A couple of years ago, you started noticing that your website is losing ground on Google. That means that your lofty ranking is being usurped right under your nose by your competitors. Is it just because Google’s algorithm changed? Well, sure, this search engine behemoth changes algorithm from time to time, but it’s not hard to keep up with the changes. If you can make the necessary adjustments, there’s no reason why you should lose your ranking on the search engine.
Funny enough, it could be your own making why your website is sliding down the rank. Web managers and business owners do many things that sabotage the website without them realizing it. If you are not careful and don’t conduct keyword research for SEO well, your website will not last a day on Google’s first page.
Outdated Content
There is nothing worse than having outdated content on your website. When people visit your site, they want to read brand-new content. Sure, your site has gotten enough visitors who seem to like your blog content in the past couple of years. But when was the last time you updated the blog? Social media and its capacity for micro-blogging have taken hold of many bloggers’ attention. So many businesses are guilty of this. Instead of churning out fresh content for their website, they only focus on their social media content.
When the content on your website is outdated, it will eventually become irrelevant. Google hates outdated and irrelevant content. It will take you out of the first-page ranking (if you are there) the moment you become consistently outdated.
Overdoing Links
In the past, internal and external linking is all the rage in search engine optimization (SEO). And Google seemed to be fine with it since many websites earned good rankings through this strategy. But as the algorithms changed, so did Google’s stand on internal linking. Overdoing it may cost your site its rank. Putting too many links to content will not only be distracting and overwhelming to the reader, but it will alarm Google of overstuffing.
If you are referencing something that has to do with old content on your website, then it’s okay to link to that. But if you’re only doing this because you want your content to look relevant, then it’s not going to do anything for your site’s ranking. Links should help readers learn more about the topic. They shouldn’t be there if they’re not adding to the information that readers need to know.
Too Many Advertisements
Of course, you want to earn every opportunity you have, so you’re letting a ton of display ads on your website. What happens if there are too many ads already? The web pages will have a hard time loading. If you know anything about your web visitors, you should also know that they hate waiting for a web page to load. The prevailing belief is that no web visitor will wait for more than five seconds for a page to load. If your homepage does not load in five seconds, forget about it. You already lost that visitor. That’s what happens when you have too many ads on the site.
Pop-ups
There’s nothing more annoying for web visitors than automated pop-ups. They only want to see your homepage, but you’re forcing them to look at a pop-up asking them to sign up for a newsletter? Some businesses like to have pop-ups on their site to improve their email list. The problem is that you may be sabotaging your business more than helping it. No one wants to visit your site anymore if ads keep on popping up on the screen.
Spammy Content and Backlinks
There is no way Google will forgive websites with duplicated content. The search engine is going to avoid recommending your website like a plague. It may even penalize you once they found out that you’ve been uploading spammy content on your website for the sake of having “new” content. Don’t think you can hoodwink Google into thinking that you have new content when you really just copied a blog from five years ago.
The same goes for backlinks. Google will frown upon your site if you link to a web page that is not relative to your topic. Broken links are a no-no, too, and may be considered spammy.
You can do more things to sabotage your own website, but these five things top the list. Make sure that you’re not doing any of these things. And if you do, address the problem as soon as possible, or you risk losing web visitors and loyal clients.
