Even the masters of SEO can make mistakes from time to time. This is going to be a recap of those devastatingly scary things that if missed in SEO can murder your entire campaign…
Okay, it may not be that sinister but you should really think about it when implementing SEO into a website.
These are 5 grave SEO mistakes that even experts can miss:
Dead Links (Broken Links)
To keep you in the spooky mood I thought we could start with Dead links… also known as broken links, these are links that no longer work, often result in the dreaded 404 error.
These issues can occur from a number of situations, for example, the page it was linking to was removed or if the link was added incorrectly.
Finding these issues isn’t as hard as you may think, we use software such as ‘ScreamingFrog’ and ‘SEMrush’. These will crawl your website and find any error codes to let you know that something is wrong.
Insecurity Issues (No SSL)
Having security issues is never good in any walk of life and this is no exception, you wouldn’t let someone break into your house easily, would you? Your website needs to have that same respect because it can otherwise be dangerous to your users, your website and you.
Having an SSL on your website will make it much more difficult for hackers to worm their way in. It will take the code that your site is built on and encrypt the whole thing to make it much more secure and search engines such as Google will hold you in higher regards for having one.
Most websites need an SSL certificate to make it GDPR compliant (read more about GDPR here). If you don’t have one and need one then simply give us a call on 01925 563 960 and we’ll help you sort it out!
Creepy Crawlies (Can’t Be Crawled)
Crawl issues are one that really gets to me and makes me want to rip my hair out but you just need to remember that there is always a solution to this annoying problem.
This issue can range from simply a robots.txt file being set up wrong to the website core codebase having a mistake. We use SEMrush to help find these problems and it’s an issue that needs to be dealt with sooner rather than later because if Google’s creepy crawlers can’t find it… it might as well not exist.
Killer Redirect Chains (Redirect Loops)
Have you ever woken up and felt like you’re reliving the same day over and over again? I’d hope not because you’re ripping off Groundhog Day if you were… but in actual fact, this is very similar to how Redirect chains work.
Basically, when you click a link it breaks because the new destination is trying to redirect you to another link and so on. This is quite a common issue but can be fixed relatively easily. If you’re using a ‘Redirect’ plugin such as ‘Redirection’ on WordPress you should be able to simply deactivate the redirect and the link should work as normal.
Shambling Site Speed (Slow Speed)
Now this one is often glossed over by the masters of SEO but should never be ignored because, although this is more of a development issue, this website factor, in particular, is very important to Google.
Have you ever gone to a website and found because it’s taking that long to load you’ve just given up and gone elsewhere? Well, this is what Google wants to avoid and if your website is slow enough to trigger someone’s buffer face then Google could penalise you for it… Now that is Scary.
We use a website called ‘GTMetrix’, this allows you to see how fast your website will load for the average Joe whether they’re in the UK, Canada or wherever else they may be.
If you feel that your site is slower than it should be or if you’re getting complains about it then let us know because we know how to help! Call us on 01925 563 960 or fill out our contact form here.
What Can You Do?
If you feel that any of them apply to your website then please let us know, the longer these issues stay an issue the more problems you’ll have. Contact us here or you can call us on 01925 563 960 and one of our expertly trained team will be able to guide you down the road to fixing the issue.
