SEO is easy to get wrong. It’s a fact. But when you get it right, it can make an immeasurable difference to your company’s online standing. But a bad SEO strategy can be more damaging than no strategy at all. With this in mind, it’s just as important to learn what not to do as it is to keep up-to-date with the latest techniques. There are plenty of common SEO mistakes that companies continue to make time and time again. To help you avoid making them yourself, here are some of the main ones:
Choosing The Wrong Keywords: Your keyword selection, if you’ll pardon the expression, is key. Many people choose the wrong ones simply because they sound impressive, or perhaps because they don’t fully understand their customers’ priorities. It pays to do proper keyword research and analysis to find out exactly what kinds of terms your customers would type in when they are searching for products or services like yours.
Keyword Stuffing: This is an absolute no-no, as anyone who has fallen foul of this rule will tell you. Stuffing is when a person over-uses their keywords or phrases. This was OK when search engines were relatively unsophisticated, but now they can pick up on keyword-heavy blocks of text and you may well be penalised. This is because search engines are geared towards helping users find the highest quality content. A piece of text that simply repeats the same thing without telling them anything new does not qualify as useful. You have been warned.
Duplicated Content: More and more, search engines are penalising websites that don’t publish original or high quality content. It used to be far too easy for companies to simply copy large chunks of text from one site to use on their own. Doing this on a regular basis will now reduce your rankings to get producing some useful and original content.
Too Broad-Based: If your website doesn’t have a strong focus then search engines will find it much more difficult to direct users to your site. And once they’re there, if your content is too broad-based you will be lacking a certain authority. What you need to do, at least to begin with, is specialise. That way you can have a small number of really targeted keywords and work on building up a reputation as an expert in your field.
Poor Backlinks: Backlinks are just as important for your SEO rankings as keywords. But you have to be selective about them: links from sites with little relevance to your subject or to poor quality sites will not do you any favours. And another thing – never be tempted to buy backlinks to boost your search online standing. Search engines are now wise to this and regard it as a form of cheating. If you practice this regularly you may well find your site blacklisted and this is very hard to recover from.
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