You know the basics: Your SEO can be hurt by broken links, lack of keywords, slow website speeds, and the like. But what are some lesser-known culprits that can lower your SEO? Here are 5 sneaky things that could be hurting your SEO without you even knowing it.
Duplicate Content
It’s understandable that you would want to emphasize and re-emphasize important information and content about your business. In fact, it is to your benefit in general to make sure information is extremely clear to your customers. However, being too repetitive on your website can actually hurt your rankings.
If you’re including the same (or very similar) block of text in multiple pages of your site, your SEO could take a hit. So instead of duplicating content and copy-pasting the same paragraph all over your site, just make sure all important info is clear and easy to access on your home page. Let each other page of your site share different content to avoid too many duplicates.
Low-Quality Website Traffic
You might think that bringing anyone to your site, no matter who they are, helps your SEO. On the surface, this is true: the more traffic your site is getting, the higher it will rank in search engines. However, it is not only the quantity, but also the quality, of the traffic that can make a difference. If the majority of your website visitors are not clicking around, or are on the site for only a very short length of time, your SEO efforts can suffer. Hence, resist the temptation to “buy” website traffic, or drive traffic using misleading or clickbait-y headlines. Merely getting people to your site, who are not truly interested in being there, won’t really help you in the long run.
Social Media That Isn’t Branded and Optimized
Although social media and SEO are not necessarily directly correlated, they do go hand-in-hand in some ways. Having any sort of social presence is good for your brand, but only an optimized and well-planned social media presence will really help your SEO.
One of the biggest benefits for your SEO from social media accounts is that they provide additional landing pages people can access from search engines to reach your brand. When a customer Googles your brand’s name, not only can they find your website, but they can also be shown your Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok accounts. You want as many of these touchpoints as possible to fill up the search rankings anytime someone looks up your brand.
To ensure these accounts will show up when a user searches for your brand online, make sure your social accounts are all branded, include your company’s name, and include as much information as possible that matches information on your website. By optimizing your social media accounts in these ways, you’ll increase the chances that all these accounts will show up in search rankings.
Website That Isn’t Optimized for Mobile or Voice Search
As far as SEO is concerned, there’s more to worry about when it comes to your website than just working links and quick speeds. You need to ensure your site works well not only on a laptop or desktop, but on mobile devices as well. Optimizing your site for mobile can provide an instant boost for your SEO. The same is true for enabling and optimizing for voice search. Lacking these extra capabilities beyond basic desktop website functionality can really ding your SEO.
Not Enough Shares
When you’re posting on social media, there are many different goals you can be striving for: engagement, direct sales, or driving traffic to your website or brick and mortar location. One goal that businesses don’t always focus on, but that can be important for SEO, is getting shares of your content. There have been numerous studies that have shown a strong correlation between SEO rankings and social signals (ie. number of shares social media content is generating) for brands. Companies don’t always think to optimize their content for shares, but if they don’t, it can be detrimental to SEO efforts. The above 5 aspects of your digital marketing efforts can really play a role in the SEO rankings your brand achieves. They may not be as obvious or directly related as some other things, but they can make just as much of a difference. Keep these all in mind to help boost your SEO and keep it from being unnecessarily hurt.
