The most common on-page SEO mistakes

A lot of the focus in the SEO world today is about creating great content and then promoting it like crazy. SEOs spend most of their time focused on off-page SEO tactics in order to earn as many backlinks as possible.

But too much time spent off-site can mean you fail to focus on your on-page SEO. And this can cause real harm to your rankings. Because even with the best off-page SEO in the world, you won’t rank if your on-page efforts aren’t up to scratch.

Here are the most common on-page SEO mistakes and how you can fix them.

 

Keyword stuffing your page titles and meta descriptions

The more keywords you have in a title, the better your chances of ranking for more keywords, right? That statement couldn’t be more wrong. Every page should be focused on a single keyword or a set of very related keywords. This ensures your page and its content have focus and that Google understands exactly what it is about and what you are trying to rank for.

Stuffing keywords into your titles and meta descriptions won’t just confuse Google, it will also confuse searchers. Page titles have a big impact on clickthrough rates and no one wants to click on a spammy title.

 

Using the same page title and meta description on multiple pages

The flip side of the point above is when business owners have the same page title and meta description on all of their pages. In the same way that stuffing keywords in your page titles dilutes the effectiveness of your ranking efforts, so does targeting the same keyword on all of your pages. Google simply won’t know which page should be ranking and in many cases you’ll be missing out on great opportunities to rank.

Having the same meta description won’t necessarily harm your rankings, but again you’re missing out on the chance to encourage searchers to click your link with enticing and personalized meta descriptions.

 

Using several H1 tags

Each page on your website should have only one H1 tag. Nine times out of ten, this will be the title of the page. It should include your focus keyword and no other keywords. Yet many website owners spam their pages with several H1 tags rather than using H2s, H3s, or H4s. This confuses Google as it makes it hard to understand exactly what your page is about and what the main point should be.

 

Keyword stuffing

It’s important to include your focus keywords in your content. You definitely want to mention them a couple of times at least. But what you don’t want to do is to spam the keywords throughout your content so that it becomes unreadable. If Google thinks your keyword stuffing when it crawls your website, it will penalize you for it. It will also turn off human users who won’t trust a site that doesn’t read well.

Don’t get stuck doing on-page SEO yourself. If you’re making any of these mistakes reach out to our team today for help.