Search Engine Optimization is a straightforward process. While it’s evolved over the years, introducing modifications like microformats and schema, SEO has remained a game of keywording, link building and time. However, as Google’s algorithm becomes more sophisticated, crawlers have begun to catch things that penalize your website’s search presence.
Untitled aims to bring transparency and effective solutions to digital marketing. With that said, we’ve outlined 5 things that could be hurting your SEO.
1. Dead Links
Dead links can cause real damage to your site’s SEO. A dead link is a former page or blog posting that no longer exists on your website. When Google crawls your website for indexing, a dead link will penalize your website, hurting your chances at ranking on page one. Fixing them is actually a relatively simple solution. Using a deadlink tracker can identify the 404 errors Google may encounter, allowing you to add a 301 redirect and fix the issue.
2. Your Marketing Agencies Outbound Links
Have you ever checked your websites “Site Info” page or “Terms & Conditions” page? If you haven’t, make sure you do. Many marketing agencies hijack clients’ websites and use them as their own outbound link building strategies. While a small shoutout to your agency doesn’t do any harm, we’ve come across some agencies that will keyword stuff a “Site Info” page with 10 to 15 links back to their website.
This can really damage your SEO. When search engines crawl your website, they’re trying to understand what your website is about. Confusing Google by directing them to a marketing website when you’re an ecommerce company doesn’t help. Make sure your agency has your best interest in mind.
3. Slow Website Speed
Recently, Google has been treating website speed as a major factor when indexing websites. The slower your site, the harder it will be to rank on page one. Make sure your images are sized properly, you compress your web components with gzip and minify CSS and HTML output where possible.
4. Unorganized Header Tags
Header tags are very important to use. When building and structuring your website, be sure that your tags are structured in numerical order: h1 to h6. As Google crawls, the headers help provide information before indexing. Be sure to add a few of your keywords in a header tag as well!
5. Missing Alt Tags On Images
Many times, people overlook the use of alt tags on their images. When an image is crawled, Google looks at the alt tag for specific information on what the image is conveying. Web developers who don’t utilize alt tags are missing the low hanging fruit of SEO. Taking advantage of image based searches have been proven to increase leads by up to 5x.
In Summary
These are our thoughts on 5 things that could be hurting your SEO. Untitled always encourages clients to have an organic search strategy. With web development being one of our main verticals, we build websites with SEO in mind from the very beginning.
If you are interested in learning how Untitled can help improve your SEO, contact us today. We promise to have a unique solution for you.
