Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the most important aspects of any digital marketing campaign. It’s a set of practices and techniques that help your website rank higher in search engines for specific keywords or phrases. The goal is to get your site on the first page of search results so more people will find it when they’re looking for something specific.
Yet some common SEO issues can keep you from reaching that goal if you don’t address them, one of which is the struggle with recovering organic traffic when you lose it. In this article, you'll get to know eight types of SEO issues you might encounter and the tips on how to fix each one:
#1. Duplicate Content
Duplicate content is, essentially, content that appears on multiple pages across your website. While this might seem insignificant to you, search engines see duplicate content as spam and will penalize you for it. You can identify duplicate content by running a site crawl with site crawling tools.
Fixing these issues will depend on the nature of the duplicate page itself. Is there any value in having two versions of the same page? If so, you’ll need to decide which one deserves more prominence in search results and remove the other from being indexed by search engines (via robots.txt file). If not, and if it seems like an easy fix, you can simply 301 redirect one uniform resource locator (URL) to another without affecting rankings or traffic.
#2. Slow Page Load Times
Slow page load times can be an issue for your website and cause many problems for you. It can cause users to bounce, open their browser, and search for an alternative source. The best way to solve this is by ensuring that your site loads fast, especially if it has a lot of media on it, such as images or videos.
The number one thing you can do is use a content delivery network that will distribute your content across multiple servers worldwide, so they aren’t all coming from one place anymore. This helps because it means that someone in Boston won’t have to wait as long as someone who lives in New York City would have to wait, too. Moreover, it could mean that a viewer in Australia might not notice any difference because their server could be closer than yours before using one.
#3. Organic Traffic Loss
You know something is wrong if your site suddenly loses organic traffic. You should be able to identify the problem quickly and easily by looking at your analytics data. The next step is to seek solutions to your organic traffic loss as this could significantly affect your business or brand.
To recover your lost organic traffic, update your site with fresh, high-quality content and make sure it’s optimized for search engines by using H1 tags, subheadings, and paragraphs between two and five sentences long. This will make it easier for search engines to understand what your page is about and why someone should click through to it from their results pages.
Besides, you can run a thorough SEO audit to identify problems with your current SEO strategy and fix them. If you find that there aren’t any changes you can make to improve your rankings, it may be time to consider hiring an SEO expert who can help you get back on track. Above all, do not overlook an SEO issue like organic traffic loss.
#4. Missing Meta Descriptions
Meta descriptions are a snippet of text that appears on search engine results pages (SERPs) just below the link to your website. They allow you to tell users what your page is about and entice them to click through to your site. Missing meta descriptions can result in a lower click-through rate and fewer visits.
Meta descriptions should be between 150 and 160 characters long to fit the small space provided by search results listings. The first 45 characters appear as bold text on SERPs to searchers (more for mobile searches). This makes meta descriptions one of the essential factors in driving traffic from organic search results.
#5. Not Tracking Keywords And Rankings
When you’re not tracking your keywords, you risk missing out on opportunities to optimize your content. You also lose out on the data that could help you improve your SEO strategy. Tracking your keyword rankings is crucial because it tells you how well you’re doing, and this information can help you improve your SEO strategy.
If a keyword has a high search volume but low competition, that’s an excellent sign to target it for optimization. You can use tools to track your keywords and rankings. Please keep track of the keywords that are ranking well for you so that when they drop out of the top 10 results, you can work on improving them by making changes to content or link-building strategies. It would help if you also keep an eye on the keywords that aren’t ranking at all, as these may not be worth optimizing because there’s no traffic coming from them anyway.
#6. 404 Errors On Your Website
Those who have encountered 404 errors know how they can be pretty frustrating for website visitors. They happen when someone clicks on a broken link or enters the wrong URL, but this isn't always the case. This error can also occur when you make code changes to your website or make content changes that affect internal links, redirects, or other technical issues. You’ll want to address these errors as soon as you spot them to protect your ranking in search results.
If there is any chance you might be seeing more 404 errors than usual due to technical issues on your site, it’s best to contact an experienced developer. They can take care of these problems before they start affecting SEO negatively by causing more errors and lowering page rank in SERPs.
#7. Not Optimizing URLs
URLs are the first thing users see when they visit your site, so they should be easy to understand and memorable. If you don’t optimize them, users might not know where they’re going and may get lost among all of the other pages on your website.
The first step in optimizing URLs is to ensure they’re structured correctly. The best way to do this is by using a URL shortener. This will allow you to create short links that are easy for people to remember and share while still keeping them SEO-friendly by including relevant keywords in the link itself.
#8. Not Optimizing Images For Search Engines
Images are a great way to increase your page ranking, but they’re not just for aesthetics. Images can be optimized for search engines, too. Make sure to optimize your images for mobile devices and they contain relevant texts so your site can be easily accessible by users.
Images should also include descriptive alt tags. This allows search engines to crawl through your website better to find out what’s important to users and rank you accordingly.
Conclusion
By reading through these tips, you can improve on all fronts, from increasing organic traffic and conversions to fixing broken links on your site. The key takeaway here is that there are several things you can do as marketers (and webmasters) to improve your SEO game for search engines.
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