or content originally published on another blog. This means they publish duplicate content on their websites, and Google hates duplicate content.

To ensure your website is free of duplicate content, you should run each post through a plagiarism checker, such as Quetext, to ensure your content is 100% unique – this will make sure Google loves the content you publish!

Recommended Read: 5 Tips for Writing Successful B2B Marketing Content

2. Sacrificing Quality For Quantity During Link Building

Link building is considered the “secret sauce” to higher rankings in Google, but there is quite a lot of debate on how link building should really be done. There are many ways to do link building, such as guest posting. Even influencer marketing can yield some high-quality backlinks for a website. The problem, however, is that people often prioritize the number of links they build to their site over the quality of these links. Thus, many businesses and website owners buy thousands of links from people who claim to be “SEO gurus” but end up with decreased rankings afterward and are unable to understand why.

Digital Search Group UK explains that, when comparing quantity to quality, a website owner should know that less can be more in this particular instance. When Google finds a link that points to a particular site, it will consider many aspects of the link to determine how “valid” that link is. Google will look at the metrics of the site that is pointing to your site and that particular site’s current Google rankings. When Google sees that the site pointing to your site is trustworthy and reputable, it will consider the link a good quality. If Google finds that the site pointing to yours is “scaly”, the link will be seen as a negative link and could even have an adverse impact on your current rankings.

3. Prioritizing Desktop Over Mobile

In the past, people could only access websites from their desktop computers. As time passed, more and more people started to gain access to mobile devices that could access and browse the internet. Today, more people browse websites on their mobile devices, such as smartphones or tablets, than on their desktop computers.

IMPACT Design & Branding reports that at least 80% of all people with internet access also own at least one smartphone. In 2016, website access on mobile devices surpassed website access on desktop computers – with 51.3% of all website traffic accounting for mobile device users in the previous month, as reported on BGR.

It is important to consider these changes, and that web traffic accounting for smartphone devices will continue to increase, and desktop traffic will likely never surpass mobile traffic again. For this reason, it is important to ensure your website is optimized for mobile traffic. According to Search Engine Land, Google has started prioritizing websites with a mobile-first design approach.

Recommended Read: How Deep Linking Drives Mobile Apps Marketing

4. Too Many Advertisements

Millions of websites heavily rely on the money they make from affiliate companies, CPA networks and other advertising agencies. Without these funds, the website owners would be unable to dedicate time to writing quality topics that offer useful information, education and knowledge to the reader. Thus, it is normal for a website to display some advertisements here and there. These advertisements can usually be seen in the sidebar of a website, within the content and sometimes in the header.

Having too many advertisements on a website, however, can discourage visitors from trusting the website and negatively impact the particular website’s rankings in Google. In addition to these advertisements, Google does not like websites with popups that may interfere with the visitor’s experience – such as popups that overlap with content displayed on the website. Popups that direct a visitor away from the landing page are also not good, as Google may also decide to penalize such web pages and decrease their rankings.

5. Irrelevant Keywords

Keywords play a vital part in search engine optimization, and a website cannot rank in Google without targeting some keywords. A keyword is the “search phrase” for which a particular website or web page would like to rank. For example, if you own a website focusing on weight loss products, you may target keywords such as “fast weight loss” or “best weight loss supplements.” When Google notices these keywords on your website and in your link-building strategies, it may increase your rankings for the particular keywords you are targeting.

One aspect that should be considered when including keywords in the content of your website is relevancy. Trying to rank for keywords related to the technology industry would not be a good idea if you target the weight loss niche. Not only may this bring in traffic that is not interested in the information that can be found on your website, but it is also seen as a negative ranking factor by Google. Instead, try to always target keywords directly related to your website's content.

Final Words

A website with high rankings for targeted keywords in search engines, like Google, will receive organic traffic directly interested in whatever it is on the website. It is offering. This may include useful information about a particular topic, details about a specific company, or a range of products and services. When search engine optimization is not done correctly, a website may be penalized, and its rankings may not be good enough to receive traffic from Google and other major search engines.

This post explored common mistakes people often make when optimizing their websites and executing SEO campaigns. Suppose you are currently implementing any of these. In that case, we strongly advise you to reconsider your current campaign and make adjustments accordingly to avoid being penalized for these simple yet meaningful mistakes.

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