SEO Mistakes You should avoid

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Mistakes are common in life, but not in SEO, Here's list of SEO mistakes you should avoid.

SEO mistakes

SEO Mistakes to avoid

1. Using UTM parameters in internal links


UTM parameters are commonly used in paid campaigns like AdWords, Facebook and sometimes in social media posts to accurately measure the user engagement and conversion ratio coming from particular source. But UTM parameters are sometimes being used in internal links mainly to get information of leads from blog articles. This is the top most SEO mistake and could potentially affect organic traffic.


Audience question
Why do we actually need UTM parameters when Analytics can track everything without it?

Yes Analytics can differentiate between paid and non paid clicks from Google( when connected), but when it comes to Facebook and other means, it would become difficult to differentiate paid and non paid clicks, additionally majority of visits would be classified as direct, so to know the source, medium and campaign to minute level, UTM parameters are must.


Why you should not use UTM parameters in internal links?
Using UTM parameters makes Analytics to reset session. Consider a case


  • User searches for particular query in search engine
  • One of your blog article catches user attention and they click on it
  • Now source is set to Google and medium is set to organic by default
  • User clicks on an internal link with UTM parameter having source as blog and campaign as name of article
  • Here the UTM parameters are reset.. and new session starts for the next link, thereby making Analytics assume user has ended that particular session.
Result: Decrease in average session duration, pages per session and increase in overall bounce rates which results to negative audience engagement and your site's organic positions could come down.

2. Using no follow in internal links

No follow is used to tell search engines that you are not sure of site's quality. Whenever you find a page which you think will be useful to your users but not sure about the genuinity or quality of the site, no follow should be used as parameter in hyperlink thereby saving your website from any potential penalization by Google and other search engines. This is important because giving wrong do follow backlinks could abruptly affect SEO

Using no follow attribute for internal links is a big no as it signifies that you yourself do not trust other pages of your website. Not only the internal links but links to all social media profile should be mandatorily follow links to avoid any hiccups in SEO.

3. Keyword rich anchor text in backlinks

Though buying backlinks itself is considered as black hat technique by Google, 90% of companies still continue to get buy backlinks as backlinks still remains as major part of SEO. According to Google backlink update, Google supsects all backlinks with keyword rich anchor texts.

Google clearly mentioned in Link schemes that links with optimized anchor texts in Articles or press releases distributed on other sites is violation of guidelines and both sites giving and receiving links may get penalized by Google. It's always recommended to have brand name or true purpose of site as anchor texts in backlinks to avoid penalization by Google.

Above all these, keyword rich anchor texts are easily noticable as paid schemes both by the visitor of the site as well as by search engines which would damage site reputation.

Grofers is local online grocery store
Eg: Consider a case where a Blogger is impressed by grofers and wants to naturally link to grofers in one of his article, what do you think he'll put backlink as? It'll be grofers or in rare case online grocery store, if he put buy grocery online as anchor text it clearly signifies that he's associated with grofers to give link to the site.

4. Not using final version of URLs in internal links

The most common mistake in SEO is not using final version of URLs. 

URL structure
  • http or https
  • www or non www
  • / or non /
Essentially if SSL is enabled an URL without html like blogging.com/blog can be represented as follows

  1. http://blogging.com/blog
  2. https://blogging.com/blog
  3. http://www.blogging.com/blog
  4. https://www.blogging.com/blog
  5. http://www.blogging.com/blog/
  6. https://www.blogging.com/blog/
  7. http://blogging.com/blog/
  8. https://blogging.com/blog/

Depending on URL structure chosen, 2,4,6 or 8th will be the final version of the URL and ideally all other versions are to be set to redirect to that final version (while trailing slash not being mandatory).

Incase other versions are used in internal links, it could significantly increase load times due to multiple redirections and could also affect interlinking structure. Additionally, using http internal links in SSL enabled sites Could abruptly affect SEO.

Google page speed insights score decreases with redirections, so using final version of URLs in internal links is recommended.

With https
Pagespeed insights : Boost Bloggers with SSL

Without https

Pagespeed insights : Boost Bloggers without SSL

5. Using do follow affiliate links

Affiliate links are supposed to be used only for the purpose of making revenue referring products sold by companies. Google recommends bloggers to use no follow for all paid links, so that the links doesn't Influence SEO Rankings and the blog doesn't get penalized by Google.

6. Not Branding Social media profiles

This is the one of the most common SEO mistakes i have noticed. Branded Social media profiles are highly essential for Knowledge graph and influences Social media profiles appearing for brand terms and in Organization schema

How to brand Social media profiles

All social media websites gives option to user to change the page URL to reflect their brand or their name, This applies to both personal profiles as well as for brand pages. This is done with an intention that these Social pages rank well in search engines for respective brand terms.

All social media pages are given an URL by default.

I created a Facebook page for my upcoming blog on sport shoes and named it as best sport shoes.

Here's the URL Facebook gave the page by default
https://facebook.com/Best-sport-shoes-199677303956346/

But I would like to change this so i go to settings>Page info >Edit page user name

Branding Facebook page

I change the username to Bestsportshoes1, accordingly the URL changes to
https://facebook.com/Bestsportshoes1

The feature is available in all Social media websites including quora and LinkedIn.

Note: The old URL would still work as usual and in some Social media, the URLs are not even redirected to the new URL, but it's recommended to use & share the new URL for all purposes.

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