5 SEO Mistakes You Don’t Want to Make
Your web design is done, and it is eye-catching and original. You eagerly check Google to see if you show up at the top of a web search. Three days go by and you are not at the top of the list. In fact, you just searched for your website and found that you were on page 1,794 of 132,000,000. After you pick your jaw up off the floor, you begin to wonder where you went wrong.
Does this sound familiar to you? If you have never created a website using search engine optimization techniques, it will likely sound very familiar. Search engine optimization, or SEO, is a process where you craft a page in certain ways to make it easy for a search engine to find and display your website. Search engine optimization is not about getting the most hits, although properly optimized websites will have that as a side effect. How can you improve your search engine standing and avoid common SEO mistakes?
You have to do it the right way. Here is what not to do:
1) Attempt to manipulate or fool search engines. People who run internet search engines generally think frown type of search engine optimization. As SEO mistakes go, this is a bad one because most search engines want to provide relevant results and might restrict your listing because of the manipulation. Someone searching for a hangover cure at 5AM on a Sunday should actually find it. Gobblety-gook might make your friends laugh, but it will not impress Google or the hungover person.
2) Stuff the website full of keywords. Who wants to read a website full of identical sentences or grammatical monstrosities with ten identical words in each sentence? Search engine optimization is much more than copy/paste.
3) Insert a link back to your website into hundreds, or even thousands of web pages. This is one of the SEO mistakes where you say: It seemed like a good idea at the time. “Link spamming” increases hits to your website, to be sure, but this is not quality traffic. These visitors are usually not the type of traffic you want. Get people to like your website naturally with useful content. Be casual and focus on quality and people will find your website.
4) Have too many pages be too similar to other pages on your website. If you have a bunch of nearly identical pages on your website, search engines will not know the difference. For example, if you had a page marked “Barney” and another page marked “That Annoying Purple Dinosaur,” the search engine would look at the similar content and not know which page to display. For best search engine optimization, it is way better to make a single, well crafted page and then support those topics with sub-pages.
5) Buy Links. Perhaps this is the worst of SEO mistakes. Google hates link buyers and considers it dirty pool. You want to get off of page 1,794, remember? Do it honestly and within search engine guidelines, avoid this and other SEO mistakes, and succeed.
SEO mistakes cloud the search engine optimization process, sometimes even before we know it. Be diligent when creating your web pages. Keep the tone natural and let it flow. Stilted language constructions reduce effective communication. Research and collect other information on correcting SEO mistakes. Remember, make the website easy to read and easy for search engines to find. That is the key for internet visibility success.
