The word ‘SEO’ (Search Engine optimization) essentially involves techniques which make any content on a particular website become more visible to search engines. SEO strategy and effective web development go together go hand-in-hand to attract both the search engine spiders and target audience to a website.

Developing an SEO (Search engine optimisation) strategy for business websites  is very important and not a new thing. But some websites still get the basic principles wrong and eventually pay the price in this highly competitive digital world. This is mainly because their developers fall for common avoidable SEO mistakes by neglecting basic principles —  which damage the whole SEO strategy, thereby affecting not only the websites ranking, but also its traffic — while building responsive websites.

The fact is, an ineffective developer is most likely to harm a website’s search rankings in so many ways. So for any programmer eager to avoid SEO pitfalls, we’ve listed  some common SEO mistakes you should avoid so that you’re not a danger to your clients.

Neglecting Mobile Users

It is believed that by 2020, there will be more than 6.1 billion smartphone users. Unfortunately, a number of programmers, while building responsive websites, don’t consider mobile users  as a critical element in their creative process. With Google offering mobile distinct algorithms to track and watch mobile friendly site performance, programmers need to be serious about mobile consumers’ just like they are about desktop consumers. A great way to test mobile friendliness is to use Google Mobile-Friendly Test Tool.

Not evaluating the page speed

Not evaluate your website during and after development is one of the most common SEO mistakes that are made.

The faster your website, the higher Google will rank it. The goodnews is, it’s now wasy to evaluate your page speed. You can use a tool such as Google PageSpeed Insights to check your site speed. This tool gives you a general review of what aspects need repair to improve the speed of a certain web page.

Compressing images before uploading them on your website can also increase your load time. If you have problem in achieving this, you can use a plugin called Smush Image Compression and Optimization.

Disregarding SEO Completely

Ignoring SEO completely is the worst mistake a developer can make. If you’re working on any kind of project for a client, it is of essence to have an understanding of how SEO can be used to improve their current situation.

If you’re new to SEO, or simply want a refresher course, here are a few resources you may find helpful:

• Moz’s Beginner’s Guide to SEO
• SEO Fast Start eBook

Failing To 301 Redirect Links When Changing Permalinks

A permalink (coined from “permanent link”) is a web address, or URL created to be the permanent address of that webpage. Permalink is a term for “the URLs where your posts and pages live.”So  a permalink change is anytime your existing URLs change, for any reason.

Some examples of permalink changes would be when:

• Your About page moves from http://mysite.com/about to http://mysite.com/about-us
• Your blog articles move from http://mysite.com/article-title format to http://mysite.com/month/year/article-title format
• Your site moves from http://mysite.com to https://mysite.com
• Your site moves from https://mysite.com to https://mynewsite.com

The negative effect of this is:

– The old address goes “missing”: there’s nothing there anymore.
– Google doesn’t know where that old content has gone,and this affects the ranking of those missing links.
Bearing these in mind as a software developer, any time a page is removed from a website, it should be 301 redirected to an active page of the site, which protects SEO link trust and also provides a good user experience.

Disorganized Web Design

One of the commonly overlooked SEO mistakes is creating disorganized website designs. A lot of programmers produce their site design over a period of time with no real strategy or search engine optimisation plans. Just after many years of including categories, products and info pages, the end result is clearly an uneven and cluttered website design that gives small worth to vital categories and landing web pages and stops people to navigate easily on the website.

Forgetting Google Search Console

Website performance should be tracked every day just like any other marketing activity.

A developer should  add Google Analytics code to every page of the website and verify the website in Google Search Console. This is very important for the ranking of any website on Google search.

Whether you’re a site owner or a developer, we hope you now have a picture of some major SEO disasters  can be easily avoided. If you’re working with a web developer as a business owner, no matter how great they are, you need to make sure that you’re also watching out for your SEO.

That’s why Charisol’s Search Engine Optimization Specialists do all it takes to l keep you updated on the newest techniques, which will play an important part in your SEO campaign.

At Charisol, we understand effective internet marketing concepts. We optimize with relevant websites and diversify each page to fit what targeted customers are looking for. We also have extensive experience in the software industry and help to create and maintain a formidable SEO strategy for your business.

We’re looking to help brands globally come to the realization that online marketing exists beyond social media marketing, email marketing, and other digital channels. Contact us today to help you to gain a foothold in your chosen niche and avoid SEO mistakes!