Most Common SEO Problems with Small Businesses, How to Find & Fix Them

10 most common SEO problems with Nigerian businesses series continues. This is the concluding part though. I will take through the remaining 5 SEO problems I have observed with most Nigerian business websites.

The search engine optimization problems earlier discussed were website indexing, Robots.txt file, URL canonicalization, Meta Robots ‘NO INDEX’ tag, and pages speed.

These are the other common SEO problems among small businesses.

Image without Alt text.

There are different ways through which images can constitute SEO nuisance, if not properly optimized. Every Nigerian business uses images on their websites and blogs, but how many of them optimize these images for organic search, really?

Nigerian Businesses lose opportunity for organic traffic from search when image name and Alt text are not optimized (for keyword). Also, when the images on a website are overbearing, they slow down the website down.

You already know the consequence of slow website. Hun?
To ensure too many images don’t slow down your website, set expiry period for your images. Maybe 90 days, maybe 120 days, you can ensure some images fade away when they are less useful to keep your website size good enough to open fast. You can compress your web images too to keep your website size in check.

To optimize your web images for organic search, ensure your focus or what your web page/content is about is contained in the file name, Alt text and caption. This is an effective way of telling search engines what the images are saying.

Depending on your industry, what you blog about, some topics spring up plenty of image results in organic search. You stand a better chance of getting some organic traffic through optimized images when your post does not top the search results.

Check images on your website, RIGHT NOW!
Do they have keyword in their File Names, Captions and Alt texts?

How do Optimize Images for SEO?

• When saving image on your computer, include relevant keyword in the file name
• You can rename already saved image to include keyword
• Include keyword in the image caption in your CMS
• Include keyword in image Alt (Alternative) text within your CMS

See example below:
Optimising your web image for organic search looks like this in picture:

Your CMS may look different, make sure you include your keyword in file name, caption and alt tag. That is what matters.

Web form is another common SEO problem

Web form, flash content, PDF document are among web contents that are not readable to search engine crawlers. I don’t think this will make news headline.

How does Web form become SEO problem?

Web forms, flash content, PDF document are among web content that are not visible to search engine. They become SEO problem when you include information you want crawled, indexed and to be ranked for in them.

Whatever these ‘invisible’ web contents contain, search engine crawlers can’t use them to rank your website.

In short, to avoid losing search ranking opportunities to Web form, flash content, PDF documents and other ‘invisible’ web contents, explain their contents on the web pages and include relevant keywords in HTML tags.

Many Nigerian websites still upload flash videos. Apart from the fact that their size after accumulating can slow down your website, the content of such flash video has no SEO value.

Hun?

Use your landing pages to explain the content of your offer if visitors have to fill Web form in order to receive your offer. Whatever is behind the Web form can’t be read by search engine crawlers.

You grab?

Another common SEO problem is web link

Web links include internal links, outbound links and back links. Internal links aid website navigation and tell search spiders the importance of certain web pages.

Spiders crawl the Internet, from one website to the other, using internal and outbound links. Web pages with broken internal links won’t be crawled and indexed. While, back links are ways other websites collaborate with you.

Think of the Internet as an estate and back links as the road network within the estate. Visitors will easily find their destinations if the road network is clear and street names are well placed to direct them.

Linking your website to other relevant websites help search engine crawlers find your website more often and consider your credible.

Broken back links will deplete authority and negatively affect search ranking. Crawl website to identify broken links. Redirect broken are the pathway for websites across the Internet. What back links tell search engine is how much relevance and authority you have earned from other websites.

What SEO problem does back links cause?

Back links can make you lose search ranking in many ways. One critical SEO issue with back link is that you can get penalized for having spammy links pointing at your website. Because of this, you should be careful with whom you give your SEO contract to.

If your SEO expert builds ‘badt’ back links to your website using black hat techniques, your website may get penalized by search engine algorithms during Google updates.

Penalty for building spammy back links could sink your website for ever, if care is not taken.

Be careful with link building, please.

The number of back links to your website is not as important as the quality of the links. Back links from authoritative websites like .edu and .gov institutions are so juicy, that you don’t want to lack them.

Be strategic as you seek back links from credible websites, ensure the pages linking to you are relevant to your website and readers are clicking through from those links.

XML Sitemap can be a crunchy SEO problem

What is XML Sitemap?

A sitemap is a dedicated file where you, or webmaster, can list web pages contained within your website in order to tell Google and other search engines about the organization of your website pages.

XML Sitemaps are required for search as signposts for directing search engine crawlers. Creating and submitting your XML Sitemap means you are providing search engines travel guide as they traverse your website.

How is XML Sitemap a common SEO problem?

A website with less than 20 web pages may not really feel the effect of having or not having XML Sitemap. However, complex websites like ecommerce or other online businesses with daily transactional activities will miss a whole a lot in terms search visibility of various category and subcategory web pages

If you do not create and submit XML Sitemap for your business website, you will leave search engines to figure out the complexity of your website, AT YOUR OWN RISK!

Imagine, you are visiting a place for the first time, and you do not have a clear description of the place, no landmark readily comes to mind. How easy will it be to navigate the area?

Job seekers can explain this better. Getting a short interview notice from a company you barely know, whose location also is not well explained is a typical scenario for Nigerian business websites that do not create or submit their XML Sitemaps to Google.

If you have created and submitted your XML Sitemap to Google, Goodluck.
If you do not accordingly update your XML Sitemap, vote for CHANGE!

How Do I Create XML Sitemap for my Business Website?

Your web developer could create and submit your XML Sitemap for you, or you use XML Sitemap generator. There are many XML Sitemap generators you could use to create it.

How Do I Submit my XML Sitemap?

• Add your XML Sitemap to your robots.txt.
• Log on to Google Console (Webmaster Tool).
• Submit your XML Sitemap with Google Search Console.

How do I Check my website XML Sitemap?

• Open your web browser
• Type in: ‘sitename/sitemap.xml’
• Press ENTER

Example: I Opened Chrome browser I typed in ‘www.google.com/sitemap.xml’

See result below:

301 & 302 Redirects can be SEO problems too

Either a web page is down permanently or for a while, you need to re-direct visitors to an active page using HTML codes. That is when you choose between 301 & 302 Redirects

How well do Nigerian business websites use 301 & 302 Redirects?

301 is used to re-direct visitors from a web page that is permanently down to an active web page on the site, while 302 is used to re-direct from a web page that is down for a while, may it is being worked upon.

How can 301 and 302 redirects be SEO problem?

If any of your web pages is down permanently or for a while and you do not re-direct it to an active page, the bounce rate for that page will increase your website bounce rate. Your website will lose organic traffic cannot find the desired information that led them to the web page.

This will affect your search ranking before you know it. Hun?
After losing organic traffic, you lose search ranking. God forbid!

Organic traffic brings more sales qualified leads, because they already identified the need for your business.

Are we good?

Which redirect is more effective for SEO?

This is not cast in stone, but over time, 301 redirect has helped website with broken web pages do better with regards to SEO.

Thus, it is advisable to use 301 redirect for your web pages that are down.

Hope you have learnt how to identify some SEO problems that may be affecting your website in organic search. Do not read and sleep on it. Find the SEO problems with your website and solve them. Let’s talk in camera if you more questions.

Should you have any SEO problem yo have identified but cannot solve or you would like me to write about. Please drop your comment below.

Originally published at wdc.ng on April 6, 2017.