Almost every business in the world wants to rank on the first page of Google, but very few ever get there. With the best SEO will in the world, top-result status is a mountain many marketers struggle to climb.
Below are some points that could be holding your website back from ranking success:-
1) Duplicate Content
Duplicate content isn’t useful content. Whether it’s your website copy or your blog pieces, Google proactively penalizes sites which don’t have original content.In the era of content marketing, people can fall into the trap of thinking that any content is worthwhile content. That simply isn’t the case. The moment you start sacrificing quality for quantity is the moment your traffic will plummet.
2) Thin Content
Thin content is just as bad as duplicate content. Think rich, in-depth, engaging content and you’re on the same lines as Google. This is even more important for highly-competitive keywords. To stand a chance of competing with the big boys, smaller businesses may want a content-rich site.
3) Anchor Text Over-Optimization
The world of SEO is one of constant push and pull–new ways to rank are identified, those methods are abused, Google introduces new rules to penalize cheaters. And so on it goes.
Anchor text has been far from immune. Back in the day, SEO was simple. Identify a keyword, and then use that keyword a few times in your copy and in the anchor text.Google then changed the algorithm to actively penalize anyone who over-optimized their anchor text. Instead focus on building a bank of rich, shareable, interesting content, instead of focusing on spamming your anchor text.
4) Bad Backlinks
Backlinks are still one of the most important factors in search ranking. Google uses backlinks to determine how relevant and valuable that content is–figuring that a link from page 1 to page 2 is effectively an endorsement by page 1 of page 2.Backlinks followed the same cycle as the rest of SEO–first it worked well, then people figured out how to abuse it, now you can get penalized in Google if you don’t stick to stringent quality guidelines.
5) Non-Optimized Page Titles
Page titles are an element that Google weights very heavily when deciding what your page is about and how valuable it is. The logic here is that your page title has to capture everything your page is about in a short character limit, so it’s probably a good indicator of content.
It’s really important to include the core keyword you’re targeting in your page title, basically. Not only will this be better for your ranking, it is also better for your click-through rate as people can immediately identify relevance to their search query.
6) Insecure Site
This is another relatively recent change from Google, who announced last year that site security is a ranking factor. Basically, all sites that start with https:// are secure sites, and this will now have a role to play in determining ranking.
It’s hard to determine how important this factor will be, but when it comes to SEO any boost is a worthwhile boost.
7) Accidentally No-Indexing
No-indexing is one of those things that seems really obvious, but it can so easily be missed. A single line of code hiding on your website, and your site is invisible to Google.This is one of the first things you should check, if you’re convinced you should be ranking in Google but aren’t.
8) Bad User Experience
Search ranking can only get you so far. If your user experience is bad, it doesn’t matter how many visitors your site gets, because your bounce rate will be outrageous. Google looks for signals that people who visit your site find it valuable – one such signal is how long they stay there. A high bounce rate is an indication that your traffic quickly leaves, which Google figures to mean it’s not useful.