How to go from a rank of #1 in Google to nothing. Sounds like a nightmare, right? Why so many people make these mistakes is not yet known, but there are some SEO trends that I have seen over and over again in my work with clients. These errors can put you at risk of getting your rankings hurt or even getting penalized by Google and have huge financial implications as well. So let’s take a look at some of the most common SEO mistakes that people make, what they do wrong, and how you can avoid them!

There are plenty more ways to screw up your website’s ranking than I could fit into this one article alone. So, stay tuned for some more good stuff on this topic.

 

1) Getting penalized for doing nothing.

As I said before, there are two ways to be penalized by Google: (1) Doing nothing at all and (2) Mistakes that are done knowingly and on purpose. It’s one of the most commonly made mistakes by websites and it is also the most dangerous kind of mistake you can make that gets you in trouble with Google: your website simply won’t rank because of a mistake so small that only someone who knows a lot about SEO would have noticed it or been able to exploit the mistake without you noticing! That’s exactly what happened to Google+ profile builder. Google penalized them after their “profile generator” was found to be violating their site-wide guidelines. You can check Google’s full post on the issue here.

 

2) Inadequate backlinks.

A lot of people ask me this question: “Why is it that a website with no traffic and 0+ inbound links is still ranked #1 in Google?” The answer to that question is that, at first glance, a website with no inbound links may seem like it’s doing something right. However, the reality is that these websites are most likely benefitting from some kind of backlink that is not being tracked. In other words, there are probably many backlinks coming into the website (even unknowingly) but none of them are being tracked in Google Analytics or any other tracking tool.

 

An example of this can be found here. The website with no traffic appeared to be rank #1 in Google on a keyword that is searched for thousands of times per month. Some might say they did nothing wrong and deserved to rank at #1 because they’ve done nothing that would get them penalized by Google. But the reality is that they were most likely benefiting from hundreds of backlinks that were not being tracked.

 

3) Not targeting the right keywords.

When I started out, I learned that my first priority should be to target very specific keywords and optimize them as much as possible to be more successful in gaining more organic traffic. But I would often see sites ranking well in Google with way too many keywords on their titles and descriptions. Many of these websites were doing this simply because those were the only two fields you could use in the SERPs (search engine results pages). But there are many other ways than just title and description you can use to make sure your site ranks well for a given keyword or phrase.

 

4) Not using the keywords you are already ranking for in your content.

This is often a mistake that I see even on sites that have been around for a while. I’m guessing it’s because many people are afraid of having their site penalized by Google if they make any mistake at all, but don’t worry; this is something you can do with total confidence.

 

Let’s say your website ranks well on the keyword “best diets to lose weight fast” and you haven’t used this term anywhere on your website yet. Hire Our Professional SEO Company India to avoid these mistakes and gets the best result.