2 silent SEO killers to watch for

Unfortunately, it’s even easier to unintentionally strangle and stymie your website’s performance with poor SEO management. Declining search rankings and search visibility problems can have as much to do with technical factors as they can with content or keyword research, so it pays to scour your site for errors and missed opportunities.

Make sure these under-the-radar gaffes aren’t dinging your SEO:

Anchor links without destinations

Anchor links are bits of code on your page that point to a specific spot elsewhere on the page, to a point on another page or even to an offsite destination. Anchor links can be like helpful ushers who steer users directly to specific information.

Each anchor link on your website should have an “href attribute.” Don’t let that technical-sounding name intimidate you; it just means the link has to point somewhere. If it doesn’t, you’ve created a broken link, which will harm your SEO.

Empty links are sometimes placed (and accidentally left) in place by developers—or anyone tinkering in your CMS—with the intention of eventually plugging in the appropriate link. Unfortunately, search engines hate dead ends such as this.