Have you heard of the skyscraper technique for SEO? Chances are, you’ve seen this technique being promoted, but you’re not sure if it will work for you. 

The great thing about skyscraping is that it can work for all kinds of businesses if you follow the correct process. Once you understand how the skyscraper technique works, you’ll see how it can help improve your backlink structure and increase the number of visitors to your website. Read on to find out how!

What Is The Skyscraper Technique?

The foundations of skyscraping were laid out by Brian Dean from Backlinko. Over the years, other SEO experts have written about the skyscraper technique and how it works. 

The skyscraper technique is an SEO tactic that uses research and link building through blogger outreach. The technique revolves around finding popular articles on the subject you want to write about, select one of those articles, and see how you can create your own better version of it. This can mean using different types of media, creating infographics and so on.

Make sure that you are actually creating something better, not article spinning. You need to create something new that has the potential to get you to the first spot on SERPs (search engine result pages). 

Why Should You Use The Skyscraper Technique?

There are three main reasons why you should use the skyscraper technique in your content strategy. 

First of all, if you choose a popular article that ranks high, you know there is demand for that specific subject. Analyze why that content is so popular, for example, does it use established sources, does it solve a problem for the readers, etc. Make sure to keep the same search intent on the new piece you are creating. 

Secondly, if the first article was popular, this means that there is a specific audience that is interested in this specific topic and will be interested in what you have to say. If your article makes the subject exciting and up to date, you can easily get the links you need by reaching out to those that are already linked to the first article.

Lastly, if Google ranks that original content high, by creating something better and more interesting, you get a chance to outrank it with your new piece. So, if you do it right, you have a decent probability of ranking on the top of the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) for the same keywords.

Okay, so you might be asking yourself: is it really that easy? Well, as usual, the devil’s in the details. We’ll go through the steps you need to take in order to successfully create a skyscraper article. 

How To Make The Skyscraper Technique Work For You Using SERPed Tools

Now that you know what skyscraping is all about, let’s get technical: what do you have to do in order to use the skyscraper technique for SEO – and increase your traffic? In this section, we’ll explain how to make skyscraping work for you using SERPed tools. 

1. Find Skyscraping Opportunities

To find the ideal article to try this technique, we recommend using SERPed’s Ultimate Research tool. 

First of all, on the Tools menu, select Ultimate Research.

This will show you the list of previous searches. In order to search for a new keyword, click the blue “+” button at the top right.

We recommend using a keyword that’s highly specific to your niche. In this case, we went with “skyscraping”, for obvious reasons.

To start your search, click the big Search Keyword button. On the results page, you’ll see similar keywords. In order to find article ideas for each keyword, click on the three-dot button at the right of each result.

Then, select Launch Keyword Analyzer from the menu that appears.

This option will open a menu with a few important metrics for the keyword.

Scroll down and you’ll see a few websites that rank for that keyword:

Check each of these websites on the list for the usual metrics: Alexa Rank, Moz Rank, Domain Authority, Page Authority… Once you have taken a look at the articles, we recommend checking the backlink profile for each page. To find these backlinks, click on Backlink Explorer on the Tools menu, under SEO Analysis.

Once you open that tool, you’ll see a list of previous searches. To start a new backlink profile check, simply click on the blue “+” button at the top right.

On the next window, you get to choose to see the backlinks for a single site or a competitor analysis using Backlink Gaps. Since we already have a single URL to use (the one from the original article), we’ll pick the first option: Single Site.

Then, paste the URL you want to check:

Now, click on the Explore Backlinks button.

The result will be a list of the backlinks for that article, and you can filter them by Citation Flow, Trust Flow, or the anchor text. It takes a while to analyze all the results, but you can export them using the option Export To .CSV by clicking on the three-dot button on the top of the list:

Exporting the file to .CSV will enable you to segment the links according to the values of each field, making it easier to spot the backlinks you should go after.

2. Create New Content

It’s not always easy to create new content, especially if you are competing for the first spot on SERPs. There are many ways of creating new material for a well-known subject, but they all fall within four categories: 

• Length. If the average article is 1000 words or less, write 1200 words. If it lists 20 items, list 50, and so on.
• Depth. If there is a way to go into more detail, go for it.
• Design. If the text can be summed up in an infographic for easier interpretation, why not?
• Freshness. If the article has been written a while ago and is no longer up to date, create fresh content by updating the information that was available before.

This does not mean that by following the four categories, the article is going to land you the first spot on Google SERPs. It also does not imply that you have to do all this in order to create your masterpiece. You should put a lot of effort into every article you create, but remember that content for SEO is both a science and an art.

Another tip is to check your other competitors to get a feel of what is working or not. Don’t just use one article as a source; check out what is out there and match your search intent and subject with the different content available.

This also works for your old blog content; a way to repurpose old material is to join two different articles that are incomplete by themselves but fit together perfectly. This is a great way to give your old content a new life. 

3. Reach Out For Possible Backlinks

This is the bit that can make or break your skyscraper technique for SEO. 

A great part of your time spent on this technique is selecting the ideal websites to request backlinks from. First and foremost, go after the authority links from the article you selected in the first step. 

Authority links have a higher Citation Flow and Trust Flow (metrics from Majestic, but you can check them using SERPed as we mentioned above). Of course, some backlinks seem suspicious immediately, especially if they’re in a different language from the original source content and the anchor text reads weird. 

Once you have your list of the ideal websites to ask for backlinks, you need to contact the webmasters. For these contacts, the right message is essential.

When crafting your email messages to send to website owners, make sure you personalize each message accordingly. Don’t just create a template and replace the name of the person you’re contacting. 

We recommend taking a look at your backlink prospects’ profiles on LinkedIn, check other articles they published that are related to your subject… Make sure you know enough about the person you are getting in touch with. 

The biggest mistake when contacting website owners is approaching everyone with the same email content. Every webmaster has different goals and points of view, and you need to respect that – this is the best thing you can do to make sure your outreach efforts are successful. 

Wrapping Up

There’s a lot more to be said about the skyscraper technique, but this is only a short guide that will help you start using skyscraping for SEO. 

It’s not easy to reach the top when it comes to SERPs, but it is possible. Nonetheless, it’s not something that happens overnight, so we advise you to be patient and keep on improving your content. 

We’ll soon have another article that will help you improve your old blog posts, which will also help you climb up the rankings. 

If you have any questions, or would like to add something to this guide, feel free to use the comment section below or reach out to us on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. 

The post The Skyscraper Technique – A Quick Guide appeared first on Serped.com.

If you’re interested in SEO, you’ve probably wondered about how search engines work. Especially, Google's search engine, since approximately 87% of all online searches are done in Google. Having the lion’s share of the search engine market, Google is without a doubt the main search engine that SEOs care about – although this might not be the case depending on your location.

However, all search engines have the same goal: to locate information online that best matched the terms that were searched. But is that all it is? How do search engines work anyway? In this article, we’ll answer that question thoroughly. Let’s start with the basics.

1. The primary actions of a search engine

There are three primary actions that a search engine goes through which describe how search engines work. We’ll discuss them quickly:

Crawl 

Crawlers (or bots – we’ll explain this concept further along this article) travel the internet looking for new content to add to their index. They read all the content and code on each URL.

Index 

The search engine stores all the information collected during the crawling process, and prepares them to be matched to specific searches.

Rank 

Ranking connects the content indexed to the results that best match the user query, attributing a position in the search results for each URL in order to best serve users with the content they’re after. They are sorted from the most relevant to the least relevant in the search results.

2. Crawling

This is the first step in the search process. In order for your website to be crawled, you need to make sure that every single piece of content and code are crawler-friendly. There are two main things you need to do in order for your website to be accurately crawled: using a robots.txt file and defining URL parameters on Google Search Console.

2.1. Can search engines find every page on your website?

In order for your website to rank for specific keywords you have chosen, it needs to be crawled and indexed. The first thing you need to do is to use the “site:yourdomain.com” search on Google.

This search will allow you to find out how many pages on your website are indexed right now. This will help you figure out if there are any pages on your website that haven’t been correctly crawled. Once you have this information, you can track crawling errors.

Of course, this is not an exact listing of how many pages on your website have been crawled. If some pages do not show, there can be a few other reasons why this is the case:

• If your website is brand new, it might not have been crawled yet. In this case, we recommend installing Google Search Console to accelerate that process.
• There might be no external websites linking to your website. We advise you to start with a link building strategy from the beginning to avoid this.
• Navigation on your website might make it difficult for bots to crawl it.
• Your site has been penalized by Google for some reason, blocking it from showing on search results.

We won’t go into details about penalizations from Google in this article, because they don’t happen often. Unless your website uses spammy tactics, you don’t need to worry about being penalized.

However, there might be pages you don’t want Google to crawl: such as pages with duplicate content, test pages, landing pages for your campaigns, and so on. To keep Google from crawling those pages – and making sure it indexes the other ones – you should use a robots.txt file.

Robots.txt

This file should be located at the root of your domain (such as yourdomain.com/robots.txt), as it helps Google understand how to crawl your website. If the file does not exist, Google will crawl all pages. If you have a robots.txt file, Google will follow the rules set out on it while crawling your website, thus indexing only the URLs that aren’t blocked by the file.

However, if your robots.txt file has errors, Google will not be able to crawl your website correctly, thereby preventing it from being indexed.

Using Google Search Console to Define URL Parameters

Sometimes, you may have a need to use dynamic URLs. There are two types of URLs: static and dynamic. A static URL is something like this: https://www.serped.com/domain-authority. This URL is always going to look the same, no matter where you access it from.

Dynamic URLs depend on the search terms used, and are commonly used on eCommerce websites. Let’s say you’re making a search on Amazon. As you click through, your URL changes and adds parameters to match your search filters. So you get a URL like this: https://www.amazon.com/s?bbn=16225006011&rh=n%3A%2116225006011%2Cn%3A11057241&dc&fst=as%3Aoff&pf_rd_i=16225006011&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_p=fd971cf1-cdbc-4301-8c91-0a56b1c1e13f&pf_rd_r=MFAGVPVN324FNGJQ2QDC&pf_rd_s=merchandised-search-4&pf_rd_t=101&qid=1488484834&rnid=16225006011&ref=s9_acss_bw_cts_AEVNBEAU_T3_w See the difference?

However, you can use Google Search Console to define which pages should be crawled and indexed according to these parameters. You just need to set options such as “crawl no URLs with the X parameter” in order to avoid crawling of duplicate content.

2.2. Common navigation issues

There are several aspects in website navigation that can affect how your website is crawled, and whether it is crawled correctly or not. Below are a few common navigation mistakes that can prevent your website from being crawled properly:

• Different navigation in the mobile version and the desktop version.
• Google has improved the way it crawls Javascript items in the navigation, but it is still recommended to use HTML for it. Using Javascript for the menu buttons is not recommended.
• If users see different content according to a defined personalization, it can keep Googlebot (Google’s crawler) from accessing all the pages. It can even lead to a penalization if Google considers this as cloaking on your website (a black hat technique).
• Make sure all your primary pages get links to them from the homepage – Googlebot uses links to travel between your pages.

Using sitemaps

Sitemaps make sure all your relevant pages are crawled and indexed. This is a major step in order to create a clean information architecture. Information architecture refers to the way pages are connected and labeled in order for visitors to navigate easily through your website.

A sitemap, as the name suggests, is a map of your website, including all the URLs you want bots to crawl. Our first advice is to follow Google’s rules for sitemaps. Other than that, you should make sure that your sitemap does not include URLs you are hiding in your robots.txt and vice versa. After that, you need to upload your sitemap to your website, in the root of your website (just like your robots.txt), and submit it on Google Search Console (GSC).

We mentioned Google Search Console above, and we definitely recommend using it even if you don’t have to define URL parameters. GSC is a powerful tool for your SEO, and it can help you detect crawling and indexing errors quickly.

If your website is not updated often, GSC can help as well. If your website does not update frequently, Google bot will stop crawling it for updates. Using Google Search Console, you can force a crawl when you’ve added some blog posts or made some major changes in your website structure and content.

2.3. Common crawling errors

While crawling your website, crawlers can find errors – just as we mentioned previously. You can check those on Google Search Console: however, you need to know what caused them and what kind of errors they are in order to fix them. We’re going to list the main types of crawling errors you’ll usually encounter on your website.

4xx Codes

This type of code is due to a client error. What usually causes these errors is usually either a URL typo, broken redirects, or the page has been deleted. The most common is error 404. Since this happens on every website, we recommend having a page designed to show your users when there is a “404 – not found” error, such as the one below:

5xx Codes

5xx codes are due to a server error. Google Search Console has a tab dedicated to these errors only. When you have a 5xx error, it means the server was unable to fulfill the request (performed by a user or by a search engine). Often, what happens is the request for this specific URL timed out. When a request times out, bots will abandon it.

To solve these issues, you need to fix your server connectivity.

How To Use 301 Redirects

Luckily, there is a way to prevent these errors: using a 301 redirect. 301 redirects are permanent, so they’re perfect to make sure users get to the right page on your website.

Redirecting ensures that all the “link juice” (defined by page rank and page authority) flows from the old page to the new one. It also helps Google index your new page correctly and quickly. When it comes to UX (user experience), it also improves the way users interact with your page, since they will be able to find it and see its content.

Avoid Too Many Redirects

If you need to redirect users to a page temporarily, you can use a 302 redirect. However, that shouldn’t be the case for too long, as it will not share the link authority from the old page, and it might affect your ranking.

You should make sure that the new page you’re directing users to has relevant content according to the old page. If this new page does not match the original content, bots are going to find that it is not relevant for the search that was made by users, and your rank will drop.

When it comes to ranking, it’s important as well to avoid too many redirects. If you redirect your users too many times, it can both affect your ranking and user experience too. Make sure to use 301 and 302 redirects only when strictly necessary.

3. Indexing

3.1. How do search engines index your website?

Now, making sure your pages are crawled does not mean you’ve ensured that they are going to be indexed. Bots render your page with all the content and all the code, analyze it, and save it to be shown on search engine result pages (SERPs, in short).

3.2 How do you see how your website is being indexed by Google?

To find out how your page has been indexed, you can check the indexed version of it by clicking on the arrow next to the URL on search results:

The arrow will show you a “Cached” button you need to click. There, you’ll find out how your page is seen by search engines:

3.3. Can I get removed from the index?

There are instances where a page is removed from the index, therefore not showing on search results. This can be intentional or accidental. These are the most common reasons for a page to not be indexed:

• 4xx and 5xx errors can cause that page to be removed from the index.
• The page was deleted and a 301 redirect wasn’t implemented.
• The page was hidden intentionally by deleting it and setting up a 404 page.
• A noindex tag was added to the page to prevent it from being indexed.
• Google penalized the page manually because it didn’t comply with its Webmaster Guidelines, causing the page to be removed from the index.
• A password was added to restrict access to the page, keeping it from being indexed.

As you can see, there are a few reasons why your pages might not be indexed. It’s not always an issue per se: sometimes you might want some pages of your website to remain private, for many possible reasons.

However, if the de-indexing wasn’t intentional, there are a few things you can do to fix that. You just need to install Google Search Console. In GSC, you can find the URL Inspection tool, which will show the status of a page. It allows you to see what is causing a wrongful de-indexing.

Also in GSC, you can find the “Fetch As Google” tool. In this tool, there is a button called “Request Indexing”, which is the one you should use when submitting a new page for the search engines to crawl.

“Fetch As Google” also allows you to see if the cached version of your page is up to date.

3.4. Telling search engines how to index your website

Search engines follow specific protocols when it comes to deciding whether to index your pages. In the following section, we’ll show you the common ways to hide or show specific URLs according to the pages you want to index or not index.

Robots meta directives

Meta directives are instructions that you give to bots in order to index only the pages you want. These instructions include the option to not pass any page authority to links on a specific page, or not to index another specific page.

Meta tags are included in the <head> of your HTML pages using the Robots Meta Tags container. They can also be added to your HTTP header using the X-Robots-Tag.

Robots Meta Tag

In the <head> of your HTML, you can use a Robots Meta Tag. It can be used to exclude all search engines or a specific one. These are common meta directives:

• “noindex” tells search engines to ignore a specific URL, preventing it from being crawled and indexed. There’s also the “index” directive, but it is not commonly used since bots index all pages unless there is a directive requesting otherwise. You can use noindex on private pages, especially ones that have content from users you want to keep hidden.
• “follow” and “no follow” allows you to define if link equity is going to be passed on from that URL. By default, all pages have “follow” activated. “Nofollow” will prevent  the link equity from being passed on to the links on that page. Usually, you’ll find social media links using “nofollow”. It should be used together with “noindex” to make sure the pages you want to keep private are not crawled nor indexed.
• “noarchive” prevents Googlebot from saving a cached version of each page. It is commonly used in eCommerce websites, because prices change often and you don’t want visitors to see the old price tags. By default, all pages are archived in search results, showing a cached version of the page. Noarchive prevents that.

You can use all of these tags at the same time, as long as you respect the syntax for the robots meta tag.

X-Robots-Tag

This tag will be placed in the HTTP header, and it allows for more flexibility than meta tags. You can set up a tag that will block entire folders in your website, or hide specific files or file types from being indexed.

We recommend using a X-Robots-Tag when you have to block a large volume of content, since it is more efficient than using the robots meta tag. The robots meta tag is ideal to block specific URLs, but if you have a lot of content to prevent indexing for, the X-Robots-Tag is the way to go.

3.5. What is mobile-first indexing and how does it affect my website?

Mobile-first indexing was first announced in 2018, and it is now working in full functionality. But what does mobile-first indexing mean?

Well, as the name suggests, Google now starts indexing your website from the mobile version and uses this version as the starting point. This also means that your mobile version has a great effect on your ranking.

So, it has become imperative to have a responsive website design, making sure that visitors coming from every device have a great experience with your page.

Mobile-first indexing also affects crawling: if you have a mobile version, it will be crawled first. However, if you only have a desktop version of your website, it will be crawled anyway; but your ranking might suffer if you’re competing with websites that have a mobile version.

It should be noted as well that if you use responsive design, your ranking should not be affected by mobile-first indexing.

4. Ranking

Now, we arrive at the part that SEO professionals care about the most: ranking. Crawling and indexing are requisites for ranking, but if your website is properly crawled and indexed and your ranking is still not high enough, you need to dig further.

In this section, we’ll explain how ranking works and what search engines want from your website in order for it to rank high.

4.1. How do search engines rank URLs?

Ranking ensures that when users type a search query, they will get relevant content in return. This function organizes results (SERPs) in order to show content from most relevant to least relevant.

Algorithms define how all websites are ranked. Google updates its algorithm quite often, with the goal of improving the quality of search results. To find out if you’re following the quality guidelines, please check this help article from Google. This link is quite helpful if your ranking has suffered recently due to an algorithm update.

The goal of search engines has always been to deliver the best results for a search query. However, if you work with SEO, you have probably noticed that a lot has changed from when search engines first appeared and how you do SEO these days.

Take keyword stuffing, as an example. In the beginning, if you wanted to rank for a keyword, you’d repeat that keyword as much as possible in your content. However, that resulted in a terrible user experience, since users don’t behave in the same way that search engines used to in the past. Users want quality results that answer their question or request, not text that’s made up for bots.

Fortunately, as time goes by, bots have become quite apt to understanding which results provide users with a better experience. Keyword stuffing now results in penalizations from Google and other search engines.

4.2. How do you rank higher?

There are three main factors that help you rank higher without being penalized: content, links to your website, and RankBrain. We’ll describe how each works in this section.

Links in SEO

There are typically two types of links when it comes to SEO. Backlinks (also known as inbound links) are links from one website to another. On the other hand, internal links are those that connect pages on the same website.

Links to your website can have a positive impact on your ranking if they are from websites that are considered authorities in your subject. However, if you get links from spammy or low-quality websites, your ranking might suffer. If you get links from the wrong kind of website, you might even get flagged for spam.

If you have no links pointing to your website, your authority on the subject is unclear, so this factor will not increase nor decrease your ranking.

PageRank is part of Google’s algorithm, and it’s PageRank that defines whether you get a better ranking according to the quality and quantity of backlinks to your website. This ranking factor works under the assumption that the better the links you have, and the more links you have from authoritative websites, the more relevant your website is for users.

Unfortunately, it’s become very common to find websites that buy backlinks; we do not recommend that at all. PageRank is able to understand which backlinks are natural and organic (resulting from other websites considering your content useful) and which links are unnatural, meaning they were bought or are the result of a link exchange. Link exchanges should be avoided too unless the website is highly relevant for your content and has a good DA (domain authority).

Content in SEO

Content is the main pillar of on-page SEO. It includes everything that is on your website: text content, videos, images… In order for your website to rank higher, your content must answer the question implied in the search.

For each search query, there are thousands of websites competing for number one on the SERPs (search engine result pages). How do search engines know which website provides a more comprehensive answer?

Well, an important factor is search intent. If a user is looking for information, your website should provide it. If the user’s intent is to buy, we’re looking at another kind of content.

In order to rank for a specific keyword, you need to find what other websites that rank already provide for users. How long is the content? The more comprehensive your answer to the search query is, the easier it will be to rank high for it. Your focus should always be on what the user wants to accomplish with their search: if your content is good for users, it will be great for bots.

4.3. What is RankBrain?

RankBrain is part of Google’s algorithm. But why is it so important for your ranking? Well, RankBrain is the part of the algorithm that uses machine learning to constantly improve search results and make them more relevant for users.

Machine learning implies a constant iteration of the algorithm functions, by using data collected in order to improve its performance. So, RankBrain is constantly learning new ways to rank websites in SERPs.

As an example, let’s say a result that is on the 7th position of search results gets more clicks than the number one result, and a lower bounce rate from users. RankBrain will “learn” that this result on 7th position is more relevant than the others above it and bring it up to the top of the search results.

4.4. Are search results changing?

In the beginning, search engines were simple mechanisms. There was a page with “10 blue links” that was shown to users for each query, and that was it. Your goal was to place as high as possible on this list.

However, over the years, Google has implemented changes to this “10 blue links” format, and now each search returns other formats as well, such as:

• Paid advertising (Google Ads)
• Sitelinks
• Featured snippets
• Local Map Pack
• Knowledge panel
• “People also ask”

Google is adding new features to its search results constantly. This caused a bit of panic among SEOs in the beginning, since organic results were pushed down on the list, and users were clicking ads and “zero-result SERPs” started appearing: result pages that only showed an answer to the user’s question and a button to “view more results”.

The goal of these experiments was to improve the way search engines answer the question implied in the search query. If users can get an answer to their request without having to click through, the experience is better for them, because it’s faster than having to go through a website looking for an answer.

So, if you have an informational query, you’ll probably find the answer in a featured snippet. If there is only one answer to the query, you can get a knowledge graph or an instant answer. Local queries are answered using the Map Pack, and transactional questions get results from Google Shopping.

User experience is everything. If it can be improved using other formats than links to websites, that’s what is going to happen; and the only way for SEOs to handle this is to adapt.

4.5. Local Search

Google has its own directory of services from which search results are extracted to show up for local queries. If you or your SEO client has a local business or provides services in a specific area, you need to create an entry on Google My Business (GMB).

Among results from GMB, Google uses a specific ranking to show each result. This ranking is based on relevance, distance, and prominence.

Relevance has to do with how well the business fits the search query. To make sure the business shows for the right keywords, you have to optimize your Google My Business entry and make sure you describe exactly what your business offers.

If you’re searching for a local business, you are interested in companies that are close to you. Even though distance is not often taken into consideration when it comes to other types of searches, in local search it is a major factor for ranking.

Google tries to show users the businesses that are more prominent in the offline world too. In order to produce the more prominent results, it relies on reviews from users (collected from Google). The more positive reviews a place gets, the more likely it is to show up for local searches.

Business listings on other sources can also be taken into account, usually from websites such as Yelp and other similar directories. Google pulls data such as name, address and phone number (NAP details) from many sources, adding that information to its database. Links and articles can also be used to collect data for Google My Business.

You should optimize your listing as you would for organic search. When defining local ranking, GMB also takes into consideration the ranking of the company’s website in order to show more relevant results to users.

Wrapping Up

Knowing how search engines work is important in order to make sure your SEO work is on point. Even if you don’t do SEO, as a client, it is important to know what your SEO professional needs to take care of and to align your expectations with reality.

SEO work is not easy, and it is constantly changing. From mobile-first indexing to zero-result searches, there is a lot of information to take in at all times. Every year, Google launches a new core update so it’s essential for SEO professionals to keep on learning all the time.

If you use SERPed.net, it can help with you different aspects of your SEO campaigns, including keyword research, rank tracking, and much more, improving your ranking within Google. Not using SERPed yet? You can check out our plans here. You'll see it will make a huge difference in your SEO strategy.

Our comment box is always available for you if you have any questions. You can also find us on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

The post How do Search Engines Work? 🔎 appeared first on Serped.com.

No matter how hard we try and how experienced we are, there are some common SEO mistakes that can be found even in the most well-optimized website. However, fret not: these mistakes are easy to discover and fix if you perform a comprehensive SEO audit.

If you didn't read our guide for a perfect SEO audit, now is the time to read it. These two articles are complementary to each other and we recommend using both when optimizing your website. We also recommend using Google Analytics to get stats on your target audience and relevant keywords, which are both ranking factors. Backlinks are also essential for your link building strategy. So, on to the list!

HTTP Status and Server Errors

HTTP status and server errors are the most common SEO mistakes that you might encounter in an audit. This type of SEO mistake is related to problems in the data transfer between the browser and the server; the dreaded error 404 falls under this category.

This type of error can affect your traffic severely since users tend to distrust websites with non-available pages and generally leave when faced with a 404 error page. Find the most common SEO mistakes of HTTP status and server errors below.

1. 4xx Codes

These codes indicate a broken page, which prevents users from being able to access it. A 4xx code can also mean that the page wasn't indexed.

2. Non-tracked pages

Non-tracked pages can result from two different issues: either the server timed out, or the server denied access to the page.

3. Internal broken links

These are links that take you to pages inside your website that no longer exist, affecting both SEO and user experience.

4. External broken links

These are links that take you to a page on another website that no longer exists, sending a negative SEO signal.

5. Broken image links

These happen when an image file is no longer available or the URL is incorrect.

6. Redirects

These can damage your optimization efforts too, and they can be either temporary or permanent.

Meta Tags

Meta tags make search engines understand what your pages are about. The text from the meta tags is also displayed on search engine result pages (SERPs), so it's extremely important to optimize these tags. Title tags and meta descriptions should include your target keywords, and at the same time be clear and concise.

We also recommend making sure there are no duplicates: title tags and meta descriptions should be unique for each page.

If these tags are not available, search engines will automatically pull whatever text they deem to be relevant from your page. Those excerpts most likely will not make any sense since they are collected and displayed automatically.

The title tags and meta descriptions you create for each page should also be the correct size 70 characters for the title tag and between 150 to 160 characters for the meta description. In some websites, it is hard to create unique title tags and meta descriptions for each page, which makes it necessary to invest even more in other aspects of SEO through SEO tools. However, the more you can use unique metadata for each page, the better it will be for your website. The following are the most common SEO mistakes when it comes to meta tags.

7. Duplicate title tags and meta descriptions

When you have several similar title tags and meta descriptions, it makes it difficult for any of them to rank for the keywords you're targeting, especially long tail keywords (which help rank for targeted searches).

8. Missing H1 tags

If you don't use H1 tags in your content, Google and other search engines will have issues analyzing your content correctly, even if it's high quality content.

9. Missing meta descriptions

When your meta descriptions are well-written and to the point, users are more likely to land on your website. Their absence might lead to low rankings and therefore, low search traffic.

10. Missing alt attributes

Alt attributes show Google and visually impaired users what your images are about. Using them correctly increases relevancy and traffic for your quality content, including blog posts that rank for more specific search terms.

11. Duplicate H1 and title tags

If there are several pages on your website using the same H1 tags and title tags, it's likely that cannibalization might occur. This is a phenomenon in which pages of the same website compete against each other on the Google rankings, disrupting any search engine optimization performed and resulting in a negative user experience.

12. Several H1 tags

Using more than one H1 tag on the same page will harm your optimization rather than improve it. Each page on your website should have one H1 tag only. This H1 tag should include your key phrase or search terms.

Duplicate Content

All elements of a page should be unique. So, marketers should make sure there is no duplicate content on your website, whether it is duplicating another website's content or another page on your own website. Whichever is the case, any instance of duplication is detrimental to your SEO strategy.

Duplication can also occur in URLs if you have a www and a non-www version of the same page.

When every element in page content and tags is unique, your website has a better chance of ranking higher. It is also going to be more relevant for your users. If you find two pages with the same content, the best you can do is use “rel=canonical” or a 301 redirect.

Missing Link Optimization

Links are of the utmost importance for user experience on your website. This includes both internal links (links toward other pages in your website) and external links (links that take you to other websites).

To make sure your website's architecture is up to date, you need to check if you have no broken links, whether internal or external. Some other links might have a nofollow attribute, or use HTTP instead of HTTPS – all these factors affect your rankings and your SEO strategy.

These are the most common SEO mistakes in link optimization.

13. HTTP pages in HTTPS websites

You probably already know your website should use HTTPS. However, when you add your SSL certificate, you need to make sure that you redirect all the pages to their HTTPS version. Otherwise, you'll end up with orphaned pages that still use HTTP.

14. URLs that contain underscores

We highly recommend using dashes instead of underscores in your URLs. Underscores might be misinterpreted by search engines, creating errors in your website's crawling.

Other common mistakes regarding link optimization are:

• Broken external links
• Broken internal links
• External links with nofollow attribute

Tracking Errors

Tracking errors can block your website from being correctly indexed by Google. That's why you should always make sure you detect any tracking errors on your website when auditing. If you correct any tracking errors, that's a great step toward better rankings.

You can avoid technical SEO issues by checking broken or blocked elements during your SEO audit. The absence of a sitemap.xml file or robots.txt file can also affect your rankings.

These are the most common issues when it comes to tracking.

15. Nofollow attributes in internal links

Internal links that contain the nofollow attribute keep your “link juice” from flowing from page to page.

16. Incorrect pages on sitemap.xml

Your sitemap.xml file should not include broken pages. Check if all your pages return a 200 code and that there are no redirects or missing canonical attributes.

17. Sitemap.xml not found

Including a sitemap.xml file on your website makes it a lot easier for search engines to explore, track, and index your website's pages.

18. Sitemap.xml absent in the robots.txt file

If your robots.txt file does not have a link to your sitemap.xml, SERPs won't be able to understand your website's architecture.

Other common tracking errors include:

• Pages not tracked
• Broken internal images
• Broken internal links
• Underscores in URLs
• 4xx errors
• Resources hidden on page links
• External resources blocked on the robots.txt file
• Nofollow attributes in external links
• Pages with one internal link only
• Orphaned pages in the sitemap
• Tracking depth over three clicks
• Temporary redirects

Indexing Errors

If a page is not indexed, it cannot be found by Google. When Google doesn”t find a page, it is unlikely that users will. Even when it doesn't seem like your website has tracking issues, there might be indexing errors Duplicate content can cause indexing errors because search engines don't know which page to rank for a specific keyword. This is a quite common SEO mistake, so make sure there are no duplicate title tags or H1 tags in your content.

When there is duplicate content , it is up to the search engine to pick which page to rank, which will be detrimental for some of those pages competing against each other.

These are the most commonly found issues with indexing.

19. Title tags that are too short/too long

If your title tag has under 60 characters, you might be losing an optimization opportunity; on the other hand, if it is too long, it's going to be shortened by SERPs.

20. Hreflang conflicts on the page's source code

If there is a hreflang conflict, websites in several languages might end up having indexing issues.

21. Hreflang link errors

If you use relative links instead of absolute ones, there might be hreflang issues. Make sure your absolute links are used when you're implementing hreflang.

22. Low word count

If your pages have less than 500 words each, we recommend increasing the word count. Longer content usually makes pages rank higher on search result pages.

23. Missing hreflang and lang attributes

When your website uses multiple languages, it is essential to use hreflang and lang attributes correctly. When these are missing, your SEO audit will show the above error, meaning there is no way to show each region the correct language.

24. HTML errors in AMP pages

When your HTML code does not follow AMP patterns, it will affect your website's performance on mobile devices.

These are other common indexing errors:

• Duplicate content
• Duplicate meta descriptions
• Hreflang language compatibility errors

Errors in the mobile version

In September 2020, mobile optimization will be one of the standard ranking criteria for all websites. Therefore, it is necessary to update your website according to AMP (accelerated mobile pages) standards, making sure it is mobile friendly.

AMP implies a few changes to your HTML, such as style, layout, or page templates. As of 2020, any mistakes in your HTML for AMP can affect your ranking.

Low website performance

When we talk about website performance, we mean first and foremost page speed. If you didn't read our page speed guide , we recommend checking it out. Page speed affects not only your users, in the sense that users will leave your page if it takes too long to load, but also affects the way Google perceives your page, making you rank higher or lower.

The following are the most common issues with website performance.

25. HTTP and HTTPS pages mixed up

It is common, as we mentioned previously, to have HTTP and HTTPS pages mixed up. You need to find a common standard for all of your pages, preferably in HTTPS. If you set up an SSL certificate, you need to change all your pages to HTTPS.

26. Javascript and CSS not cached

If the browser cache is not active, your website might take longer to load.

27. Javascript and CSS files not compressed

Compressing these files will help your page load faster. The easiest way to do this is by removing lines, comments, and blank spaces from your code.

How to check for SEO mistakes using SERPed

If you use SERPed.net, it's easy to perform an SEO Audit:

You just need to pick the Site Manager tool and then click on SEO Audit for an easy way to do an audit that will give you all the information that you require.

Wrapping Up

In this article, we tried to list the most common SEO mistakes you should be aware of. Of course, there were a few we didn't cover as thoroughly, mainly because you can find them in other articles in this blog.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask away in the comment section or you can find us on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

The post The 27 Biggest SEO Mistakes in 2020 ❌ appeared first on Serped.com.