Online Reputation Management, SEO, Web Development
Top 10 SEO Mistakes
By | Published: December 29, 2010
What year end post would be better than coming up with a Top 10 list? And why not make it something interesting like common mistakes that many folks make when engaging in search engine optimization mistakes. So without delay, here’s the list…
10. Monitoring Results
If you take the time to do any online marketing, measure your results! Install some free/cheap tools and see how people are finding you, where they go on your site, and what information they are looking for.
9. Nofollow and Link Juice
In the past many believed that adding ‘nofollow’ to your links gave you more link juice to share among your own pages and thus control link juice flow. This has been proven false – all nofollow does is not share the link juice with the target of the link. It doesn’t give you that link juice back to share.
8. Reciprocal Linking
Try not to “exchange links” with other sites because mutual linking will ding you. Instead, offer a link on a totally different site so you both benefit.
7. Keyword Stuffing
In the Good ‘Ole Days a decade ago you could stuff your keyword into the page 50 times to help the page rank. Now you have to be careful to keep the density down to a more human level.
6. Keyword Selection
Before you build a site and focus your online marketing efforts, make sure you have a market that exists. Look at the search volume, examine the competition, and estimate the amount of time and money needed to get ranked before you jump in.
5. Submitting a Reconsideration Request Without Full Cleanup
If your site has been black listed, you can always come clean and appeal to the big G for reinclusion in the index. But make sure you clean things up before you go crawling!
4. Correlation != Causation
Just like in the medical field, you have to be careful extrapolating out why things work (or don’t). Work hard to get down to the root cause of changes in the black box we call Google.
3. Buying Adwords Where Natural Ranking Will Work
Why waste money buying adwords where you rank naturally? It’s just wasting your money.
2. Blasting Links
While it’s normal for something viral to get a lot of links quickly, for most sites this is very abnormal. So hold off on that “1000 directory submission” package.
1. Anchor Text Overuse
When people link to your site they do so with a variety anchors ranging from ‘click here’ to your URL. If you have 95% links containing a keyword it’ll look just a bit suspicious!
Top 10 SEO Mistakes
What year end post would be better than coming up with a Top 10 list? And why not make it something interesting like common mistakes that many folks make when engaging in search engine optimization mistakes. So without delay, here’s the list…
10. Monitoring Results
If you take the time to do any online marketing, measure your results! Install some free/cheap tools and see how people are finding you, where they go on your site, and what information they are looking for.
9. Nofollow and Link Juice
In the past many believed that adding ‘nofollow’ to your links gave you more link juice to share among your own pages and thus control link juice flow. This has been proven false – all nofollow does is not share the link juice with the target of the link. It doesn’t give you that link juice back to share.
8. Reciprocal Linking
Try not to “exchange links” with other sites because mutual linking will ding you. Instead, offer a link on a totally different site so you both benefit.
7. Keyword Stuffing
In the Good ‘Ole Days a decade ago you could stuff your keyword into the page 50 times to help the page rank. Now you have to be careful to keep the density down to a more human level.
6. Keyword Selection
Before you build a site and focus your online marketing efforts, make sure you have a market that exists. Look at the search volume, examine the competition, and estimate the amount of time and money needed to get ranked before you jump in.
5. Submitting a Reconsideration Request Without Full Cleanup
If your site has been black listed, you can always come clean and appeal to the big G for reinclusion in the index. But make sure you clean things up before you go crawling!
4. Correlation != Causation
Just like in the medical field, you have to be careful extrapolating out why things work (or don’t). Work hard to get down to the root cause of changes in the black box we call Google.
3. Buying Adwords Where Natural Ranking Will Work
Why waste money buying adwords where you rank naturally? It’s just wasting your money.
2. Blasting Links
While it’s normal for something viral to get a lot of links quickly, for most sites this is very abnormal. So hold off on that “1000 directory submission” package.
1. Anchor Text Overuse
When people link to your site they do so with a variety anchors ranging from ‘click here’ to your URL. If you have 95% links containing a keyword it’ll look just a bit suspicious!