When developing or designing a website, it is easy to forget about the importance SEO plays. Having a strong SEO strategy is just as important as having a properly optimized and dynamic website, and it pays to give both of these a good amount of attention. Developing your SEO strategy alongside your actual website is the ideal way to give your shiny new website the best start and the attention it deserves.
It is easy to make mistakes, though, especially with SEO, and these are three common SEO mistakes which you should watch out for when it comes to writing copy and content for your new website.
#1: Keyword Cannibalization
Keyword cannibalization is something which can seriously hinder your website’s SEO, but what exactly is it? It is when your entire website relies on one single keyword or phrase and it is placed within multiple parts of your website.
This is very easy to do unintentionally, especially when operating within a niche industry, and pages using the same keyword in their titles, anchor and content can cause serious trouble for your website as it contravenes Google’s stringent guidelines.
It is a problem because Google does not know which word to prioritize, and it instead opts to discount them all as a result.
#2: Publishing Copied Content
Your website’s must be original, you absolutely must not copy content from other websites and sources – either indirectly or indirectly – because duplicate content is easily caught out by Google and when they catch you, that’s it – you’re done!
Instead of ripping content from other sources or using content spinners (never a good idea), spend time either writing the content yourself or hire a professional writer to do it for you. It is well worth investing in high-quality and original content as this will give your website the best chance at appearing higher in search results, which is the whole point of SEO.
#3: Infinite Scroll
When designing your website, you may be tempted to include the modern infinite scroll feature, especially if your site has lots of content. This can harm your website’s SEO performance, however, when done incorrectly.
If your website’s pagination is not set up correctly and you have implemented infinite scroll, Google and other search engines will not be able to crawl and index your page, meaning you stand no chance of appearing high in search results.
You can make infinite scroll pages Google and search engine-friendly, however, and Google has published information on this very issue because it is very common. Infinite scroll is a great idea if it fits the theme of your website – we are not discouraging its use, we are simply highlighting that it is easy to get wrong!
When you are designing your brand-new website, it’s a great idea to develop your site’s SEO alongside it. This way, you end up with a website which is ready to go straight away and will not need any tweaking to accommodate the SEO after you have already completed it.
