5 SEO Mistakes to Avoid

Everyone knows that content is king. But there are other details that can make or break an SEO campaign. Below are five common SEO mistakes to avoid while building your campaign.

Title Tags with No Keywords: How many times have you seen web page titles with just a company name or some other inappropriate text with no relevance to the actual content of the page? A title tag is meant to educate both search engines and human visitors about the theme of the webpage. Title tags can be one of the most important on-page factors that determine your ranking in search results.

Improper URLs: Long URLs with parameters can be incomprehensible for both a site visitor and a search engine spider. Descriptive file names with appropriate keywords not only assist a website visitor, but may also aid in achieving better search results. A word of caution, however: Don’t give in to the temptation to overuse keywords in file names.

Poor Navigation & No Sitemap(s): Search engine spiders often rely on navigation and sitemaps to index pages. Menus made in Flash, JavaScript or images are largely unreadable to most spiders, and they may choose to ignore them. Sitemaps – both HTML and XML – allow search engine spiders to crawl a website quickly and efficiently. Avoid menus made in Flash and JavaScript, and always provide a sitemap (preferably HTML and XML) for ease of navigation.

Inappropriate Anchor Text: Use descriptive anchor text such as “Tampa FL Dentist” which includes your keywords and also relates to the page being linked to. Don’t use anchor text which has no relation to the linked page.

Disallowing a Search Engine: The robots.txt file is kept in the website’s root folder and instructs search engine spiders which pages and directories they can crawl – or not. “Toying” with a robots.txt file is not for the novice. Far too many inexperienced webmasters have inadvertently banned search engines from accessing relevant content on a website.  Mistakenly disallowing a search engine spider may result in some – or in extreme cases, all – of your website content not being indexed by the search engine. What does it mean if your site’s pages are banned from indexing? Your site will not appear in search results!

Most of the mistakes mentioned above can be easily avoided. Such mistakes can be typically found in websites that have been optimized by an inexperienced SEO consultant or a webmaster with little or no knowledge of SEO. Thus, it is recommended that your website be reviewed by an experienced SEO consultant. An experienced SEO consultant not only avoids such mistakes but has also in-depth knowledge of the SEO industry and SEO principles which can give your website an edge over your competition.