Common SEO Mistakes

Keyword Stuffing

Keyword stuffing is an old SEO practice that involves repeating a keyword in the same format in most (or all!) headings and across every paragraph on the landing page.

If you see the same word repeatedly with no variation of the word (i.e. renewable energy recruitment and renewable energy staffing or renewable recruiters) in ever paragraph, it is likely keyword stuffed.

This practice is still used these days and we don’t recommend it. Instead, we can advise that the longer your text is, the more research you put into it, and the more you try to use natural phases - it’s very likely you’ll be able to hide your hero keyword in a smart and non-intrusive way.

Duplicate Content

Duplicate content refers to using the same copy or very similar copy across more than one page or website. This includes only a paragraph of text, not just entire landing pages!

Here are some examples:

• Adding the same informational paragraph to every landing page or at the end of every blog post
• Copying and pasting content from other websites exactly (even if you cite them!)
• Using the same About Us on two separate sister brands with different domains

Why is it bad?

Google cannot always distinguish which content is the original and so it will decide to stop indexing or passing authority to all the pages with this content or ones it thinks may be the copies.

Google aims to ensure that users are always given fresh, unique content, which means putting effort into writing things in different ways from varying perspectives!

Where is duplicate content okay?

Pages that you’re not 100% worried about ranking well. Some pages are not converting pages like your About Us or Meet the Team pages.

If you’re using a global module across your website and this module has only a small amount of text in there, that will be the same across all pages - that’s okay! Just make sure the rest of the content on those pages is unique.

Ignoring Mobile SEO

Candidates are more likely to start their search on mobile, and once they’ve found something of interest, they may proceed to a desktop version of the website to complete registration or applications.

Clients are very likely using their desktops (as this is during working hours) to find your website as part of their vendor research for recruitment support.

Google checks both as it will want to ensure it ranks websites that perform well and give users the best possible experience. This is why it is imperative that even if mobile is not your target platform - your website should be responsible and accessible to allow the best experience and better “brownie points” from search engines.

Ignoring Website Structure/Navigation

All websites have a “sitemap,” which includes the structure of the pages across the website. This allows search engine crawlers, and ultimately human users, to find the most relevant pages and sub-pages related to them and navigate back to where they started or to other parts of the website with ease.

Traditionally, you may think of this as your menu navigation visible at the top of your website! However, well-organised and optimised websites will also include all the right pages in their structures, leaving what we call “breadcrumbs” for crawlers and users to understand where they currently are in the navigation and how to get back.

For example, your main navigation may include Sectors. Within these sectors, you may have sub-sectors and any other related pages. Users and Google will expect that when they arrive on your “Renewable Energy” sector page, then users will find links to the sub-sectors such as “Wind Energy.” This means that when I’m on the “Wind Energy” page, I understand that the trail I followed was:

Sectors > Renewable Energy > Wind Energy

This should also be reflected in the URLs to establish a hierarchy and breadcrumbs:

www.example.com/sectors/

www.example.com/sectors/renewable-energy-recruitment/

www.example.com/sectors/renewable-energy-recruitment/wind-energy/

Orphan Pages

These are pages have been created but are not linked to any other landing page on the website or in the main menu navigation. This means that unless you provide a user with that specific URL or someone crawls your website, they will not be able to find this landing page in any shape or form!

As these pages are not easy to find, Google recommends avoiding them as they will create a bad experience for a user who may have found them - clicks away to another part of the website - and then is not able to get back to the orphan page as it is not linked anywhere.

Orphan pages are usually used for PPC traffic to ensure only ads link to them or during “secret” one-off campaigns. If you need to create an orphan that definitely cannot be linked to but don’t want to be penalised, we recommend noindexing and nofollowing the landing page so Google ignores it.