Today’s young generation is highly tech-savvy. They search their required info, products/services, etc on the Internet. This tendency has compelled entrepreneurs to reach out to new customers and clients with WordPress business websites and generate sufficient revenues every day/week/month/year.
Technical SEO tends to be done by digital marketing professionals to improve the search engine visibility of WordPress websites. It enables them to get traffic and generate leads. However, due to the rapidly increasing competition in web-based businesses, numerous SEO professionals use unethical SEO practices to gain illegitimate advantages over their competitors and be a leader in their industry sooner or later. By doing so, they engineer the possible demise of their online business.
All digital marketing agencies and professionals must always note that the healthy performance of websites largely depends on the purity of technical SEO. Unethical SEO practices are doomed to fail sooner or later. If you are an SEO geek who optimizes WordPress websites for different search engines and people, here are some Technical SEO Traps that should be avoided at costs:
1. Say No To Spamming Activities in Website Optimization
Although different search engines use different parameters to calculate rankings, relevancy, and usability of websites for targeted audiences, they all try to help visitors to find the required information as soon as possible. Their algorithms try to display the most authentic, up-to-date, and professional looking websites/web-pages in their search results.
A large number of entrepreneurs are extremely materialistic. They create numerous websites/blogs using content management systems and engage in spamming activities (technically known as BlackHat SEO) to promote their websites on the World Wide Web. If you are also engaged in such activities, just be careful.
If search engines come to know your dirty game, they will penalize your website or delete it from their indexes. In such an unpleasant scenario, your dream to become a tycoon in the online business world comes to an end. So, better avoid it completely. Just optimize your website using White Hat SEO tactics, make slow, but steady progress.
2. Keyword Stuffing
SEO professionals try to inject their high/low performing keywords into their content as much as possible so that search engines can display their content in the search results with all-important keywords/terms under their niche. In this process, they are keyword stuffing knowingly or unknowingly.
In simple terms, keyword stuffing is an unfair practice in which SEO professionals cross the maximum limit of keyword placement (approx 2.5%) within their content. If Google detects keyword stuffing, it can penalize your website, by downgrading its ranking in its search engine results pages, or even delete it from its index. It can also increase the bounce rate of your website and repel visitors away. So, it’s better to avoid this practice fully. Place only appropriate keywords in your content and strictly follow the maximum limit.
3. Unoptimised URL & 404 Pages
Due to the emergence of different content management systems, even non-technical people have started to create websites/blogs with the help of plugins/themes/extensions, widgets, and shortcodes. Such individuals have little knowledge of complex SEO tactics and terms and they heavily rely on the default settings.
For example, when you publish new content on your WordPress website, it automatically creates a default URL for it. In most cases, default URLs are messy and long and search engines tend to avoid them (when they have to display results to visitors) because of the need to evaluate such pages with complex parameters. Even visitors treat such URLs as SPAM and can be afraid of visiting them out of fear that they could be a victim of online hacking attempts. So, such pages can have a lower click through rate and a higher bounce rate, which reflects in website analytics and performance.
Whenever you upload new content to your website, just optimize its URL and make it user-friendly and search engine friendly by adding important keywords, terms, date, place, etc. Google prefers Websites/web pages with clean URLs so if you are on par with your competitor but you have clean URLs then Google will give your web page preference over theirs.
Sometimes you browse websites and see the message: Sorry, the page you are trying to reach is not found. It is actually a 404 page-which means non-existent URL. Due to various reasons (like website migration, deleting the live content, hacking, etc), a good number of web pages vanish almost every day. If webmasters don’t fix them, they result in 404 pages. The availability of too many 404 pages on your website can make it unimportant in the eyes of Google. So, you must eliminate 404 pages as soon as possible by using 301 redirects, which can be implemented by hand or by using a plugin.
4. Images with No ALT Text
Images have become part and parcel of website optimization. SEO professionals use attractive images to support text and catch the attention of their targeted audience but they can fail to implement image optimization practices. It doesn’t matter how good and attractive your image is, Google will not be happy if there is no ALT text.
Search engines are all about providing the best experience for everyone, so by adding some descriptive ALT text for your images you’ll be providing your visually impaired visitors with the next best experience of being able to fully see your chosen images. To be frank you should be doing this anyway regardless of any SEO benefits it may bring.
In addition to adding ALT text, reduce the size of your images by optimising them using a tool before uploading or by using a plugin post-upload. You can also lazy load your images to make your website or its pages faster. Well-optimized images are also shown in image search results so you can benefit from a number of SEO optimisations, which will benefit your business sooner or later.
5. The Use of Lousy Content For Website Optimization
All SEO professionals, who are under tremendous pressure to boost the ranking of websites for the generation of leads and business opportunities, always scream loud about the availability of search engine optimized, grammatically correct, fact-filled, informative, and customer-centric content, which can result in the production of low-quality content.
If a website is optimized with such low-quality content, Google can penalize it or erase it completely from its index. So, never use low-quality content for website optimization as you will be the sole loser at the end of the day. Just provide high-quality content to optimize WordPress websites. It will encourage Google and other search engines to display your websites for web pages in search results.
6. Too Much Affection for SEO Plugins/Extensions
The availability of lots of SEO plugins and Extensions allow SEO professionals to easily automate some website optimization activities to increase their productivity to a great extent, and meet ambitious targets easily. But, using too many SEO plugins/extensions can make your website slow. It can reduce all your website efforts as search engines and users, both, hate slow websites. So, it will be better for you to relinquish your needless affection for plugins and extensions. Just use them in restricted numbers.
Concluding Remarks
Optimising your website will help persuade search engines to display your website above your competitors, which can improve your business but there are a number of things to look out for, avoid and fix in order to be rewarded for your online efforts. By addressing the SEO blunders described in this article you’ll gain more visitors, to turn into leads and sales to help exceed your online goals.