When I first started building
websites of my own many moons ago, I read almost everything I could lay
my hands on about Search Engine Optimization (SEO). I could foresee the
importance of search engines then and wanted to be ahead of
competition. Soon, I knew by heart the methods needed to improve my
websites’ search engine rankings by leaps and bounds, or so I thought.
Unfortunately,
not all my websites were able to achieve great SEO as well as I had
desired. Some websites were ranked pretty high and were sitting on the
first page of search engine results for years; while others did not even
make it to page two. Looking back, I saw that I had committed countless
mistakes in my quest to SEO my websites. And through the years, I had
learned from my mistakes and had managed to put these websites back on
track, though it did take some time. Today, I have put together a list
of 5 common SEO mistakes to be careful of, that I would be sharing with
you, so you don’t have to learn it the hard way like I did.
Mistake #1: Wrong Keywords
Choosing
the appropriate keywords is the most important part of the SEO process
and yet the most common SEO mistake ever. Most webmasters, regardless of
beginners or experts, commit the crime of applying keywords that THEY
think best suit the website, instead of what keywords the search engine
users pick to look for information offered by these websites. Most of
them failed to realize that their keywords are not necessarily the ones
that their targeted readers choose to search with. So do ensure that you
do keywords research first and one way of doing so is through Google’s
free Google Keyword Tool.
A tip here is to concentrate on
keywords that have lesser competition and higher monthly searches. This
way, you get less competitive sites but comparatively higher traffic,
thus elevating your chances of ranking high in the results page.
Mistake #2: Keywords Saturation
I’m
sure you have come across some sites which seemed to be saturated with
the same keywords. Some webmasters believe that by stuffing the website
with the keywords over and over again, the search engines would be able
to detect them better. While this may hold some truth few years ago, it
is not the case these days. In fact, most popular search engines today
would penalize websites that have excessive keywords and poor content.
Regardless
of whether it was done intentionally or unintentionally, cramming
keywords in the websites or articles should be avoided. Do ensure that
you produce quality articles and not quantity keywords only!
Mistake #3: Duplicating Content
Seen
an article in another website and think that it’s so well written that
you are tempted to just “borrow” it for your website? Don’t even think
about it. Not only would search engines drop your site from being
indexed but you would also be committing the ultimate crime in writing
i.e. plagiarism. It is not worth the trouble.
You may be able to get
away with it once or twice but what happens after that? You have to
think long term and you definitely have to put in the effort.
It
is not easy to come up with quality articles and sometimes you may
encountered writer’s block but do persevere through it and your readers
will come to appreciate it. So will the search engines.
Mistake #4: Not Doing Any Site-keeping
Like
housekeeping, you have to consistently monitor and manage your
website’s SEO progress. This is because search engines are changing
their algorithms every so often and in order to maintain your high
ranking, you would need to constantly put in SEO efforts besides
updating your websites.
Mistake #5: Using Black Hat Techniques
Most
people are tempted by the less-effort and quick-result offered by black
hat SEO techniques like invisible text, doorway pages and overstuffed
unrelated keywords. These are short-term and therefore, should be
avoided. Bear in mind that search engines are improving their techniques
too and will heavily penalize websites found to be using black hat
techniques. Do not every use any black hat SEO techniques!
While
many knew about the importance of SEO in generating traffic to a
website, not many would take the trouble to SEO their websites. But if
you are serious about internet marketing, I suggest that you put in the
effort to learn more about SEO as well as the above list of mistakes to
be careful of. Armed with this knowledge, you would be able to build a
great SEO strategy and with some patience and effort, your website would
soon be ranking high in search engines results.
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