On page SEO plays a hugely important role in the ranking process. One of the biggest dangers in taking a DIY approach to Search Engine Optimisation is skimping or rushing on page work in a bid to try and speed up results. As SEO continues to evolve, there is a common misconception that off page work is where the real results can be found. This leads to on page work being treated as an afterthought. Needless to say, skipping over on page SEO almost always means putting your rankings at risk.
Avoid These Potentially Deadly On Page SEO Mistakes
How can you be sure that your on page efforts are not in vain? For starters, you can make sure that you are not falling prey to these commonly made on page mistakes.
Some of the worst on page SEO mistakes to avoid include the following:
Nofollowing your own links
This mistake is frequently made by those trying to prevent issues with duplicate content issues, hide member areas, prevent thin content pages from being indexed, hide archives or internal search result pages or perform A/B tests. This can have a negative impact on your SEO rankings without adding much value at all. Instead, try a noindex tag.
Not making use of canonicalisation
The rel=canonical tag is a very useful way to avoid duplicate content from getting indexed. It can also pass PageRank from a non-canonical page to a canonical page, which, in turn, means that you won’t lose page rank that may be accumulated by a non-canonical page. Failing to use this tag for conversion testing, to use an example, can result in both pages losing ranking.
Messy URL structure
Without a clear hierarchy, it is difficult for search engines to crawl your website. What this means is that search engines will not be able to separate important pages from less important pages, which will ultimately impact your ranking. Make sure that your link structure is logical, simple and clear, with a categorical hierarchy in place.
Absent or duplicate meta data
Missing meta descriptions will not be the end of the world. If you also have poorly written, absent, duplicate or non-optimised meta titles and no alt tags in place for your images, you will struggle to rank. Make sure that your meta titles have your key term in the front and ensure that your descriptions are sorted.
Poor quality content
You may not think that SEO content has much to do with your ranking. In reality, poor quality content that is duplicated, crowded with links, missing images (or filled purely with images), not optimised with your key phrase, not relevant or not to standard will not get you very far.
All in all, even a few simple changes can make all the difference when it comes to your rankings. Make sure that your on page SEO is on form and you will start to see results.
