Top Ten SEO Common Mistakes
There’s a great deal of misperception in the field of search engine optimization (SEO). Because business owners don’t know much about it – and make decisions about it only after they have a full understanding of it – they make mistakes.
Here is a list of the top ten most common problems I see when clients come to me:
1) Comprehensive, one-size-fits-all SEO plan.
Big companies make the mistake of providing one-size-fits-all SEO plans to their clients. Unless you are a giant with deep pockets and a lot of time, it’s hard to know what works with the search engines and what doesn’t. Without proper planning, an SEO campaign that will work in the future will never be properly executed.
2) Perpetual failure to update SEO techniques.
If you want to get first page SERPs for select keywords, you’ve got to have a plan for on-going maintenance of your plan. Search engine optimization changes frequently, so a maintaining SEO plan is imperative.
3) Over-using optimization tools.
The only way to get close to top-notch results is to be prepared and have a wide range of tools to apply to your SEO strategy. Without the right kind of tools, your progress is likely to fall short of your goals.
4) Doing it yourself.
It’s certainly possible to do things the same way that a professional SEO firm does it, utilizing the latest technologies and methods. The trouble with this approach is that it isn’t always the best idea. SEO can be quite technical in nature, and it requires frequent attention and learning about novel methods to apply to keep your site performing.
5) Search engine submissions and site maps.
Submit your site to all the major search engines and keep your site map up to date. Each time you make a change to your site, search engines will send out spiders to crawl your pages. If they ever get lost or decide to stop sending out the spiders, it’s going to take some time and work to get them back up and running.
6)Genuine link building.
One of the biggest mistakes people make when building links to their site is taking the easy way out and not generating quality links to their site. Search engines reward sites that have a lot of great content because they want to birth more sites that offer relevant information to clients. Though it may seem easy, it’s not always easy to generate new content and can be time-consuming to find the right sites to work with.
7) Not building traffic.
Your site is never going to generate traffic without getting people to sign-up for your newsletter. If you’re not aware of the importance of generating traffic to your site, the next best thing is to hire a professional to help you with the traffic generation methods you want to implement.
8) Using outdated optimization techniques.
The world of search engine optimization is always changing. Though you might be using the oldest methods today, it’s only a matter of time before Google makes a change to encompass them. Make sure you always follow Google’s guidelines so that you know what might be considered legitimate in the future.
9) controlling every aspect of your site.
If you have a very large website, chances are your navigation is internal. It’s very likely that you have duplicate product pages as you have different versions of the same product on each page. Dig through the internal pages in your site and find the ones that are not linked to from anywhere and try to get them indexed. You might have also bought guest posts to build your site’s link popularity. Find a way to get rid of all of your lower-level product pages.
10) Writing only for search engines.
It’s fine to write for your customers, but never forget the search engines. While the language of “appliance” might be interesting to you, write with search engine optimization in mind. complex scientific and technical words make your conversion rate lower. Remember that you’re writing for people as well as search engines.
11) Numerous broken links.
Make sure that all of your links are working properly by checking from a remote location where it’s less likely to interfere with your site. If broken links bother you, complain to your hosting company or ask your webmaster to find and fix broken links. By finding and fixing broken links on your website, you’ll make more visitors comfortable and it will also keep search engines from flagging you for having a bad link population.