Good SEO ranking is not just about what you’re doing right but could also be affected by what you’re doing wrong. In most cases, polishing things up and correcting some of these mistakes could greatly help your website rank well.

Let's get into some SEO mistakes that you can easily polish in order to improve your website’s ranking, namely these things:

• Disregarding the low-ranking keywords
• Having a poor site structure
• Having a poor website design
• Content publishing is neither enough nor consistent

Let’s get right into it!

SEO Mistake 1. Disregarding the low-ranking keywords

*Image lifted from *Ryte Wiki

An SEO rule of thumb you should keep in mind is this: no matter how many tips you read about SEO’s best practices, it’s never complete without an emphasis on keyword research. One of the more drastic SEO mistakes you can commit is dismissing keyword research altogether. Keywords are crucial to attracting visitors or traffic to your website, yet some marketers tend to disregard the “low hanging fruit” or keywords/keyword phrases that aren’t doing very well compared to its more competitive counterparts.

And yes, it’s a daunting, risky option. However, any outright dismissal may mean missing out on the opportunity to have your website rank well on something that it has a greater chance of ranking for. Think of it this way: the big guns are already using and ranking well with these high-traffic keywords. Since they are, there’s a greater probability of visitors choosing them over smaller players. This leaves you with an immense chance of capturing the audience from the remaining, low competition keywords.

SEO Mistake 2. Having a poor site structure

This is one of the most overlooked SEO mistakes out there: poor site structure. Websites have structures. This “structure” helps search engine crawlers discern your high authority pages from the low authority ones. Some can cripple their websites by burying their high authority webpages deep into the site architecture, which leads to a jumble of pages or a dramatic decrease in the website’s chance to rank well. So, for your webpages to find a sense of order create your site structure** in a way that highlights first and foremost, the high authority pages** before you trickle down to the low authority ones. Consider this site structure from Wise SEO:

Your home page is the highest authority page on your website since it has the greatest number of incoming and inbound links. So, the farther a page is to your home page, the less authority it has (or the worse it ranks). So, it’s crucial to arrange your webpages in a manner that highlights your most important pages to help attract and direct more visitors to your website.

SEO Mistake 3. Having a poor website design

A poor website design is off-putting. Visitors are discerning about the websites they visit, and nothing screams “unprofessional” more than a website that has totally thrown the aesthetics out the window. Putting a lot of thought into a website’s design could go a long way; not only does it reflect your brand, but a good design is also used by your audience as a barometer for how serious you are at delivering quality services to them.

So, when considering your website’s design, think about components such as the colour palette; typography; text size, colour, and readability; images or videos; and icons. You need to tie-up all these aspects, make them work coherently, and build quality websites to deliver a more seamless, more appealing user experience to your visitors.

SEO Mistake 4. Content publishing is neither enough nor consistent

Probably one of the most glaring SEO mistakes one can ever commit is not being consistent with their content. Content is not only a good source of information but is also essential for indexing and ranking. So being inconsistent with your content schedule can affect SEO adversely since search engine crawlers use your website’s content as a reference. The more content you publish, the greater number of web links these search engines can reference.

Additionally, the more you publish content, the more search engines will think that your site’s active. Your site’s activity plus engagement it gets signal search engines that you’re worthy. And while it’s not always easy to churn out impactful content, or create a good content strategy, remember that whatever you publish must not only resonate with your readers but also be relevant to them.

Big or small websites, everyone’s susceptible to committing these SEO mistakes.

With SEO being so vast and continuously evolving, it wouldn’t come as a surprise if you stumble around it occasionally. It takes a certain kind of openness to admit that some aspects of your website are no longer working. There’s no harm in polishing up these glaring SEO mistakes! Good websites do this to not only improve their ranking but also offer their users a more seamless user experience.

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