What's Hurting Your Site's SEO Rankings? 

Many people think of SEO as the art and science of getting a website ranked highly on search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing. You can do many things to optimize your site for search — e.g., writing fresh content and making sure your coding is clean. However, you could also make mistakes that will tank your website's SEO rankings!

Continue reading to find out what these mistakes are and why they can be so damaging to your rankings.

Duplicate Content

Duplicating content on your website is one of the worst things you can do to your site's SEO rankings. It's not just a matter of repetition, either. Google views plagiarized content as "spammy" and can penalize sites that use such content. Plus, if you don't create unique content, you won't be able to rank for competitive search terms.

Neglecting Site Speed

One of the most common mistakes you can make is not optimizing for site speed. It doesn't matter how great your content is if no one can access it! After all, if your site loads slowly, people are likely to leave before seeing what you offer.

Not Tracking Your Analytics

We cannot overstate how important it is to set up Google Analytics and start tracking your site. It's easy, free, and will help you learn about your users. However, some people don't even bother doing it because they think it takes too much time or are intimidated by the process. But when you don't track analytics, you don't know who is coming to your site, how long they stay on it, and what pages they visit.

Any New York City SEO expert will tell you how valuable it is to have a deep knowledge of your audience. Only by understanding who visits your site and what they do when they're there can you make strategic decisions about content, campaigns, and where to allocate resources. If you aren't tracking your analytics, you don't even know if what you are doing is working or not.

Ignoring Mobile Optimization

Despite the mobile revolution, many websites have not been updated to work on all devices properly. This is a problem for two reasons. First, Google has begun to penalize sites that are not "responsive" — or sites that cannot adjust their layout and content automatically to fit any device screen size. Second, with so many people using their phones for web browsing now, you are missing out on a lot of potential traffic.

Bad Social Media Engagement

You may wonder how social media has anything to do with your site's SEO rankings. Well, it does! Social engagement is a huge ranking signal that Google looks for. The more engaged your followers are, the higher your rank in SERPs (search engine result pages). It might seem tedious at first, but engaging with your followers regularly will reap benefits in the form of higher search rankings and increased traffic to your site.

Trying to Do It All Yourself

Instead of taking a DIY approach to strengthening your online presence, you should hire professional SEO services in New York. SEO specialists will have a much more intimate knowledge of SEO than you ever could, and they will be able to help push your site up on search engine listings.

In addition, they can provide information about what works and what doesn't, which can help prevent issues like penalties from Google. Not to mention that working with an outside company will allow you to focus on other aspects of running your business without worrying about how it will affect your rankings.

Conclusion

In today's competitive online world, losing sight of your site's true priorities can be easy. In the race to get more customers and sales, business owners sometimes make decisions that threaten their website's SEO rankings rather than help them. While it may seem that many of these decisions are just harmless mistakes, you should avoid them if you want to improve your site's SEO.

SEO Long Island is a division of Cybernet LLC based in Long Beach, Long Island. We recognize the importance of good SEO to local and national businesses.