Which SEO errors are negatively impacting your search rankings?
Is it your meta tags? Page speed? Duplicate content?
According to new data, all three of these important factors (and more) very well might be hurting your SEO performance.
Throughout 2017, Serpstat (disclosure: I work for the company) indexed 175 million pages with its SEO audit tool and found a whopping 300 million errors!
Our team analyzed all this data, found the most common SEO errors, and now we’re ready to share the results! (You’ll find the full infographic at the bottom of this post.)
Here’s what we found.
Duplicate content is an identical or similar content that appears on more than one webpage.
Duplicate content makes it hard for search engines to understand which page to show to users in the SERPs.
Whenever there are two identical pages, Google has to choose one or another. Therefore, visibility of each page suffers.
Link equity suffers too, as it’s diluted between two pages.
The canonical tag helps you avoid these problems as it points which page is preferred for indexing. So check if you’re using this tag correctly.
=> Pages That Are Hidden from Indexation via Noindex Tag
A noindex tag tells the search engine when you don’t want to index a certain webpage.
We don’t consider this issue an error. It’s kind of reminder for our users.
See, you can exclude some page from indexing for some reason and simply forget to remove noindex tag when this reason is no longer relevant.
We recommend to keep track of your pages with noindex tag and check if it’s still necessary from time to time.
=> Iframe Found on a Page
This is an outdated element. Search engines ignore info hosted inside iframes.
What is more, it has a negative impact on your loading speed.
You should avoid using iframes.
=> Low Word Count
While there is no such thing as an optimal word count – and E-A-T is what really matters to Google – many SEO pros believe content should be at least 300 words.
It’s clear that the more text on the page, the easier it is for Google to understand what this page is about.
Try increasing the amount of relevant text on some of your webpages to see if it helps them to rank higher.
=> Other (Flash Elements on Page, Pages Hidden in Robots.Txt)
Flash elements are outdated and may affect your website ranking and loading speed negatively.
We don’t consider pages hidden in robots.txt an error, as was the case with noindex tag.
Just check if all your hidden pages still should be hidden from indexing.
=> Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
AMP is a Google project launched in 2015.
Using AMP helps loading speed on mobile devices.
Let’s see what AMP errors are the most common these days
=> Title / Description Too Long
The optimal number of words in the title tag is under 11 words (about 65 characters).
As for the description, it should consist of 100-320 characters.
A while ago, Google increased the length of the snippets, so now it’s quite difficult to make your description too long.
=> Duplicate Titles / Description
Description and title tags must be unique for every page on your site. Otherwise, it becomes difficult for search engines to understand which page to display for a specific keyword.
Also, if your pages with duplicate titles are identical, Gooogle will index only one of them. These two issues affect your ranking negatively.
=> Missing H1 Heading
You should add an H1 to every single page on your site.
Make sure it’s unique and used only one time per page.
=> Loading Speed
Even small delays can cause lower revenue and traffic on your site, so it’s important to check your pages’ speed performance across all devices.
There can be a lot of reasons for slow loading like bad images optimization, problems in JavaScript and the CSS code, etc. Here are the most important ones:
Is it your meta tags? Page speed? Duplicate content?
According to new data, all three of these important factors (and more) very well might be hurting your SEO performance.
Throughout 2017, Serpstat (disclosure: I work for the company) indexed 175 million pages with its SEO audit tool and found a whopping 300 million errors!
Our team analyzed all this data, found the most common SEO errors, and now we’re ready to share the results! (You’ll find the full infographic at the bottom of this post.)
Here’s what we found.
Duplicate content is an identical or similar content that appears on more than one webpage.
Duplicate content makes it hard for search engines to understand which page to show to users in the SERPs.
Whenever there are two identical pages, Google has to choose one or another. Therefore, visibility of each page suffers.
Link equity suffers too, as it’s diluted between two pages.
The canonical tag helps you avoid these problems as it points which page is preferred for indexing. So check if you’re using this tag correctly.
=> Pages That Are Hidden from Indexation via Noindex Tag
A noindex tag tells the search engine when you don’t want to index a certain webpage.
We don’t consider this issue an error. It’s kind of reminder for our users.
See, you can exclude some page from indexing for some reason and simply forget to remove noindex tag when this reason is no longer relevant.
We recommend to keep track of your pages with noindex tag and check if it’s still necessary from time to time.
=> Iframe Found on a Page
This is an outdated element. Search engines ignore info hosted inside iframes.
What is more, it has a negative impact on your loading speed.
You should avoid using iframes.
=> Low Word Count
While there is no such thing as an optimal word count – and E-A-T is what really matters to Google – many SEO pros believe content should be at least 300 words.
It’s clear that the more text on the page, the easier it is for Google to understand what this page is about.
Try increasing the amount of relevant text on some of your webpages to see if it helps them to rank higher.
=> Other (Flash Elements on Page, Pages Hidden in Robots.Txt)
Flash elements are outdated and may affect your website ranking and loading speed negatively.
We don’t consider pages hidden in robots.txt an error, as was the case with noindex tag.
Just check if all your hidden pages still should be hidden from indexing.
=> Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
AMP is a Google project launched in 2015.
Using AMP helps loading speed on mobile devices.
Let’s see what AMP errors are the most common these days
=> Title / Description Too Long
The optimal number of words in the title tag is under 11 words (about 65 characters).
As for the description, it should consist of 100-320 characters.
A while ago, Google increased the length of the snippets, so now it’s quite difficult to make your description too long.
=> Duplicate Titles / Description
Description and title tags must be unique for every page on your site. Otherwise, it becomes difficult for search engines to understand which page to display for a specific keyword.
Also, if your pages with duplicate titles are identical, Gooogle will index only one of them. These two issues affect your ranking negatively.
=> Missing H1 Heading
You should add an H1 to every single page on your site.
Make sure it’s unique and used only one time per page.
=> Loading Speed
Even small delays can cause lower revenue and traffic on your site, so it’s important to check your pages’ speed performance across all devices.
There can be a lot of reasons for slow loading like bad images optimization, problems in JavaScript and the CSS code, etc. Here are the most important ones:
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