Choncé Maddox — April 14, 2020 If you have a website for your business, odds are you’d like to get that website ranking better in Google. SEO can seem confusing at first, but it’s easy to follow once you get the hang of how Google’s algorithm works.
Sure, Google’s algorithm does change over time but it’s not hard to keep up with these changes and make adjustments to your site. That said, here are 5 things on your website that could sabotage your Google ranking.
1. Outdated Content
It’s no secret that Google loves fresh content. If you have content on your blog that does well, realize things may change over time. Over time, these become outdated or no longer relevant. Google wants all content to be fresh, current, and helpful to the user.
This means you should focus on updating content each year especially when it comes to your most popular blog posts. Focus on making your content better overall and go more in-depth on certain topics.
2. Overdoing Internal Links
There’s nothing wrong with linking to other content on your website in blog posts. However, you can overdo it and Google doesn’t like this. Try to avoid stuffing a ton of links into one piece of content. This could actually be distracting and overwhelming for the user.
Make sure you’re focusing on linking to content that is relevant and will aid the user reading it. For example, if you’re referencing something that happened in the past and want to link to it, that would make a good internal link.
Another good idea for internal linking would be to share additional information about a topic that you briefly mention in one piece of content.
Personally, I like to add related content links after some of my headings for blog posts to help readers who’d like to learn more about what I just discussed.
3. Additional Advertising
Another thing that can sabotage your Google ranking is having a ton of display ads on your website. This increases your site’s load time and has a direct impact on your website’s SEO. To check your site’s load time, you can go to WebpageTest.org.
Make sure you’re being mindful of the ads you place on your website and make sure they’re not distracting to the user.
4. Automated Pop-ups
Google has been clear that is views some automated pop-ups as intrusive and distracting to the user’s experience. Some businesses like to have pop-up content as it could help better market your email list.
However, you’ll have to choose which one you want more. You can always test having a pop-up on your site and see how well it does. Then test-taking it off and see if your Google ranking improves.
Another option would be to consider including pop-up content when a user is leaving and not right when they arrive on your site.
5. Backlinks to Spammy Sites
Google doesn’t like reciprocal linking. That said, just avoid exchanging links with sites that are not relevant to your niche. Some people are simply looking for backlinks and will even pay a small fee to you for linking to them. This is usually frowned upon by Google and could hurt your SEO later own the line.
Focus on only be linking to pages that make sense. If they’re relevant to your topic and would be helpful to users, then it’s probably not a bad idea.
Summary
As you can see, there are quite a few things you can do to sabotage your Google ranking. Having more success on Google all comes down to providing the best user experience. If you can provide high-quality and helpful content, that’s a good start.
But take it a step further and make sure your site doesn’t contain lots of distractions like tons of ads, pop-ups, or anything else that could deter users.
Improving your site’s SEO can be overwhelming if you try to do everything at once. Take your time and tackle each thing on your list one-by-one. Organic SEO is a long-term game but your efforts today (large or small) will pay off tomorrow.
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