Discover SEO
Basic SEO
Top SEO Mistakes
Top SEO Mistakes
Splash Page
I've seen this mistake many times where people put up just a big banner
image and a link "Click here to enter" on their homepage. The worst
case -- the "enter" link is embedded in the Flash object, which makes
it impossible for the spiders to follow the link.
This is fine if you don't care about what a search engine knows about
your site; otherwise, you're making a BIG mistake. Your homepage is
probably your website's highest ranking page and gets crawled
frequently by web spiders. Your internal pages will not appear in the
search engine index without the proper linking structure to internal
pages for the spider to follow.
Your homepage should include (at minimum) target keywords and links to important pages.
Non-spiderable Flash Menus
Many designers make this mistake by using Flash menus such as those
fade-in and animated menus. They might look cool to you but they can't
be seen by the search engines; and thus the links in the Flash menu
will not be followed.
Image and Flash Content
Web spiders are like a text-based browser, they can't read the text
embedded in the graphic image or Flash. Most designers make this
mistake by embedding the important content (such as target keywords) in
Flash and image.
Overuse of Ajax
A lot of developers are trying to impress their visitor by implementing
massive Ajax features (particularly for navigation purposes), but did
you know that it is a big SEO mistake? Because, ajax content is loaded
dynamically, so it is not spiderable or indexable by search engines.
Another disadvantage of Ajax -- since the address URL doesn't reload,
your visitor can not send the current page to their friends.
Versioning of Theme Design
For some reason, some designers love to version their theme design into sub level folders (i.e. domain.com/v2
,
v3, v4) and redirect to the new folder. Constantly changing the main
root location may cause you to lose backlink counts and ranking.
"Click Here" Link Anchor Text
You probably see this a lot where people use "Click here" or "Learn
more" as the linking text. This is great if you want to be ranked high
for "Click Here". But, if you want to tell the search engine that your
page is important for a topic, than use, that topic/keyword in your
link anchor text. It's much more descriptive (and relevant) to say
"learn more about {keyword topic}"
-- Warning: Don't use the EXACT same anchor text everywhere on your website. This can sometimes be seen as search engine spam too.
Common Title Tag Mistakes
Same or similar title text:
Every page on your site should have a unique <title> tag with the
target keywords in it. Many developers make the mistake of having the
same or similar title tags throughout the entire site. That's like
telling the search engine that EVERY page on your site refers to the
same topic and one isn't any more unique than the other.
One good example of bad Title Tag use would be the default WordPress
theme. In case you didn't know, the title tag of the default WordPress
theme isn't that useful: Site Name > Blog Archive > Post Title.
Why isn't this search engine friendly? Because, every single blog post
will have the same text "Site Name > Blog Archive >" at the
beginning of the Title Tag. If you really want to include the site name
in the title tag, it should be at the end: Post Title | Site Name.
Exceeding the 65 character limit:
Many bloggers write very long post titles. So what? In search engine
result pages, your title tag is used as the link heading. You have
about 65 characters (including spaces) to get your message across or
risk it getting cutoff.
Keyword stuffing the title:
Another common mistake people tend to make is overfilling the title tag
with keywords. Saying the same thing 3 times doesn't make you more
relevant. Keyword stuffing in the Title Tag is looked at as search
engine spam (not good). But it might be smart to repeat the same word
in different ways:
"Photo Tips & Photography Techniques for Great Pictures" "Photo"
and "Photography" are the same word repeated twice but in different
ways because your audience might use either one when performing a
search query.
Empty Image Alt Attribute
You should always describe your image in the alt attribute. The alt
attribute is what describes your image to a blind web user. Guess what?
Search engines can't see images so your alt attribute is a factor in
illustrating what your page is relevant for.
Hint: Properly describing your images can help your ranking in the
image search results. For example, Google image search brings me
hundreds of referrals everyday for the search terms "abstract" and "dj".
Unfriendly URLs
Most blog or CMS platforms have a friendly URL feature built-in,
however, not every blogger is taking advantage of this. Friendly URL's
are good for both your human audience and the search engines. The URL
is also an important spot where your keywords should appear.
Example of Friendly URL: domain.com/page-title
Example of Dynamic URL: domain.com/?p=12356
These things are the pillars of Search Engine Optimization and so to your web site's success path.
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About the Author: Robin Dale is the publisher for www.teeky.org , we offer useful & quality articles and news about Search Engine Optimization, Internet Marketing, Dedicated Server Hosting, Windows VPS Hosting UK, Linux VPS Hosting UK, e-commerce hosting, cPanel Hosting, hosting tips & UK Web Hosting. |
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