5 Common SEO Problems of 2021 You Need to Fix NOW!

Search engine optimization plays a crucial role in the growth of your business online. Having the right strategy will not only help search engine bots find and understand your site faster for ranking, but it will also improve the kind of experience you provide your web visitors.

Furthermore, SEO can help drive organic traffic and steadily increase your ranking in the search results for the long term.

However, implementing SEO can be tricky, especially if you don’t have any knowledge or experience working with algorithms. There are many on-page and off-page factors you need to consider, and if you’re unaware of what these are, a single mistake can cause your site’s ranking to collapse.

This is why we highly recommend businesses to avoid hiring newbie marketers or doing it themselves. It’s best to hire an expert to handle your SEO.

As your go-to SEO services provider in Florida, we will share with you five of the most common SEO problems our new clients had encountered before onboarding with us.

Without any more delays, let’s get started!

Localization Problems

Localization refers to elements of your website, content, and your other marketing efforts that are tailored to a specific geographic location or a particular region.

This strategy is commonly used by businesses that are targeting international clients. It allows them to reach foreign users using terms that are familiar to them.

However, having multiple languages or providing localized text for foreign users can lead to indexing penalties if not set up correctly.

So, how do you build localized text correctly on your website? Here’s how:

• Use the right URL structure for it
• Add HREFLang in your source code
• Include the location and language code

HREFLang is an attribute that allows you to specify the language and optional geographic limits of a page. You can use it to define the lingual and geographical targeting of a site.

If your business caters to international clients and uses multiple languages, make sure to match the locale dynamic with the current language.

Keyword Cannibalization

If you haven’t heard of keyword cannibalization before, then let us introduce you to it.

Keyword cannibalization happens when you have multiple pages on your site that are using identical or similar keywords. This can confuse search engine bots, and as a result, they can’t determine which page on your site they should rank higher.

Keyword cannibalization can lower the rank of all the pages on your site that share the same keywords.

So, how do you know if your site is suffering from keyword cannibalization?

Audit your site!

Auditing your site helps you diagnose the pages that are sharing similar or identical keywords. To do this, create a spreadsheet and list all of your site’s major URLs together with their corresponding keywords.

You can also use a keyword mapping tool to make this step easier. Keyword mapping is the process of designating relevant keywords to the different pages on your site based on comprehensive keyword research.

After you’ve completed your list, scan through it and see if there are any duplicate entries. Once you’ve identified which pages on your site are suffering from keyword cannibalization, it’s time to fix them.

There are five ways you can fix keyword cannibalization, depending on the root of the problem:

1. Revamp your website by turning your most authoritative page into a landing page that links to other unique pages on your site that uses related keywords.

2. Create a new landing page that will serve as your authoritative source page for each of your targeted keywords. Then, link all the pages on your site that use variations of those keywords.

3. Combine similar content that is targeting the same keywords, especially if they aren’t unique enough to warrant having different pages.

4. Find new relevant keywords to use. If you already have content-rich pages that are highly diverse, all you need is a proper keyword planning strategy.

5. Use 301 redirects to consolidate your cannibalized content, especially if you already have too many pages ranking for the same terms. But, as much as possible, only use this as a last resort. Too many redirects can hurt your site.

The technical side of SEO is complicated. Don’t hesitate to seek professional assistance from SEO services in Florida to guarantee the success of your SEO efforts.

Low-Quality Content

One of the most common SEO problems that websites have is poor quality content. If you’re not writing informative blog posts, educational videos, or engaging infographics that aim to answer the questions or address the pain points of your target audience, then it’s probably the reason why your ranking isn’t doing so well.

Remember, although SEO is there to help search engine bots better crawl and index your site for relevant searches, your content should still be centered around your target audience’s needs, not those of the bots.

Imagine producing content without having the intent of your target audience in mind. Obviously, none of your blog posts, article, or videos will resonate with them - all the more if they’re only stuffed with keywords for ranking.

Yes, it may help drive people to your site, but that’s it. They won’t engage or even stay for a minute. They’ll bounce right away after seeing how your content provides no value to them, and this can negatively impact your rankings.

Never underestimate the power of high-quality content. It can attract the right audience to your website, keep them engaged, establish trust, and push them to take action.

Here are some tips to help you produce solid, targeted content for your audience:

1. Use the topic cluster model to make sure you cover every possible topic your target audience might be interested in regarding a specific keyword you want to rank for.

2. Do thorough keyword research and understand the reason why your target audience uses those words or phrases during a search.

3. Map out your target audience’s buyer’s journey and try to think of the possible pain points they may have at each stage and try to address them in your content.

4. Update your old blog posts and see to it that they reach the optimal length required.

5. Search for the keywords you want to rank for and check the top three highest-ranking search results. Find out their length, what type of content they are, from what angle they’re discussing the topic, and then take inspiration from them to create something better and more valuable.

Poor Internal Linking Tactics and No Backlinks

Links contribute a lot to your ranking. The more quality links you get from authority sites, the more Google sees you as credible and worthy of citation, which results in a better ranking. Search engines see backlinks as trust signals.

Unfortunately, many websites still don’t have backlinks and have poor internal linking strategies. Moz discovered that of the 100,000 random blogs they examined, around 75% had no external links. Other studies also revealed that 94% of content online received zero external links.

If you know your pages aren’t getting any backlinks and you’re not taking your internal linking seriously, it’s time to change your strategy.

The following tips can help increase your chances of getting backlinks:

1. Create better quality content that’s link-worthy.  Content like infographics, videos, tutorials, and resource guides usually drive people to post or link back to on their site, so be sure to include them.

2. Write for other websites that accept guest posting. To find such websites, simply search your target keyword and add “guest post” at the end.

3. Provide high-quality content for HARO (Help a Reporter Out). When it comes to authority sites, you can never go wrong with journalistic blogs or news websites.

4. Check your top outbound links. Reach out to the websites you’re mostly linking back to and see if they’re willing to form a partnership.

5. Offer to make a testimonial. If you have former clients or suppliers that run a website, offer to make a testimonial.

6. Link to your most valuable core pages. If you follow the topic cluster model, it’ll be easier for you to create an internal linking structure that will allow search engine bots to crawl the content of your site.

Overly-Optimized Anchor Text

We know what you’re thinking, and yes, there is such a thing as an overly-optimized anchor text.

But, what exactly is it?

Anchor texts are clickable words users see on your page that are hyperlinked going to another site or document on the web.

An anchor text becomes overly optimized when your site is using a keyword as anchor text repeatedly. For search engines, this will look spammy.

So, how can you fix this? There are four things you can do to make sure your anchor texts aren’t overly optimized:

1. Avoid using keywords as your anchor text. If you have way too many of them, eliminate them one by one with words that are highly relevant to the page you’re linking to.

2. Use highly relevant anchor texts and limit your number of anchor texts per page. We suggest you stick to a minimum of two and make sure your anchor texts are related to the page you’re linking out to.

3. Use the thesaurus to find alternatives to your keywords. This will not only help you rank for your targeted keywords but also other terms related to them.

Looking for the Best SEO Services in Florida?

Localization, keyword cannibalization, poor content, lack of backlinks, and using overly-optimized anchor texts are just some of the most common SEO problems business website owners experience that negatively impact their ranking.

Use this article to audit your site and check if it’s suffering from any of the issues we mentioned above.

Digital Resource is an SEO services company in Florida that can help you get more customers online, boost your sales, and achieve business goals through an effective SEO strategy that’s tailored for your business. Contact us today for a free SEO scan to check how your site is doing- SEO-wise.