When it comes to your website, search engine optimization (SEO) is crucial to its success. Given that the vast majority of people who find a website do so by using search engines, then it becomes critical to maintain SEO efforts that will keep the site up near or at the top of the search engine rankings. This is where a website audit can reveal if the site itself is up to snuff when it comes to its SEO standing.

Unfortunately, the companies themselves which paid good money to have their websites fully SEO ready are often the culprits in sabotaging their own success often due to not fully understanding how SEO works. What follows are five different ways to sabotage your SEO.

Poor CMS System

This is when the CMS of the website does not allow for the best SEO elements to be included such as title tags for example. In some cases, it may appear that the website may allow for such additions, only to erase them after the person has logged off. This may mean having to change the platform or switch to another host in order for the proper changes to be made.

Keyword Stuffing

This is a rather old, but pretty bad practice where a single keyword or group of keywords becomes overused in the content. Google, in particular,punishes websites for keyword stuffing as this practice and skilled SEO experts and writers know how to craft content that does not stuff in keywords. Unfortunately, too many businesses fall into this practice, and the result is a punished website.

SEO is Not Advertising

Another way businesses can ruin their SEO efforts is believing that search engine optimization is the same as advertising or public relations when it is not. This is because the emphasis shifts from the quality of the content to a more sales piece on a particular product or effort by the company itself. The emphasis on selling something more than informing the customer is detrimental to the status of the site. So, it’s little wonder that many businesses get away from excellent content to pitching sales which hurts the website rankings.

Non-Removal of Bad Backlinks

This is more of a maintenance issue when it comes to websites as backlinks are usually very important in terms of rankings. However, websites can go offline or be removed which makes the backlinks to them detrimental to the ranking of the site. Without removing the backlinks in a timely manner, the result becomes a lower search engine rating. This means conducting a website audit to ensure that all backlinks are still working.

Unexpected Website Changes

Changing the website in ways that fall outside of the SEO guidelines, even if they are seemingly minor in nature can have a major effect. This is because when one thing is changed, other changes happen as well. A good example is adding new images which may be so large that they slow the download rate of the website which in turn affects its SEO rankings.

You will need to perform a website audit on a regular basis to pick up on any changes that might negatively affect your SEO rankings.