Online companies lay great emphasis on the concept of SEO. Search Engine Optimization or SEO is a powerful and efficient marketing tool that helps the websites get more online traffic from the search engines. A wide range of SEO strategies are employed to enhance the website and thus, promote the company and the brand. With so many methods recommended by various sources, one might get confused as to which technique is more effective and which is detrimental. Therefore, here is a list of points, which can damage the SEO ranking of a website.

• Backlinks that point to the main page only

When using backlinks, it is important to build them properly. If the links point only to the main page, then it will be the only page to be ranked from the entire website.

• Importance to extremely specific keywords

Keywords should be analyzed and used carefully. It is a good idea to think like the online audience to get a better understanding of key phrases and word they use, rather than targeting keywords that are excessively specific.

• Overlooking Google webmaster

Optimally using the features provides by the webmaster can allow the site to get more attention from Google, thus enhancing the priority.

• Utilizing Google Translate on all the online content

Although, it is an effective tool to translate between English and other languages, sometimes the translation can fail to form a sensible and complete sentence structure. It is recommended not to completely translate the content with this feature.

• Using a single keyword list for targeting all geographic locations

This is a wrong technique as it can restrict the website from targeting audience of other locales. Implementing variety can help the website reach the audience all over the globe.

• Staying clear of sites that are country specific because of content duplicacy

Duplicacy of content is frowned upon, especially due to the Google Penguin algorithm. However, it offers an HTML tag, ‘rel=”canonical” ‘which can be employed to spread the content over all the domains related to different countries or locations.

• Placing all supported languages in a single page

Placing multiple language notes can make the website look chaotic and disorderly. Proper design and a creative approach ensure the visitors can conveniently browse through the website.

• Using a single landing page when supporting multiple languages on the website

A website represents the business to a global audience. Users may move on to other sites if they cannot understand the website. This can affect the website adversely. Designing a website with flags that denote the different languages supported can make the website friendlier to the users and thus, they can be redirected to a page on the website where the language of their choice is supported.

Knowledge about the methods that can adversely affect the SEO rankings of a websites can be beneficial as it can help one avoid making mistakes when optimizing the website.