The biggest SEO mistakes that can kill a website

[Brighteyes]

(Note: This article is written by Rob Collyer, CEO and Founder of Webforumz.com. I have retained permission from him to reprint it)

In my years as an SEO specialist (or Guru as I've been dubbed by some) I have come across many SEO mistakes and pitfalls.... some of which are of the cringing variety. What I am about to share with you are not tricks or cheats, they are the fundamental and basic DONTS of SEO.

If your site does any of these things, then you will definitely want to look into rectifying that ASAP. If you are unsure as to whether your website is suffering from any of these points, then please let me know and I will take a look at it for you.

The following are in no particular order and is not meant to be an exhaustive list, but should hopefully (at least) help out some of you.

Not using a <title> for your page.
If SEO were a game of darts, then getting a good page title would be like hitting the bullseye. Failing to use a descriptive and thought about title containing your keywords will harm your rankings. Every page on your website should have a different title.

Using Dynamic Javascript, Java Applets or Macromedia Flash for site navigation..
This is a regularly overlooked factor and is visible all over the web. Search Engine Spiders may be very intelligent at crawling web content, but they cannot index Javascripts. Any menu system done purely in Javascript is a disaster because search engines will not see those links and therefore your listings on search engines will be very, very limited. This is equally true of navigation systems done in java applets and Macromedia Flash. Googlebot will see links in flash (I think the weighting in algorithms would be far less than regular text links), but I am not aware of any other spiders that will. Just because complicated site navigation menus may be easy for a human to use, does not mean spiders will be able to use (follow) the links.

Many Javascript and flash menu's can be replicated almost identically using CSS and XHTML. If you insist on using a technology invisible to spiders for your navigation, then the golden rule in my book is to place normal text links (or a link to a site-map) in your footer (not invisible ones... lol) in order to give spiders a crawl path around your site
Tip!: Images are not as good as text for navigation and links. Search engines cannot see the context or relationship of the link and the page your are linking to if you use an image.

Not using meta-data.
Make sure you use a keyword optimised title (see above), meta description and meta keywords on your pages.

Tip!: Meta-data should be thought of as a spiders 'first impression' of your website so make sure it very accurately describes the content.

Poorly written, UN-optimised content.
You may have spent ages writing the most in depth and informative content in the world, yet that does not mean it's automatically good for SEO. For instance you could have a 5000 word page all about London.... you may mention several attractions in London and rant about the fine restaurants and nightlife.... you may even say the queen lives there but if you never mention the word 'London', then you're stuck!!
If for arguments sake the page really is about London Tourist Attractions, then you will want your page title to be 'London Tourist Attractions'.... your H1 element (highly recommended) would be the same. Ideally, you will use those words throughout your copy a handful of times... and maybe even include them in bold or italics to show search engines that those words are REALLY important in the scope of the page!

Overuse of images and flash animations
Many websites employ a plethora of images and animations to give eye-candy to the page and in my book, there is nothing wrong with that. The problem arises when the content of the page is mostly portrayed in images and animations. Websites with very little textual content are very hard to classify as search spiders cannot see inside images. Achieving a good balance of content and images should be the ideal focus for any website.

Tip!: When you do use images, make sure that each one has ALT text. ALT text is contributory to SEO and gives some (however small) indication to search engines as to what the image is.

Never seeking links.
If you never take the time to hunt out relevant and well ranked websites in which to obtain links from (or exchange links), then your site is pretty much like a hermit who doesn't get out much. You need a good number of inbound links from other websites.... if you have none, you are effectively an orphaned website with a non existent search engine rank.

Links on other websites to your own contribute enormously to a system known as Google Page Rank and in turn play a sizeable part in search engine ranking algorithms. To reflect this you should spend a few hours a week working to increase links. Links can be sought on other people's or businesses websites and also directories.

Tip!: Writing blogs and articles for other websites are an excellent way of boosting links.

Don't make yourself an island!
Where relevant, give your users links to additional references and information. Spiders will 99% of the time have already classified the pages you link to... they will know the subject matter and topic so linking to other relevant sites is contributory in terms of SEO as it helps to hold up the relevance of your page.

Blatant disregard for search engine guidelines.
OK, so this one goes without saying, but do you actually know what the guidelines are? Most search engines have guidelines that need to be adhered to. Often, if you read the guidelines, you will reveal tips to improve search engine rankings for your site. Breaking the guidelines all too often results in your website being banned from a search engine... a very difficult and challenging situation to reverse. I wrote an article recently all about techniques that are used to fool search engines. You may wish to read it and ensure you are not using any of them otherwise... well, you know.

[williammurray]

If you are straight forwardly following the TOS provided by the search engines, you are playing safe. Otherwise you are displaying red carpet to the bull.

[Stella Richards]

nice post, its really matter in seo. without these things we can't rank higher

[juanromeo]

Nice post. Pointed out some very common but ignored things in SEO.

[wanrom]

Well including these there are killer SEO mistakes
Like navigations between Pages
Improper content
Forget Placing keywords in title tags:

[adamrich]

Black Hat SEO is the biggest SEO mistakes that can kill a website.Because of Black hat your site can be destroyed by Google.
So beware the Black Hat Seo Simple .

[andrewbarry]

3 SEO Mistakes That Will Kill Your Ranking

If you have a website, or maybe you're running some other kind of business on the web, you're going to want traffic that's actually searching for what you're offering. You need to get your site optimized for the search engines if this is your aim. If you are good at your SEO, you will find that you not only get the traffic you want but your conversion rate will increase, too. However, if you are new to the whole SEO concept, then you might make mistakes that will harm your site on the long run.

Your aim is to get liked by the search engines, not get banned. This is why it's crucial that you stay away from the following mistakes if you hope to reach your goals. So read on and don't make these mistakes if you want quality traffic flooding to your website.

The number one SEO mistake early marketers make is improper on-page SEO. Don't neglect this, unless you don't want your site to reach its full potential. The way you format your site is considered on-site SEO. The main components of on-site SEO are your heading tags, ALT tags, navigation, and file names. Each on-page element should contain your main keywords. On-site optimization is one of the search engine's ways of giving higher ranking to the sites that will give their searchers the best experience. Although on-site SEO is very simple, it has to be done; don't worry though because we are about correct a problem that most websites are making.

The second big mistake is internally linking your pages wrong. Your internal linking structure is one more of the few SEO factors that you completely control. Not only will your web pages rank higher, which results in more traffic but you will make your site more user friendly to its visitors. This strategy is often overlooked by many as people focus more on the outbound links. This is an under applied SEO method that is proven to produce results. And what makes it so great is that these are permanent results, not temporary. Many authority sites are masters at internal linking and that is one of the reasons why all of their pages usually have the spots 1 or 2 on the first page; an example would be Wikipedia.

Another SEO error that many webmasters make is writing an irrelevant site title and a poor site description, which can both be detrimental to your search engine rankings. Search engines will factor in the keywords and themes chosen in the title and description to try and calculate a ranking for your site overall. Search engines have expanded and evolved from just a few years ago, incorporating more complex algorithms to try and please visitors, so it's important to pay attention to the finer details. Overall, successful SEO methods can be boiled down to several small elements and tactics designed to work well together to provide you with results. While so-called 'blackhat' tactics might promise you instant results for improving your search engine rankings, they're not considered long-term methods that you can count on. Try to focus on using Whitehat SEO techniques that are more reliable in terms of improving your search engine rankings, bringing in plenty of targeted traffic and won't get you banned for your efforts.

[Hemingway]

Very nice information share Thanks for shearing

[RobertK]

Before reading this post i believe that in on page SEO main mistake is to not utilize title tag and H1 tag as these two are about 70% of on page SEO, and in off page SEO, two many irrelevant links at once is a big mistake, but now many more things clear to me thanks for posting useful material

[robertmakine]

I think in link building this point is very important "Don't make yourself an island", some very good advices for newbie like me thanks for sharing

[GoldenBrown]

Very nice points especially newbie like me, got a lot of good points from this post thanks

[ricketts]

Great article on what can hurt your site! I think to compliment this post, you should also read top 10 on-site seo tips to help your site! Check it out here: Top 10 tips for best on site SEO results - Web Developer Post

[addyj672]

I think in on-page the biggest mistake is keyword density and the biggest off-page mistake is creating back links very quickly.

[kimsteiner]

very useful information is provided in this thread .
thanks for it.

[GoldenBrown]

while doing SEO we must care about our website and these tips tips are very helpful, thanks guys

[jassicarich]

nice post, its really involving in seo. without printout these things we can't rank higher.thanks for information.

[IdaSaxton]

Thanks for the useful info.....its really great

[seowaft]

Thanks for sharing the information . This is so helpful for me ...........:

[Ferris]

greats post. thanks for let us know about mistake. its really very helpful post.

[Mark Donovan]

5 common SEO mistakes :------
1. Targeting Broad Keywords
2. Keyword Stuffing
3. Design not Crawler-Friendly
4. Disorganized Content
5. Ignoring the User