UPDATED POST On The 13th of APRIL 2023 HERE: 10 Common SEO Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
15 Common SEO Mistakes
1) Focusing on wrong keywords for the site
Now this is the major problem for the sites not ranking well. You have a site for only providing the services for manufacturing of business cards, but you have all the keywords like printing cards, delivering cards etc, that doesn't give any value to your website, rather than focusing on too many non related business keywords or not to the specific keyword.
2) Leaving the Title Tags Empty
I have seen the websites not giving focus to the title tags of the web-page. Title tag is an important tag and it is being displayed in the search results as the title of the web searches for the website. So as a result it becomes important for the titles of the web pages to be unique and present on the page.
3) Not Utilizing the Meta Data
Meta Data, i.e., The Meta Title, The Meta Description & The Meta Keywords, even though they are becoming the things of the past, but having them in your web page not only increases the relevancy of the page but also helps in creating/identifying the theme of the web-page to the spider.
4) Concentrating only on Meta Tags
Now this is a another seo mistake which comes into picture. If you are thinking that providing only the proper meta data to your web-page can put you on the top of the search engine listings, then my dear friend(s) think about it.
5) Java Script Menus
Java Script make the menus very functional, but is not considered as SEO friendly. There are some sites which can't live without the Java Script, so in those cases where you cannot remove the java script menus by css, it's better to provide the menu links in the sitemap or you can also create the footer links for the menus.
6) Lack of Maintenance
SEO is an ongoing process, so once your business start showing up for your keywords which you have optimized the site for, don't just stop. Think of the other ways and methods and processes, look at your competitors and see what they are doing, and create new strategies to maintain your listing on the top.
7) Using Images for Headings
Images do make a site look more attractive and appealing to the users, but using the images in the place of Headings is really a bad idea as far as SEO point of view is concerned.
8) Not choosing proper URLs
Now this may seem too basic thing to be considered, but choosing the proper keyword for your domain is very important factor in SEO. Not only this, while creating sub-pages for the website, it's always better to put keywords in the URL of the pages. All the major three search engines give proper relevance, so there is no point of ignoring the keyword stuffed URL's.
9) More Backlinks are never better
This is another SEO Mistake which many people considers. Having backlinks is important for the SEO, but the more the better concepts does not applies here, rather than the quality matters. So just check the quality of the links which your website is getting, other than checking the number.
10) Lack of Keywords in the Content
You have the content for your web-page, but you lack the keywords in the content for your page, that will do no good to the site. Putting important keywords on the page, particularly the one you are optimizing the web-page for, is very important and is highly recommended as SEO point of view.
11) Missing Robots Tags
Robots tags are as important as title tags. They provide the information to the spider to crawl which section of the website, and to leave which portion of the website.
12) Directory Listing in DMOZ & Yahoo
Google takes it's search results from DMOZ and Yahoo takes from Yahoo Directory. As these are the major search engines, it is always better to get listed in these directories to get major exposure. Even though there is a price of $299 to get listed in the Yahoo Directory, as compared to DMOZ which is free, it's worth submitting it.
13) Improper Anchor Text
It's a good way to use the keywords in the anchor texts and a way to circulate them in the page.
14) Insufficient Content
The content of the site has to be informative and should provide enough information to the user. No content means no traffic.
15) Not Following the Guidelines as Laid by Google, Yahoo & MSN
The major search engines have laid the guidelines for the better indexing and crawling of the websites, not following them leads to the negative result for the websites, check the same here,
- Google Webmaster Guidelines
- Google Guidelines for SEO
- Yahoo Search Content Quality Guidelines
- Yahoo Search Ranking Guidelines
- Live Search Webmaster
Some Useful Links
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