Nowadays most webmasters know the importance of SEO and learn it by themselves to improve traffic to their websites. However, many newbies tend to make many mistakes while doing it for their website. This article is for newbies who do not know the basic Search Engine Optimization rules. It may help at least a handful of newbie webmasters to correct their web page optimization mistakes. Here I focus the On-Page factors rather than Off-Page tactics. The most common On-Page SEO mistakes are:
- Not using Title Tag
A properly optimized title tag can improve the Search Engine rank of a website for the specific keyword. Search Engines take first 72 characters of the title tag to determine the page content. If anyone is not using optimized title tags for his website, he is making a big SEO mistake.
- Not optimizing images properly
Images have a big effect on drawing traffic. Google not only brings traffic via image search but also from the web search too. See the image below where I look for the keyword Belkin Router Setup. After the first three results for Belkin Router Setup, you can find the image portion.
Google shows a part of images in Google web search. So properly optimized images have the potential to get traffic from direct Google Search. In image optimization, you should care about the alt image tag, title tag, image name etc.
- Usage same meta tags for multiple pages
This issue is most common in dynamic sites where multiple pages have same meta details. This may create a duplicate content issue and can prevent those pages from getting better Search Result rank.
- Not looking in SEO at the time of website development
Search Engine Optimization is not an afterthought. You should have an SEO plan at the time of designing and developing the websites.
- Keyword stuffing
This is one of the most common Search Engine Optimization mistake which may affect the quality. Unnecessary repetition of the keywords in website content may ruin the quality of the content and readers will turn away from it.
- Avoiding important tags
Proper usage of strong, header tags, meta tags etc are necessary for a successful optimization.
- Keeping a dynamic URL structure
Keeping a dynamic URL structure is a big SEO mistake. URL structure should be static.
- Not doing proper competition analysis and keyword research
SEO cannot be started without performing proper competitor analysis and keyword research. We should understand the strengths and weakness of our competitors first.
- Avoid Internal Linking
Well planed internal linking is very important in site optimization.
- Using frames
It was an old SEO mistake where some designers use frames to display content. Google spiders cannot read content in frames.
- Not targeting the right keyword
It is because of the lack of proper business analysis and keyword research. If you are not targeting the right keyword, you may not get business from your web pages.
- Heavy use of flash and scripts
Heavy use of flash and scripts can create obstacles for Google spiders from crawling your web pages.
- Not checking the quality of content
For a successful website quality content is a must. Content should be unique and valuable for users.
- Stop doing SEO once the target is reached
Many do the same mistake and let competitors beat them again. SEO is a continues process and one cannot stop it as long as his competitors are working.
Great information.
ReplyDeleteThanks for posting this. :-)