Search engine optimization (SEO) plays a crucial role in ensuring that websites get to the top of SERPs and establish their online visibility. And, with search engines like Google continuously improving their algorithms, it has become a must for SEO experts and website owners to create and publish quality content that attracts value-adding visitors and links to their sites. Take note, however, that high-quality content will be pointless if your website is plagued by several structural and technical problems. To avoid this from happening here’s a list of the common SEO problems you might encounter and the right ways to solve them.
Typical SEO Problems and Simple Ways to Solve Them
1. Website is Not Mobile-Friendly
Take note that if your site has a poor user experience on smartphones and tablets, more so, slow to load on mobile devices, users are most likely to leave your website. If this happens, expect that this will increase your website’s bounce rate.
As you are likely aware, more and more people nowadays access the Internet through their mobile devices. That only means if your website is not optimized for mobile use, chances are, visitors will click away.
The least you can do to avoid that from happening is to utilize a responsive design for your site. This will enable it to adjust to the size and resolution of the devices visitors’ use while presenting the same type of content. Thus, it can provide better mobile experience and will also improve secondary signals search engines consider for search rankings, such as the number of visitors, time spent on a page, frequency of visit and bounce rates.
2. Slow Load Time and Bad Navigation
Take note that if your site has poor engagement statistics, has crawlability issues, and other technical issues, these are all signs of low authority. Furthermore, if your website is considered useless and irrelevant, it will not rank on search engines.
If visitors come to your site and it loads too slowly, you cannot expect them to stay long enough to see what it offers. The same thing can be said if they are unable to smoothly go from one page to another due to bad navigation.
Slow loading time and bad navigation are two major problems that not only affect engagement but are also indicators of low quality. As such, when your site suffers from these issues, it can be considered irrelevant by visitors, leading to a lower ranking in search engines.
Ensure to test the speed and navigation of your site. What you want is to ensure that it loads fast and its navigation is user-friendly. That is, follow a standard navigation style, use descriptive labels, minimize the number of items in your navigation and use the right links.
3. Poor Redirects
During the life of your website, it cannot be avoided that some of its pages or the entire site itself have to be migrated to a different URL. This can create problems as there is a strong possibility that the old links and URLs will not properly connect to the site, which can result in poor redirects or 404 errors. The best thing you can do to prevent this is to locate 404 errors on your websites and then have 301 redirects from old pages to new ones. This will ensure that both users and search engines will be directed to the correct and relevant pages on your site.
Also, if you have rebuilt your website without enlisting a reputable SEO, there is a bigger chance that the URLs and links from your older site are not appropriately set up to connect with your new website.
4. Confusing URLs
Some CMS and blog platforms tend to create confusing URLs to recently added content. For instance, you may find that one or two pages contain unnecessary characters at the end of their URLs. While these may seem harmless, they can affect the credibility of your site, which can lead to lower click-through rates. So when setting up those URLs, be sure to keep them clean and include a keyword that provides information on what the site is about and will be easily understood by visitors and search engines.
Remember that SEO friendly URLs have keywords, more so, are easy to understand for both users and search engines. In simpler terms, SEO friendly URLs are equal to an easily indexed and ranked website.
5. Slow Loading Web Pages
Online users’ attention span is continuously decreasing as time progresses. Studies show that 53% of mobile users leave a website that takes longer than three seconds to load. Your page’s load speed is crucial not only for good user experience but also for you to obtain good search rankings.
For websites with several elements such as videos, images, CSS style sheets, JavaScript codes, etc, make sure that your websites are as optimized for speed as possible. It’s best to run your pages through a page-speed test and implement the suggestions provided by the tool you have used. Making use of even a few of the suggestions given will help your pages to improve its loading speed faster.
Aside from the ones mentioned above, other problems could hinder the success of your SEO efforts. These include excessive use of flash, duplicate content and shady backlinks among others. The point here is that if you want to ensure that your website gets on top of SERPs, consider evaluating it and correct the issues first before proceeding with any SEO campaign.
Outsourcing SEO to PrimeOutsourcing
PrimeOutsourcing has been in the field of outsourcing services for over ten years, this serves as an attestment of the quality of services we offer. Our Junior and Senior SEO consultants have years of experience from one to three years and up. Our team of SEO experts is well-versed when it comes to the rules of optimizing sites, search engine analysis, keyword research, link development, website optimization, etc. The best way to increase your site traffic is by outsourcing it to an SEO expert!
Take advantage of the best SEO services Primeoutousrcing has to offer. Check out our SEO services packages and request a quote! Or better yet talk to us via our Contact Us page and we’ll make sure to answer all your inquiries.
