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.