The BIGGEST Search Engine Optimization Mistakes
Posted by reviews on Nov 28, 2007
There are arguably many, many mistakes that could be made as far as Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is concerned, however I am listing some of the biggest and most common mistakes.
- Poor website linking structure
- It is very important to have complete (or almost complete) internal linking between the pages within your site. They are almost as important as having relevant external backlinks.
- Wrong Keywords
- Try to avoid poorly chosen keywords for your pages. Especially ones that people would not use in their search.
- Wrong Page Title
- Not using a sitemap to direct the search engines to the preferred pages
- No ‘H Tags’
- No ‘Alt Tags’
- Poor URL Format
- Too long of a url
- Too many numbers
- Irrelevant keywords
- Canonical url’s
- Not enough original content
- Emphasis on original
- Lack of Content Keywords
- No Text Navigation
- No deep linking
- Wrong Meta Description
- Wrong Meta Keywords
Thanks very much, there are a few things I need to adjust on my site after reading that
“Try to avoid poorly chosen keywords for your pages. Especially ones that people would not use in their search.”
I would tend to say that for highly competitive keywords, it is wise to target some secondary keywords that are leass searched but alot less competitive in addition to to your targeted primary keywords.
“Wrong meta description”
This should probably read ‘weak meta description’ - since this is the text that shows up in the SERP you want to make this appealing to your users.
“Wrong Page Title”
Should probably read ‘targeted keywords not included in title, or diluted by too many keywords’
“Too many numbers”
Did you mean too many server variables, e.g. ?var1=1 . If so, what it should say is ‘excessive use of server variables’ (more than 3 is bad). Also where possible mod_rewrite should be used to rewrite the variables in a user friendly and hence SEO friendly fashion.
And finally -
“Lack of relevant inbound links from other domains to your domain” is probably one of the biggest aspects of SEO. Conversely excessive outbound links from your domain to ‘bad’ sites could also damage your rank.
Also ‘wrong meta keywords’ probably wouldn’t matter so much for modern search engines like Google provided you know your keywords and you target them in the title, headings and content.
I would also include use of iframes to deliver content as a point, as this can confuse search engines about what to index.
Another thing would be not updating content frequently enough.
Everything else is correct - sorry to focus on what is wrong
Good list, but you missed out: nofollowing image links.
Now that I now the difference between http://www.domain.com and http://domain.com I never build a site that doesn’t redirect to the standard official way which is:
http://www.domain.com
It drives me nuts to see a site that doesn’t redirect to the standard. It also is a good idea as you have suggested because Google and other search engines view these two different names as separate sites thus duplicate content.
No. 1 Big Mistake: Over-optimization. Result: Google -950 penalty.
Very informative article! It’s always good to find the things that you miss out on!
Building sites is a new thing for me. Articles like this are very helpful. James
@Mark Sanborn - Matt Cutts had stated in Jan 2006 that Google had been working the canonicalization issue during the “big daddy” update but he clearly stated to do what you’re saying and create a 301 redirect to the http://www.domain.com from domain.com to help Google out. Unfortunately, Wordpress software defaults to the domain.com and most bloggers are unaware of changing that and/or adding permalinks.
On the “Wrong Page Title” tip, I’d like to add that keeping your page title to a minimum and only to the keywords you want for that page. If you want/need more keywords, create another page.
Also, the “Text Navigation” tip, this one is an absolute must. I *only* use CSS to dress up link buttons that are really text (no more image based navigation buttons), and I know from experience that image buttons don’t pass juice to inner pages like CSS formatted text link buttons do.
Good article, one more thing to add would be using the ‘b bold tag’ on keywords in addition to the ‘h tags’..
Good read, a very resourceful post with great tips. Thanks for pointing that domain issue too Mark. Checked back on my site and realized I made some…. ok many mistakes. Thanks for pointing these out.
I see you have a search engine friendly url on this page. How important is that?
I like this post!
I wrote an article on this subject asweel - though I dont think you understand danish Ill give to you anyway: http://www.oza.dk/seo
Over optimization is also a common mistake. People get their sites flagged for things such as artificial link building.
Good tips. I’ve come across a lot of them before, but its a nice refresher.
Most of the time I am just to lazy to adjust all the META discriptions, they don’t have any value anymore
Great ideas, thanks. Also, you have some smart commenter’s too, who have great ideas of their own. Where did you guys learn so much about the way Google works??
Lack of unique, quality content I think is the biggest mistake most webmasters make.