Top SEO Mistakes to Avoid for Better Ranking on Google in 2023

SEO is an evolving discipline that is easy to implement but difficult to master. SEO has become the key to online success for brands and businesses considering the modern customer journey.

Did you know? The global SEO software market is projected to reach $1.6 Billion by 2027. The demand for Search Engine Optimization is growing for online businesses around the globe. So are the opportunities.

You will agree with me that SEO is both important and inaccurate. From changes in the market condition to constantly changing search engine algorithms, methods, and consumer behavior, marketers must stay updated and ready to cope with all the changes coming their way.

Proper planning, tailor-made strategies, loads of effort, and adaptability make it possible for a website to stay at the top of SERP.

For example, attaining the top position for many keywords should not be your end goal. Once the website is there, holding the place for longer should be an ideal target. This gives your website a solid presence, builds trust among users, and drives a large amount of traffic and, eventually, business to your website.

So, how to do it? For that, you need to know the most common SEO mistakes to avoid for better ranking. Let's begin.

List of Top SEO Mistakes to Avoid:

1. Not Knowing Your Target Audience

One of SEO's most crucial principles is understanding the target audience. You need to know your audience inside and out. You need to understand how they behave at a granular level.

You should plan effective strategies and understand what messages to give to your users during their different conversion phases.

Mistake: Businesses do not understand their audience and work on strategies that target high-volume keywords.

The best way to do it is by analyzing the historical and real-time data to understand their behavioral changes and researching the targeted market and audience before planning any SEO strategy.

2. Not Considering Search Intent

Figured out your target audience? Now let's focus on another critical element, i.e., 's "Search Intent."

What is a Search Intent?

Simply put, it is the intent behind a search. For example, if a user searches "website development" on Google, the user intends to learn something relevant to "website development." If they land on a page containing information about "website development services," they will find this page irrelevant and bounce from it.

On the other hand, when a user searches "website development companies," it means they are looking for companies providing website development services. Here the Intent is to "Hire."

Understanding the intent of the searcher based on their search query and serving the relevant answer or solution to their query is essential.

Mistake: Businesses prefer to target keywords based on their search volume over relevance and search intent.

Despite having quality content on your website, it won't help visitors land on your page due to lesser relevance if it is not well-targeted. Before planning your keywords and content, try understanding the user's search intent.

3. Choosing the Wrong Keywords

Do keywords matter?

Yes, keywords are the crux of an efficient SEO ranking strategy. Optimizing the right keywords on your pages helps Google understand your page's audience and make It rank in relevant search results.

Your keywords tell the search engine the context of your website's pages.

So, when someone enters words and phrases relevant to you into the search engine, your pages may get served to them.

Mistake: Businesses build pages and content covering topics without research.

You must conduct proper keyword research, considering the search intent before creating content for pages or blogs. Keyword research not only helps you in content creation but also helps in other marketing and promotional activities.

4. Publishing Duplicate Content

Google is stringent against the use of copying or plagiarizing content. Google penalizes the websites and highly discourages this spammy practice. 

Instead of copying someone's content or using content spin software, you should start creating original and meaningful content that will save your website from getting downgraded or push-backed in the SERP.

Content is King. You might have heard this phrase from digital marketers. But is content really the King? Let's find out. 

Having original, high-quality, and helpful content on your website leads to a good reputation in the search engine's index, which helps you in better search ranking. It also motivates your visitor to spend more time interacting with your website, sharing it with friends, returning to your website, and more.

Mistake: Businesses with lesser knowledge of content copy it from competitor websites or uses spun/modified version of the same.

Quality content gives your user a great user experience, improves inbound traffic, generates high CTR, and enables you to earn mentions and backlinks from high-authority sites. These all together help you in ranking higher in SERP.

So, you should focus on creating high-quality and helpful content for your website.

5. Ignoring 404 Errors

You must have come across the message "404 Page not Found" while accessing websites over the internet.

What does it mean, and how will it affect your website? 404 error codes are generated when a user or crawler tries to access a webpage that is either moved or deleted.

A massive number of unresponsive URLs can result in an awful user experience, leading to lower engagement, trust, and an increased bounce rate. Your website will start dropping in the SERP as it will be considered unreliable by Google and the SEO value earned by those pages are not transferred to the new pages.

Mistake: Businesses tend to ignore older pages' value and create pages on new URLs, do not redirect the older URLs or implement a one rule fits all approach.

So, whenever you find 404 error links on your website, always add 301 redirects for them on relevant URLs to avoid giving a poor experience and losing ranking in the SERP.

6. Poor Page Loading Metrics 

Is your website slow and sluggish?

If yes, you must fix the issues and load your website faster.

According to a report, nearly 70% of consumers have admitted that the page speed of a website impacts their willingness to purchase from an online retailer.

In 2023, if your website page speed is slow and sluggish, it will impact your website's SEO, affect your position in SERP, give your users a poor user experience, and degrade your conversion rate.

Did you know? The website with load times between 0-2 seconds has the highest eCommerce conversion rates.

Mistake: Businesses prioritize adding new developments on the website, keeping the loading performance in a lesser important queue.

It's time to get up and start fixing all significant issues related to page speed. Use Google page speed insights and find out the problems and fix them, or take the help of some professional to resolve the issue.

Conclusion

The above is only a small list of mistakes businesses make in SEO.

Ensure you follow the above list of SEO mistakes and avoid them to see a better ranking in SERP, increase the user base, drive quality traffic, higher conversion rate, etc.

Follow the practice of creating high-quality original content targeted to specific queries. Keep checking the health of your site regularly and fix the issues. If you are new or unable to do it alone, you can hire an SEO marketing agency to help you.