SEO can be a great way to increase your business and make your website more popular, but it can also cause a lot of problems if you go about it the wrong way. Finding the right balance and avoiding the most common mistakes will help your website hit those high ranks without receiving penalties.
Common SEO Mistakes
- Keyword stuffing. This happens when you cram too many keywords into your email content. It´s not good SEO, it´s just an obvious attempt to fool the search engines and can get you penalized. Aim for 2-5% keyword density and keep it normal sounding.
- Not using meta tags. This is something that everyone tends to know about but doesn´t use. Do a little research and you can boost your SEO through the roof!
- Using exact anchor text. When you are link building, it´s a good idea to avoid asking for the same anchor text all the time. If your keywords are “blue car” then you need to mix it up, “big blue car”, “Blue car for sale”, etc. This will keep the links looking natural.
Don´t make these SEO mistakes. They could cost you a lot of valuable traffic and in the worst case scenario, make your business die down to nothing.
Caroline
Small Business Mavericks
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Good tips. I posted recently about the meta-tag element of a web page as the common misconception is that meta tags alone are the key to rankings. While they are a small factor, it is in any websites best interest to create accurate meta tags of 4 to 6 keywords/terms and complete their meta description.
Stuffing is what led to meta tags being thrown out of search algorithms for a while, but responsible websites using truthful meta data will see benefits.
Thanks Aaron,
Great point. The tricky thing about SEO is that ranking well isn’t about “one big thing” you can do – there is no magic SEO pill that will make your site rank on the first page of Google. It’s the combination of multiple little things that all add up, and I think that’s a place where people get confused a lot of the time. They are looking for the “magic SEO pill” when SEO is really about diet and exercise (for your site). Thanks for commenting!
Caroline