10 Search Engine Optimisation Mistakes

 

Non-relevant links

External links are highly valued by search engine algorithms because search engines consider these links as individual endorsements of your site. Many online professional search engine optimisation websites promise large numbers of external links to your website. Having said that, caution should be applied before you allow all those external links to cling on to your site. A whole lot of links will not necessarily have a positive impact with your websites rankings instead might have a negative effect if the links are from irrelevant websites.

Search engine optimisation professionals who know their job knows that only good links will help your site with the rankings. External links should always come from sites that deal with related topics to your site and should always be of relevance to what you are saying through your site. A single external link to your site, from another quality site with many number of other good quality sites linked to it, will be of a far more greater value to your site, than hundreds of poor quality links. Professional search engine optimisation people will also know links from gambling, pharmaceutical or adult themed sites, especially if your site is not of the same theme, will only cause harm to your website. Link building is as much a science as it is an art, one any genuine search engine optimisation professional take very seriously.

Untargeted Keywords

Keyword research is a very important aspect of search engine optimisation. Identifying the keywords/ search terms people type on search engine browsers to look for the type of product or service you offer in your website is the very essence of search engine optimisation.  Websites with content not having targeted key words/terms will extremely rarely get caught up for any organic searches if not never.

Excessive Graphics and Flash Content

Any professional search engine optimiser would tell you those beautiful pictures and graphics you have included in your website is of no value for the search engine crawlers. The search engine crawlers are after the real meat, which is good quality keyword rich content with a high relevancy to the search. Professional search engine optimisers will often advise against heavy usage of flash or if possible will advise to avoid using flash altogether.

The luxury of having a flash driven picture illustrated site can be afforded by websites of products with extremely popular brand names. These websites don’t necessarily have to rely heavily on search engine optimisation alone to get listed for a search, people will find the website anyway because of their loyalty to the brand and will always search by the brand name.

Believing all search engines are the same

Not all search engines are the same! What makes Google happy will not guarantee you a ranking with Yahoo MSN and the other engines. At the same time what make the Yahoo and MSN happy might get ignored by Google.

Individual search engines will always want to do something different to satisfy consumers better than the other search engines out there. Search engines are in a business too. Individual search engines can make their money only if people use those search engines for searches. It is obvious why they want to out do each other and strive to be different if not unique.

Situations of this sort can be avoided at least to a certain extent by doing search engine optimisation to your content, keywords, inbound links, and internal linking structure. This search engine optimisation practice will at least ensure that there is something for at least one of the three top search engines.

Multiple Search Engine Submissions

This search engine optimisation practice would have had some success in the early days of search engines but now it is a practice fast becoming obsolete. Multiple Search Engine Submissions now can actually lead to slower indexing and rankings. A website with inbound links from other quality websites will naturally get indexed and search engine submission is not necessary. As a matter of fact multiple search engine submissions can now be considered as spamming and be penalized.

Incorrect Use of Title Tags

Writing the optimised title tag is one of the key elements in the search engine optimisation process. The title tag should always contain the most important key search term and should be limited to a maximum of 65 characters to avoid the appearance of title tag keyword stuffing.

Use of 'Black Hat' techniques

Ancient search engine optimisation practices like the use of doorway pages, hidden text and overstuffing of keywords in modern day can lead to such site penalized or banned by search engines.

Expecting Immediate Results

It should be understood that search engine optimisation is a dynamic process moving forward. Building good links from good quality sites is a lengthy process that cannot be achieved overnight.

Use of Unethical SEO Consultants

Watch out for those bogus search engine optimisation professionals that guarantee without any past clients to back their claims. Choose a reputable search engine professional who will keep regular contact providing progress reports and updates.

Decide to do search engine optimisation in-house

Could have been done in the past but not today with search engines using increasingly sophisticated algorithms this is an area best left to an expert.