13 Common Technical SEO Mistakes You Cant Afford To Make In 2019
SEO combines a set of techniques to improve the visibility of a web page in the search results, positioning it at the top of the page of the results in the engines according to particular keywords. When it comes to working on SEO in depth and apart from the focus on content, it represents a big part of the work of an SEO company in Kenya. One generally raises the organization of a site, the crawl, (the exploration of the pages by Google) the errors of links, the structure of the URLs, etc.
When dealing with very large websites for large companies, this notion of technical SEO is very important and can only be approached by SEO agency in Kenya or professional SEOs. We still see here the importance of the SEO dimension and the work that this represents.
No real question for a neophyte to venture there, unless you have tools for a first census of errors, that would meet a website. Protecting yourself at the base is also essential, but we often encounter problems with time and websites that are becoming overweight.
The technical SEO errors are very numerous on the websites and they are often neglected over time. The mere fact of having broken internal and external links is one example.
So if you have already adopted the basic rules to optimize your SEO (“Search Engine Optimization”), now is the time to rule out the few technical SEO mistakes that can kill organic traffic. Fixing technical SEO errors is also a very important aspect of google ranking factors in 2019.
Also Read – Want To Hire Best SEO Company In Kenya? – [A Complete Guide]
1) Duplicate Content Penalty in SEO
This is a concept used in search engine optimization. Among other things, it aims to reproduce content or part of a web page. And with more and more powerful robots that roam the web sites at large, there is no doubt that duplicate content will be quickly spotted.
When this is the case, you incur SEO penalties and de-indexing your page. Lost time, in short.
So to position yourself on the search engines, it is appropriate to submit to Internet user informative and innovative content, which respond to their problems and therefore the research they will enter on Google. If these include the right keywords and real added value for your prospect, you’ll be well positioned in the search results, and it will increase your website’s conversion rate: jackpot.
Also Read – 60+ Best Digital Marketing Tools for Small Businesses In Kenya
2) User Intent Matters More Than Keywords
The keywords are the basis of an SEO strategy: it is essential to choose them rigorously, according to their level of difficulty, the competition that takes place and the volume of research. Tools such as Google Adwords allow you to get details on the number of monthly searches for the targeted keyword.
Thus, you have every interest in specifically studying each keyword that could enter your targets on search engines, to place you at the top of the results pages and gain visibility.
Keep in mind that sometimes a simple synonym will be used much more than the keyword you intended to choose, even if yours remains relevant. It’s important that your LSI keywords help people when they search for your main keyword.
To do this, think about the type of requests that users will make to find your content.
3) How Website Page Load Time Affects SEO
The user experience is important to your prospects, but also to the search engines. Indeed, if your pages are too slow to load, the bounce rate will increase, which will negatively impact your SEO.
To satisfy the search engines and your prospects at the same time, navigation on your site must be fluid and straightforward. So be careful with too heavy content that could make navigation difficult, such as photos or videos too large or too massive content.
There are certain ways to Speed Up Your Website and Improve Conversion rate –
Limit Image Size to lower Average Page Load Time
Eliminate Redirects and increase Website’s page Speed
Optimize Caches improve Page Load Time
Minify JavaScript & Style Sheets to immediately improve your Website speed
Apply CSS3 and HTML5 to Improve Page Load Time
Use Content Delivery Network to enhance Average Page Load Time
Also Read – Top 10 Web Design Trends in Kenya For 2019
4) Internal and External Links Impact Your SEO
You must have this question in your mind, why are internal and external links important for SEO? In an effort to have a very strong SEO strategy for your website or blog, you will need to know differences between an internal & external link, and the way they could improve the SEO strategy.
Using relevant both external and internal links at your website will ultimately improve the visibility and rank of your website.
Internal links allow you to link the pages of your website together and further optimize your SEO. In another time, you can also anchor content whose topics are similar to pique the curiosity of your readers and gain a little more popularity.
Do not neglect external links either. These “backlinks” allow search engines to analyze the quality of content through the number of links that point to your site.
To be effective at this level, it is therefore ideal for building relationships with popular websites and developing affiliations, without omitting (once again), “the quality of your content.” As a result, you will get two birds with one stone; you develop your notoriety and gain credibility with your readers.
5) Meta Tags Impact Your Search Engine Ranking
At first, the meta-description brings precision to the Internet about your content. To be understandable and especially enticing for readers, it must be synthetic and catchy. But it also has a primary value for search engines because it helps to assess the relevance of your content. It must contain the keywords in your article, to enable them to understand the content of your page and optimize your SEO.
The ultimate goal of using a focus keyword in the title, the meta description or even in content is to let the search engine know what the content is all about. Once the search engine understands the query of a user, it redirects the user to the same content as he has quest for.
The focus keyword is usually the search term that you really want your web page to rank for. Whenever the reader tries to find that phrase, they should find you.
There is a much stronger correlation for keywords in meta descriptions, H1, and Title tags. Optimize these properties for your chosen keyword, but don’t forget to aim for the parent topic by any means.
For more information on the topic, you can read this case study which is about the way google ranks your content in 2019
6) Heading Tags Good or Bad for SEO
These tags structure your content into titles, subtitles, paragraphs or key points. By prioritizing your content with these tags, which must contain your main keywords, you first allow your users a clear and simple reading. And in a second time, this hierarchy makes it possible to optimize your SEO in an effective manner, because your contents will be more readable for the search engines.
Writing the H1: the rules to follow
If your page does not have h1, you can use your site management tool: your CMS (WordPress, Joomla, Magento, etc.). If you do not know how to do this step, your webmaster will know how to assign an H1 attribute to your page titles.
Here are the main rules to follow to optimize your titles:
Have a single H1 tag per page (the logic remains the same: identify the main subject of a page).
Write different H1 for each page.
Use the lower levels (from h2 to h6) to structure the speech.
Insert the main keyword of the page into the H1.
Although there is no rule on the size limit of title 1, we advise you not to exceed about 70 characters (5 to 8 words).
Use words describing the content of the page (no suite of keywords).
The test is simple: at the simple reading of the H1, anyone must be able to understand what the page is about. If it is not the case, it is surely that your H1 is not sufficiently descriptive and explicit.
Remember the first 3: H1, H2 and H3 that’s it Google is not so complicated.
Are my title tags optimized for Local SEO in Kenya? If the majority of your business coming from a local business, this is too important.
Improving on a business’ local SEO is certainly not one of the fascinating tasks, though it’s a rewarding effort one can take. It’s a low-hanging fruit that online business and marketers should consider to reap benefits.
7) Image Alt Text Still Matters in 2019
When the search engines review the different contents, they cannot see the images but simply the alt text attributes or Alt Tags that correspond to them. Once again, it is, therefore, necessary to use the keywords that you target in your content to assign them to your images and improve your SEO. This can bring you traffic from people just looking for images, but also helps to understand what visual is positioned when, for example, the internet connection is bad and the image does not load. In addition, software for helping the blind and visually impaired read “alt-text”, hence the importance of not neglecting this module.
Also Read – Want To Hire Best SEO Company In Kenya? – [A Complete Guide]
8) Consider Social Networks Build Credibility
A social network is a godsend for your SEO. With increasingly powerful algorithms, search engines now consider social networks. They help to index content and increase their visibility, through the multiple possible interactions on these (shares, likes, retweets, etc.). And the virality allowed by social networks further increases your chances of being visible everywhere on the web.
The overall impact of social media marketing is highlighted from the undeniable fact that it is a hundred times more effective in sealing the lead to conversion.
Hence brands are strongly utilizing this channel to achieve multiple business goals.
For example –
9) Use of 301 and 302 Redirect in Search Engine Optimization
From the point of view of the visitor of your website, there is no difference whether you are using 302 temporary redirects or 301 permanent redirects. But for search engines, that’s another story. Because depending on your choice, they will not treat the links in the same way.
Thus, in case of permanent redirection 301, they transfer the PageRank to the new page. This is not the case with the temporary redirection 302.
You have to check your redirects in your .htaccess file or in the administration panel of your server.
10) Difference Between 404 Vs Soft 404 Error
These 404 errors happen more often than you think. By chance for you, the visitor of your site will not even notice it. But the search engines, though; Google tells you elsewhere in the Webmaster Tools.
A 404 soft error is like a 404 error but also returns an HTTP 200 code. In other words, on your site, you set it up so that when a user requests a page that does not exist, is returned to the homepage or any other custom 404 page of your choice.
It’s the same with robots. Thus, you tell the robots that the requested page does not exist (error 404) but you still send it to a page of your choice having content by sending it in addition the code 200 OK (soft error 404). And this, in place of a page “the requested page was not found” or “File Not Found”.
And the search engines do not like this sleight of hand. Because for them, you have 2 links with the same content. Happy Duplicating! This will limit the crawling of your site.
As much as you can display a custom 404 page, this custom page should always return code 404 to search engines.
To check which code your custom page 404 returns, you go to the Google Webmaster Tools and insert the link to see the page as GoogleBot would see it.
11) How Hidden Character Could Cause Robots.txt File Error
Still, in the Google Webmaster Tools, it sometimes happens in the “Health Status -> Crawl Errors” section, it tells you that some “syntaxes are incomprehensible”. This is especially the case when you leave a space somewhere in the robots.txt file while all the command lines are correct.
To solve the problem, rewrite your robots.txt file, put it back in the root of your site and start the verification again in your Webmaster Tools.
The benefits of a well structured robots.txt file boil down to two categories:
Optimizing search engines’ crawl resources by telling them not to waste time on pages you don’t want to be indexed. This helps ensure that search engines focus on crawling the pages that you care about the most.
Optimizing your research usage by blocking bots that are wasting your server resources.
Also Read – SEO Glossary: ABC Of SEO Terms & Definitions 2019 [Infographic]
12) What Happens When Google Crawls Base64 Urls
That’s right, it’s a bit more technical.
We will still refer to the Webmaster Tools where you can one day find a large number of existing 404 errors on your site.
Challenging, isn’t it? Especially when we know that we did not give such a name to one of the web pages. So, how did your site generate such links?
The problem is that it’s impossible to know where these URLs come from.
In fact, all these unique links are created on the fly by some CMS platforms for security reasons to try to avoid multiple requests and crossed on the site (authentication token). And also on sites with a private area, and therefore with an access code.
So these are all “fictitious” pages encoded in base64 that Google, for example, tries to index without success, hence many 404 errors it reports.
The solution lies in your ability to insert command lines into your robots.txt with Regular Expressions (ReGex) prohibiting robots from crawling such pages. A good developer can solve the problem for you.
13) Server Error Can Hurt Your SEO Efforts
An incorrectly configured server can also impact your SEO.
Thus, if the HTTP Headers of your server are not configured correctly, your home page may never be indexed by the search engines.
In principle, when a web page is requested by a web browser, it sends an “Accept” Header that tells the server about the type of files it can read. And when the server responds by sending the requested document, it sends at the same time to the web browser a “Content-Type” Header indicating the type of file it sends (HTML/PDF/JPEG/). Did you follow?
The problem arises when the browser sends an “Accept Header” beginning, for example, with “text/html” and the wrongly configured server systematically returns the first type of file read in its “Content-Type”. Which can cause a server “down”.
The same thing happens with robots that, before crawling a page, send it an Accept Header. If the server responds with a Content-Type indicating a page in “txt” format, the page might not be indexed.
To avoid such situations, the configuration of a dedicated server must always be entrusted to a specialist.
As you can see, SEO is not just about optimizing pages and looking for backlinks. Technical errors, such as those we have just seen, can also penalize your SEO.
Well, a thoughtful SEO strategy is a gold mine for you to build a reputation and increase your chances of reaching a large audience. At DimeHub, we have a team of SEO experts to provide you with a chance to improve your ranking on the results pages and reach as many prospects as possible.