While SEO is very crucial to help your online business perform (rank) better in search engines, if you (or your SEO consultant) have been doing it the “wrong way,” it could be worse than doing nothing at all.
In recent years, Google have rolled out several “Penguin” and “Panda” updates that you may be already aware of. These updates have forced SEO consultant to revise their SEO practices and utilize only that abide by their guidelines.
In this article, we’ll be discussing top 5 common SEO mistakes you must avoid in order to be considered for better rankings or stay away from your site getting “penalized” for search engines like Google.
Top 5 common SEO mistakes you must avoid:
1. Keyword Stuffing
Many beginner website owners make a mistake of stuffing their keywords in their content – blogs and videos – thinking the MORE they use it, the BETTER the result will be.
There are 2 major problems with “keyword stuffing,” and both are serious!
1. Firstly, stuffing keywords in your content will “lower the quality” of your site. Your readers will likely smell something “fishy” about the content as it doesn’t reads “natural.”
2. Second, search engines DISLIKES “keyword stuffing.” Most sites often get penalized when webmasters perform keyword stuffing on their site and its content.
Google, for example, sees it as if you are playing games with their SEO guidelines and it raises a “red” flag.
Instead, focus on using moderate amount of keywords in the right places (in the post title, headlines, headers, and first and last paragraphs of your copy), and, of course, make a habit of writing content that sounds natural.
2. Duplicate Content on Your Site – There are several ongoing debate among veteran SEO experts as to how detrimental a duplicate content could be.
However, you still need to be aware of 2 types of duplicate content.
1. The first type of duplicate content is when you post content that are also present in other sites. For example, you may publish an article on your blog and then publish in it Ezinearticles.com.
Although this type of duplicate content isn’t beneficial for SEO purposes, search engines won’t penalize you site for it, though. There are several high ranking sites, like news and online magazine sites that frequently republish their stories.
Ensure that you only post “unique” content.
One popular method is called “content curation” where you place short excerpts and links from other articles and insert your own thoughts, ideas, and expand it.
2. Another type of duplicate content is when you publish the same content in several location of your own website. This method could be disastrous for your SEO purposes.
You have to make sure your post titles and pages don’t have duplicate names.
This type of duplicate content often happens on BIGGER sites, which, of course, is very easy to overlook as there are tons of articles on it.
Duplicate content on a site will detract its value and hence results into “lower search engine rankings.” This often happens on an e-commerce sites where owners usually generate a single product description for variation of it – i.e. the size, the color, etc.
3. Building Poor and Mass Backlinks
Are you trying to rank your website quickly by purchasing backlinks in bulk that are likely to be of “low quality?”
It’s one of the surest ways for Google to indentify your site as utilizing “black hat” SEO tactics, even though you may not be aware of it at all. These low quality backlinks usually comes from sites selling links and “link farms.”
Likewise, avoid building mass profile in forums in order to get “backlinks.” You or your SEO consultant could sign up in tons of forums, create profiles, and build backlinks through signatures box.
Why should you avoid it?
1. Forums have become smarter ever than before, and they can catch this tactic as being “black hat SEO”, and quickly delete your profile.
2. Secondly, generating tons of backlinks from forum, especially “low-quality forums,” will eventually raise a RED FLAG to the search engines.
You MAIN objective are to get variety of backlinks from “different sources.” Plus, the linking must appear natural.
4. Using Limited Keywords in Anchor Text
This is another common SEO mistakes you must avoid – creating anchor text using the same keyword over and over again. Of course, this method looks suspicious to search engines.
Instead, use wide variety of anchor text. Just don’t only use your primary (main) keywords, but use its variation as well, like several long tail keywords that have “high search volume” but also has “low competition.”
This will make your site not only more natural, but you can also gain high ranking quickly for those less competitive keywords too.
5. Lack of Internal Linking
Not only you need to build backlinks from other sites, but also take time to “inter-link” content on your site too. That means you will link one post to another page/ post published on your own site.
In a small site, internal linking may not be beneficial as there may not be much content, however, as your sites grows, it become imperative and beneficial for you to perform internal linking.
It is okay to put couple of external links on your page or post, but it would be even better if some of those links take your readers to other places on your own site.
Not only your reader will stay LONGER on your site, but it also tells search engines that your site/ page are really valuable. Guess what? Once you make a habit of building internal links, it gets even “easier.”
So before you write content, make sure to look for other relevant posts and link to them.
Common SEO Mistakes You Must Avoid - To sum it all
Search engine optimization is vital when you want to rank your site better. However, most beginner site owner makes these 5 commonly made SEO mistakes, as we discussed in this article.
While some of these mistakes are made because people aren’t aware about it, (like the “internal linking” method), but most SEO mistakes result from when people are looking for “shortcuts.”
Examples include “keyword stuffing” and “buying bulk backlinks” from “low quality sites” in order to “rank higher in search engines” like Google.
However, if you focus on creating valuable and original content using moderate amount of keywords (along with its variations), search engines will automatically “reward you.”
In recent years, Google have rolled out several “Penguin” and “Panda” updates that you may be already aware of. These updates have forced SEO consultant to revise their SEO practices and utilize only that abide by their guidelines.
In this article, we’ll be discussing top 5 common SEO mistakes you must avoid in order to be considered for better rankings or stay away from your site getting “penalized” for search engines like Google.
Top 5 common SEO mistakes you must avoid:
1. Keyword Stuffing
Many beginner website owners make a mistake of stuffing their keywords in their content – blogs and videos – thinking the MORE they use it, the BETTER the result will be.
There are 2 major problems with “keyword stuffing,” and both are serious!
1. Firstly, stuffing keywords in your content will “lower the quality” of your site. Your readers will likely smell something “fishy” about the content as it doesn’t reads “natural.”
2. Second, search engines DISLIKES “keyword stuffing.” Most sites often get penalized when webmasters perform keyword stuffing on their site and its content.
Google, for example, sees it as if you are playing games with their SEO guidelines and it raises a “red” flag.
Instead, focus on using moderate amount of keywords in the right places (in the post title, headlines, headers, and first and last paragraphs of your copy), and, of course, make a habit of writing content that sounds natural.
2. Duplicate Content on Your Site – There are several ongoing debate among veteran SEO experts as to how detrimental a duplicate content could be.
However, you still need to be aware of 2 types of duplicate content.
1. The first type of duplicate content is when you post content that are also present in other sites. For example, you may publish an article on your blog and then publish in it Ezinearticles.com.
Although this type of duplicate content isn’t beneficial for SEO purposes, search engines won’t penalize you site for it, though. There are several high ranking sites, like news and online magazine sites that frequently republish their stories.
Ensure that you only post “unique” content.
One popular method is called “content curation” where you place short excerpts and links from other articles and insert your own thoughts, ideas, and expand it.
2. Another type of duplicate content is when you publish the same content in several location of your own website. This method could be disastrous for your SEO purposes.
You have to make sure your post titles and pages don’t have duplicate names.
This type of duplicate content often happens on BIGGER sites, which, of course, is very easy to overlook as there are tons of articles on it.
Duplicate content on a site will detract its value and hence results into “lower search engine rankings.” This often happens on an e-commerce sites where owners usually generate a single product description for variation of it – i.e. the size, the color, etc.
3. Building Poor and Mass Backlinks
Are you trying to rank your website quickly by purchasing backlinks in bulk that are likely to be of “low quality?”
It’s one of the surest ways for Google to indentify your site as utilizing “black hat” SEO tactics, even though you may not be aware of it at all. These low quality backlinks usually comes from sites selling links and “link farms.”
Likewise, avoid building mass profile in forums in order to get “backlinks.” You or your SEO consultant could sign up in tons of forums, create profiles, and build backlinks through signatures box.
Why should you avoid it?
1. Forums have become smarter ever than before, and they can catch this tactic as being “black hat SEO”, and quickly delete your profile.
2. Secondly, generating tons of backlinks from forum, especially “low-quality forums,” will eventually raise a RED FLAG to the search engines.
You MAIN objective are to get variety of backlinks from “different sources.” Plus, the linking must appear natural.
4. Using Limited Keywords in Anchor Text
This is another common SEO mistakes you must avoid – creating anchor text using the same keyword over and over again. Of course, this method looks suspicious to search engines.
Instead, use wide variety of anchor text. Just don’t only use your primary (main) keywords, but use its variation as well, like several long tail keywords that have “high search volume” but also has “low competition.”
This will make your site not only more natural, but you can also gain high ranking quickly for those less competitive keywords too.
5. Lack of Internal Linking
Not only you need to build backlinks from other sites, but also take time to “inter-link” content on your site too. That means you will link one post to another page/ post published on your own site.
In a small site, internal linking may not be beneficial as there may not be much content, however, as your sites grows, it become imperative and beneficial for you to perform internal linking.
It is okay to put couple of external links on your page or post, but it would be even better if some of those links take your readers to other places on your own site.
Not only your reader will stay LONGER on your site, but it also tells search engines that your site/ page are really valuable. Guess what? Once you make a habit of building internal links, it gets even “easier.”
So before you write content, make sure to look for other relevant posts and link to them.
Common SEO Mistakes You Must Avoid - To sum it all
Search engine optimization is vital when you want to rank your site better. However, most beginner site owner makes these 5 commonly made SEO mistakes, as we discussed in this article.
While some of these mistakes are made because people aren’t aware about it, (like the “internal linking” method), but most SEO mistakes result from when people are looking for “shortcuts.”
Examples include “keyword stuffing” and “buying bulk backlinks” from “low quality sites” in order to “rank higher in search engines” like Google.
However, if you focus on creating valuable and original content using moderate amount of keywords (along with its variations), search engines will automatically “reward you.”
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