Are you making these 5 SEO mistakes?

SEO process is quite simple and well known. SEO is not a rocket science but still it amazes me to see how many mistakes people do make. Even SEO experts have been guilty of making them. Is it ignorance or carelessness? Whatever it maybe let's explore what are these SEO sins and how do we rectify them.


1) Duplicate Title & Meta tags: This is the most common mistake. I have seen a website having numerous pages having same title and meta tags. Each webpage is different and serves a different purpose then it makes no sense to have duplicate meta tags and titles. Each product page should have correct keywords in meta tags and titles. Not only is this useful from SEO point of view but also a site visitor. S/he will immediately recognize a page from its title.


2) Absurd/Default Titles: Webpages created with WYSIWYG editors like Dreamweaver have default title such as "Untitled Document". Designers as expected do not care about SEO. Many webpages have Titles such as "Home". Many websites have titles with wrong/insufficient information. An auto dealer's website may have a title "Steve Autos". Such titles serve very little purpose because they don't reveal where this dealer is located, what type of cars or brands they are selling. Not many people search for "Steve Autos". Rather they will search for "used car dealer New Jersey" or something like that. Your title should have keywords which people are more likely to search for.


3) Using Flash based websites: I always cringe when I see a website fully made in Flash. This is one super mistake which jealous and over eager web designers are always prepared to make unless stopped by wise SEO Consultants. Flash enables designers to make nice looking website, with all bells and whistles but they are like a kryptonite as far as search engine optimization of a site is concerned. Search engines cannot read flash and it has no way of knowing what the site is about. If your site is flash based, it will look cool but it will have a lonely life because it won't have any presence on internet and no traffic as a result.

Even if your website just has a flash based menu, the problems are plenty. Search engines bots cannot read menu and hence will have great difficulty in indexing all page of your website.


Make life easier for Google bots and use CSS based navigation for more accessibility.


4) Negligible inbound links: On-page optimization though crucial is not the end of SEO. Inbound links from relevant websites with good PageRank are the lifeline of a website. Try to get inbound links from different sources with different anchor text.


5) Too much of SEO: Many SEO Consultants stuff their website with keywords. They do not know that more is not better. Search engines take a dim view of such websites and can penalize them. Make copy which looks natural with a decent sprinkling of keywords.


Author: Aniruddha Badola