Listing 10 major SEO Practices to avoid is an easy job when you have committed most of these SEO crimes personally. If you have been in this blogging game for as long as I have, I am almost sure you will notice a few of your search engine optimization sins listed here too.
SEO Practices to Avoid
#1. Avoiding SEO Practices Altogether
This is one of those terrible SEO practices that most webmasters cannot avoid. The problem lies with lack of knowledge. When you build your first website there are so many elements to learn that Search Engine Optimization often gets neglected. SEO practices are very hard to grasp and sometimes it is easier to avoid, but this is a major crime. If you do not perform search engine optimization on your blogs and websites, you might as well build a gift shop in the desert.
Performing SEO on your website will tell the search engines what your website is about and therefore they can serve it to their customers who are searching for that particular content.
#2. Picking the Wrong Keywords
Unfortunately to build a successful blog you will need to know how to find the right keywords and how to use them. The entire Internet is based on keywords. If you think about it people type keywords into the search engines to find websites. Websites are just made up of words. These are the most successful websites.
You need to find keywords that people are searching for. There is absolutely no point choosing a keyword that no one is looking for in the search engines. There are many ways to research keywords and you can choose to use either paid software, such as keyword elite or market samurai, or you can use the free Google keyword tool.
#3. Not realizing Content is King
What’s the point of performing SEO if you have terrible, worthless content? All that hard work on SEO will not help when people see your web content and hate it. It’s just that simple, content is king and if you do not realize this you will have a problem. Your content can be king in your blog, in a membership site, or even in your free reports.
#4. Not Submitting a Sitemap
Webmasters often presume that because their blog gets updated regularly and they have automated systems in place, that they do not need a sitemap. Well this is wrong. You need to submit a sitemap to all the relevant search engines to clearly show them what is available on your website. It is like handing out step by step instructions, rather than letting people accidentally discover your content and find out what it is.
#5. Never Visiting Google Webmaster Tools
Google Webmaster tools has now integrated with Google analytics, however it has always had its own interesting information to share. You can submit a site map to Google Webmaster tools, check on crawling errors, duplicate content, back links to your site, and so on. All Webmasters should visit Google Webmaster tools. This is a one of those SEO practices you should never avoid.
#6. Never Check your Website Stats
Not following your website statistics is a major crime in the Internet world. You need to be aware of what results your website is producing. You can find details such as traffic sources, keywords used in search, website bounce rate, and so on. You should be using these statistics to improve your website further and to gain more traffic and followers.
I find Google Analytics has the most detailed information about your website statistics. You can also set goals, track conversions, and even see the posts that have the most AdSense earnings.
By checking your website stats you can:
- Give your website visitors what they want
- Find problems with your website
- Recognize your popular content
- Earn more money, and more…
#7. Black Hat SEO Techniques
We all know what Black hat SEO techniques are, but we sometimes seem to get conned into using them. The problem is, if you get found out, you risk being penalized by the search engines. All of your hard work you did like building your blog from scratch could all disappear overnight when the search engines disown you.
Examples of Black hat SEO Practices:
- Buying back links
- Mass article distribution
- Automatic Blog commenting
- Sneaky scripts
#8. No On Page SEO
On Page SEO Practises are extremely important because they will tell Google and other search engines what your page is about. If your post title is “10 major SEO Practices to Avoid” then you need a number of Onpage factors to match this and back it up.
Example of Onpage SEO
Keyword: SEO Practices and variations
Title: 10 major “SEO Practices” to Avoid
Description: keyword x2 variation x2
Tags: SEO Practices and variations
Headings in content: H1 x 1 keyword, H2 x1, H3 x1
Keywords in content:
- In first line once
- In last line once
- 2%-4% in content (10 times in a 500 word post, including headings)
- 2% keyword variations
Many webmaster simply write an article to convey some type of information but it is not always focused enough for search engines to recognize its true purpose. This is why you should never avoid Onpage SEO.
#9. Wrong Backlinking
Ouch! I cannot tell you how important it is to make the right backlinks using the right anchor text pointing to your posts and pages. Search engines are taking note of what the anchor text is telling them. Make a list of at least 5 similar keywords for each article. Make sure they all mean the same thing and use these variations for the anchor text. Do not use the same anchor text over and over as it will look like spam.
#10. Not being Sociable
Sharing is caring and it is extremely important to make it easy for other to share your content. Although many bloggers are now including social networking buttons on their websites, some still refuse to do so.
There are many more SEO mistakes that a webmaster can make.
Which SEO practices do you try to avoid?
An awesome post on SEO, which I was searching this for a long time.
Thanks now I got to know everything about how to optimize a blog post for SEO.
Though I use the all in one SEO plug in for a long time, but now I came to know how to use it effectively. Really thanks for this great article Mitz :).
Thanks for your comment. I hope you learn some more SEO if you are selling SEO services??
There are so many things that you can do wrong that you don’t even realize it yet. You could get an idea one morning and screw things up for good
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Hi Mitz. Can0t agree with you more. #1 for example is just mind boggling to me as I do occasionally see some sites that do not bother at all about SEO. I guess that they believe with some say that “write great quality content” and they will come. Quality content is laready a given and what sometimes they do n0t realize is that if there where 100 blogs and 99 of them are doing at least the basic SEO, then how does someone who avoid SEO all together will ever get found by search engines? SEO is really just what you mentioned here and all you have to do is to get it done. Good one!
Thanks DiTesco
I agree it is sad when a blogger presumes they can get away with no SEO.
People often ask me to check their websites to see what is going wrong.. The first thing I notice is no SEO. This is just too common.
Your website is probably one I could not fault..
Thanks for sharing, what exactly is buying backlinks?
I hope you don’t mind if I step in and answer this one Mitz. Many high page rank/high traffic websites sell links on their site. Usually these are authority sites and can provide a boost to your rankings, however Google hates it and if you get caught you will get hit with a nasty penalty and fall off the rankings all together. Take a look at the JC Penny scandal, it’s an interesting read.
Thanks for the great example Will! 🙂
Hello Mitz,
Well and True said about SEO practice. All 10 which you have shared are mandatory as it BASIC and ONLY way to get promote our site and bring it at the TOP.
Avoiding or neglecting anyone from this will surely going to proves dangerous for us.
So thanks a lot for this most important sharing.
Hi MegB
Its not dangerous but it is not good to avoid these things..
#1 Well, technically avoiding SEO isn’t a SEO practice in itself – it’s more of a keyword stuffing exercise or something.
#3 What’s the point of performing SEO if you have terrible, worthless content? I know that was your point, but it’s also mine.
#4 Sitemaps are over rated and can hamper SEO efforts. Newbies submitting sitemaps will never learn about the indexing process and large websites indexed using sitemaps could have tonnes of internal linking problems that are infinitely more difficult to identify. Sitemaps & indexing does not necessarily result in rankings – it’s that lazy approach to SEO that spawns the multitude of poor SEOs that are out there.
#7 Buying links is black hat is it? Gets your site penalised does it? Google will disown you will they? Melodramatic much? Buying links is marketing. Not going to get your site penalised or your competitors would do it to you. Google isn’t so mean as to disown anyone. And how exactly do you think the practice of buying links is any different to writing shallow top 10 lists for blogs in exchange for keyword links? At least buying links contributes to the economy – the Internet has enough crap content.
#8 Keyword density. I seriously had to just scroll up and see if this article was first written in 2003.
Hi ScottB
#1. Most webmasters are doing SEO themselves and do not care about technical terms, but thanks for clarifying.
#3. ??
#4. Saying that a sitemap is overrated and a lazy cop out for the inexperienced is a negative thing to say about a newbie. SEO is not rocket science and you shouldn’t make it out to be. Unfortunately I believe that the only people that say it is hard are the people selling SEO services…
#7. There is plenty of proof out there about websites getting penalized for buying backlinks and to deny it is just silly!!!…The only people that say this is ok when all the proof is out there are the ones doing SEO for clients by buying and selling links… You can do it and get away with it but good luck to you!
#8. Are you saying that keywords density does not matter now because if you are then I really do not know what to say to you.. I have been building websites well before 2003 so I am well aware of how it was and equally what it is like now..
I’m sorry, what proof is there that sites get penalised for buying links? That’s just yet another SEO myth that people cling to without doing any homework. Sure if a site buys links, Google might come along later and slap the website that sells the links and the buyer may notice a drop in rankings as a result, but that’s not a penalty for the buyer – it’s a loss of link juice.
The only real situations where websites get penalised due to backlink manipulation is where large link networks are used to poison the target site’s rankings. That takes an immense amount of resources and knowledge to accomplish that is far out of reach of the average business, webmaster or SEO.
And how is buying links on a website any different than this article with some nice keyword links in your bio? It’s the exact same thing. Trading a commodity in exchange for links. People buying links for SEO purposes are just as likely to lose rankings due to lack of link juice as those using guest blogging, directory submissions, article distribution, forum profiles / sigs, link exchanges or any number of other techniques design to artificially inflate link popularity. Any of those link sources can be wiped out in an instant.
Sitemaps are very much a cop out. They were intended to aid indexing – not become a replacement for it. Saying SEO isn’t a rocket science – lol – try optimising a half million page website then. I’ve spent most of my 10 year SEO career fixing other people’s mistakes, largely down to newbies taking on projects that were out of their league as a result of the “optimise a couple of small business websites and think SEO easy” attitude.
Yes, I am saying keyword density doesn’t matter. It hasn’t mattered for a long time. It’s an obsolete concept that largely stemmed from the era of keyword stuffing and hasn’t been important for many years. Keyword density was a child that quickly grew up into infinitely more complex concepts and procedures. I’m not saying people shouldn’t target keywords – optimising title tags and clearing defining headings and Meta descriptions is important for a variety of reasons, but there is no situation in even a mildly competitive market where a few more keywords on a page resulted in improved rankings.
Are you saying that newbies cannot do SEO on their own websites because it is too difficult? If everyone listened to you we would all get no where. That is not what blogging is about…
We have all performed good and bad SEO and share the results with others. Yes we live and breathe SEO and it is a big part of how we make money.
Your statements amaze me and go against every SEO expert I know, including Google.
Here is a Google pdf showing the best practices for SEO. If you have any problems with this please contact them and argue to your hearts content. http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/www.google.com/en//webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf
By the way…If Google says to submit a sitemap, that is what I am going to do!
Here you go; http: //sphinn.com/story/179982 That’s what the experts have to say about sitemaps.
And no, I’m not saying newbies should avoid SEO because it’s too difficult. I’m saying they should do their own research (i.e. actual testing and not simply reading rubbish on blogs) so when they get round to optimising a website that has more than 5 pages they actually know what they are doing.
But unfortunately most don’t do that – they think it’s easy and we get situations like this – http: //searchengineland.com/6-key-findings-from-the-2011-local-seo-industry-survey-90161 where 31% of *SEO Providers* are new to SEO in the past year. That’s what this attitude and poor information disguised as fact leads to.
Thats funny because I always “read rubbish on blogs” and learn some great stuff! Then I test things for myself. If it works I will continue using it. The proof is in the pudding.
People often come back any say that something either worked or it didn’t… This is how we work..Test, measure, evaluate. It is ok if something doesn’t work for you, no need to cry.
Everyone has to go through some failure in order to learn and we are prepared to do that. To avoid failure would leave us less experienced.
I do not really care about the new SEO Providers because….
To quote: “The SEO industry already suffers from a negative reputation caused by poor service being dished out by too many inexperienced and underqualified SEO providers.” We are the ones that have been burned from this and now we just have to DIY SEO.
Don’t you know bloggers are on a “can do anything” road? You cannot dampen the spirit?
Oh I didn’t realise you thought this was an attack on bloggers doing their own SEO – it’s not. It’s an attack on poor information being pedalled as fact which just ends up screwing small businesses and bloggers in the end. Anyone new to the web will go away thinking that they need to stuff keywords into their articles because of the arbitrary 2-4% keyword density you plucked from thin air. A completely untrue claim that you probably picked up from a 10 year old article on the subject and just never stopped doing yourself – or tested.
Serisouly do you have a single shred of evidence to back up your claims or is all we can expect is another disingenuous retort that says absolutely nothing? Example of sites that have been penalised from buying links? Evidence of your keyword density figures? No, didn’t think so.
And to correct yet another inaccuracy – “the proof is in the pudding” doesn’t actually make any sense. Like much of what you wrote, you’re shooting in the right direction, with no clear understanding of why.
“The proof of the pudding is in the eating” is what you were looking for.
Are you crazy? Find the proof yourself if you are so interested. I do not have time to waste on your silly arguments.
You sent me to an article about a sitemap discussion which didn’t go either way 100%. Does this mean it is true and that I should believe it now?
I developed my strategies after testing and not just based on what others say. I listen, implement, then test.
The proof is in the results I get. Go and research if you like…
I really do not care if you pick all of my methods to death….Keep going because it is just entertaining.
True professionals open their eyes to other possible ways, but your eyes are closed.
And FYI I am in Australia and “the proof is in the pudding” does mean something here.. But thanks for enforcing your expertise to this statement too!
Lol my eyes are closed because my decade of experience as a SEO (ranging from small business SEO to million page big brand website SEO) tells me that half the rubbish you are pedalling is wrong? That’s not ignorance – that’s experience.
What is entertaining is the fact that only 2 or 3 of the people commenting on this article are actually interested in the subject. The rest are thinly veiled link building efforts that are as transparent and meaningless as your article – but you seem to engage them as they are ever going to read the comments again. When the second guy with a SEO service related username came along thanking you for these tips, didn’t you stop to think that was a little odd? If not that, then surely the Brocoli Soup MFA site?
10 points for sticking to your guns, but watching you talk to a spambot is just priceless!
http: //www.google.com/search?q=Informative+knowledge+about+how+to+do+SEO+of+a+website.
+I+will+share+this+among+other+people.+I+am+the+regular+visitor+of+your+site.
+I+always+gain+Information+from+this+website.
+I+will+recommend+this+website+among+other
Who else can you bag out here?
Do you realize that your not the only one with experience? Get over yourself!
this is a very helpful tip. especially for newbie like me. sometimes newbie tend to ignore the most basic rule in internet marketing. thanks
Awesome post Mitz. It’s crazy how many people never even use Google Webmaster Tools. It’s an awesome resource that can tell you a lot if you take the time to learn how to use it.
Hi Rick
I know!!! I love Google Webmaster Tools and it has just got more features… You can even see what pages are getting plus ones and more…
It also helped me when one of my websites got hit by panda… All good now but at the time I spent 2 days going over the details in Google webmaster tools.
Agreed. A bunch of our clients were crushed by Panda and had no idea how to use Google Webmaster Tools to identify what happened. The smart ones (like yourself) dug in to figure out exactly where they were losing traffic.
Hi there. Thanks for sharing this. It’s a very nice share from you. Now I know better, which one I should avoid so that I won’t do same mistakes.
Hi Mitz,
It’s unbelievable the quantity of blogs that fail in the #1 and #2. I think many bloggers write and perhaps remember some potential keyword to put in title and nothing more. Research zero.
I want to add the URL-slug with your keywords, bold first sentence with your keyword and last but not least: social media today, is linked with SEO. Make a post/video/audio who is shared a lot and you’ll see improve in rankings 🙂
Cheers,
Gera
Great tips Gera!
I do try to make the URL short and sweet and have the keyword in it but I am human and sometimes forget.. I wish SEOpressor told me to do that too…:)
Thanks so much for the tips, Ileane.
About what you mentioned in number 8, should all blog posts contain all of the things you listed to get a higher SEO ranking? I know this may sound like a rather stupid question from a newbie blogger. But I would really appreciate your input on this.
It is not necessary but you would be crazy not to do it. I will give you an example.
I went and performed SEO on an article that was at least four years old. I think it was getting around 200 visits a day.. I optimized it, the way I do, and at this point it gets around 2,500 to 4,000 visits a day… What if I didn’t do this onpage SEO? I would be missing out on loads of traffic…
Thanks so much for the input. I’ll keep that in mind. 🙂
Very Nice .
Thanks for sharing such a wonderful post!
Hey Mitz thanks for the great tips you gave us.
I just got an question is it important to do all these tips or can I just do a few from these steps and then maybe later all the steps?
Hi Demi
They are all pretty important but some can be automated…For example you can add social sharing buttons to your website and let your content be shared by your visitors..
Picking the right keywords is important and you can save time by keeping lists of keywords you have made stored for later use…I research keywords for every post.
Excellent blog, many thanks. You just got a new reader.
Thanks for answering me Will 🙂
“Hey,
It’s look like you cover every thing in this Article. This is great and finally got something to learn after roaming around the other blogs.
This should keep me busy for a while! Thank you so much.
Hope I will get some great stuff soon from you.
Great work.”
Informative knowledge about how to do SEO of a website. I will share this among other people. I am the regular visitor of your site. I always gain Information from this website. I will recommend this website among other.
Great! Keep coming back as Ileanes blog has all the great info. 🙂
Picking the wrong keywords can absolutely decimate you if you’re planning on doing SEO.
One of the biggest mistakes people make…not selecting exact match and not zeroing in on buying keywords.
Great post as always, Mitz.
Mark
Hi Mark
I totally agree about the exact match and buying keywords…Thanks for mentioning these…
I have a question for you though…what are the main factors that determine a buying keyword for you?
For good SEO results first of all go for on site SEO ( read google panda update).In on site SEO contents have primary importance for ranking of a site.
Create natural and relevant links.These links should be do follow.Show your patience for results.
Great tips Jamal
Thanks for sharing! 🙂
Number 8 was very helpful. I only used some if it correctly. I’m going to be more aware of incorporating the rest.
Do I really need to submit a site map in Bing or Yahoo for example? I get less then 1% traffic from each of these search engines. Dose a sitemap submitted on Bing’s Webmasters Tools equivalent for example, really help?
Good question Christian!
Yes I did submit a sitemap to both Yahoo and Bing but I am not sure why?
I have a website that gets 10,000 visitors a day and out of all of them about 180 come from Yahoo… and they only go to one post…I am sorry I do not know how Yahoo and Bing work at all… I have looked at my posts to compare why Yahoo sends traffic there and hardly nowhere else but they are all optimized the same..
Seems to me that if it’s going to take too much of your time, then don’t worry about the lesser search engines. They often pull and copy from Google anyways. She’s the one you need to feed and care for. 😉
Such great advice. One area of importance that I’ve noticed is the power of Webmaster Tools in Google. So many bloggers don’t even know where to find it, what it’s about, and how to use it properly! When harnessed – you’ll find a world of benefit!
Very True Christian
Google webmaster tools improves every time I visit. The information is absolutely fantastic and most people do not even realize what is at their finger tips. 🙂
And if I’m not careful I can find that I’ve spent hours tweaking listings for different websites!
great mind apply to here………
Mitz,
I like your tips. Anyone can follow (or actually avoid) these steps and do a relatively good job with SEO. Most of us do not need to be industry experts with our hands on the pulse of the minutiae of SEO as long as we understand these NO-NO’s and grasp the basic concepts.
Thanks for a solid advice and the things to avoid.
Thanks Steve!!
I totally agree that anyone can follow these steps and that it is not necessary to enlist the services of an industry expert!!!!
I would never tell someone they cannot do something because of lack of experience or money.. I say get the knowledge and jump in, make your own mistakes, and come out the other end a success! 🙂
I used to ignore On Page SEO. Now I am realizing the mistake of not doing that.
Many of the points are controversial, haven’t been proven that have worked or not, it all depends on personal skills. SEO practices allow leverage between black and white, SEO process have exactly 7 steps, being social nor not doesn’t have to do anything with SEO. On-page SEO have very little impact on rankings, rarely link building can go wrong with or without proper anchor text. With the rest of the points I agree.
1. There are endless steps in SEO. This is just a sample and things change year after year.
2. Being social has a lot to do with SEO now…It is all about creating backlinks…Also Facebook pages gain their own page ranks..Google has brought into it now by creating Google plus…
3. Wrong backlinking can cause you to rank for junk keywords..Also non-targeted.. It can be devastating for a website to get traffic that does not suit their content.
1. Steps sure, diversity definitely, but process contain only 7 steps.
2.Can you please give an example with fanpage with PR? I will really appreciate that. Things are moving this way, but it is still early to talk about,but social marketing is very important part of online marketing strategy and the fastest way of promotion.
3. Well, there is a good point, however if things works this way and have this devastating effect, don’t you think that bombarding competition with irrelevant links will get them banned? Believe me black hat SEOs have tried that many times, impact is close to 0
These are two of my Facebook pages..
this one is PR4 http://www.facebook.com/pages/Tips4pc/167156574680
this one is PR5 http://www.facebook.com/pages/WP-Website-Builder/113027295403362
Who actually has enough time to create backlinks for other sites? I doubt this happens much as it is hard enough to keep up with your own…
By wrong backlinking I meant the wrong anchor text..for example if you had a site about “boys toys” but built links using “boy toy” So close but so different!
Mitz
hum Scott what is it you started to comment for ?
Is it
A You have to much time on your hands ?
B You are to doing “thinly veiled link building effort” ?
C You just enjoy pouring piss on peoples fires ?
Mitz didnt claim to be an SEO expert at any point and reading some of the points was a reminder for me of times gone by.
Mitz I made a good few of the mistakes you mentioned thank you for sharing, My the force be with You.
Hi SEO manchester!
Well said! 🙂
I have personally made most of the mistakes listed above but I am grateful I made them in the early days.. I couldn’t bare to ruin my websites now…
OH yeah Scott I see your Alexa rank is 1 million +++++ blah blah
Mitz your at 22,000 not bad at all
and before you start Scott with Alexa rank means nothing FU** OFF
I wish to reply to your comment, but I think it goes 3 levels deep. Forgive me about my journalistic tone. Quite often I build links for my customers and also mine Facebook pages. One reason why I don’t overdo this, is because very often Fanpages appear in SERP before main website. Sure different phrases have different competition and different daily searches, but this is not very critical as plural and singular forms can be easily fixed with more link building. Excellent reply, thank you very much Mitz!
Thanks for asking great questions Kaloyan…
You bring up some great points. Also the one about Facebook fan pages ranking before your actual site..Not good and I will have to keep an eye on that…
Well explained. Each of these are the most essential for any blogger and truly very easy to neglect and skip. A big kudos to Mitz.
Hi Suresh
Thanks for the nice comment…You are right about these tips being essential.
That’s true Mitz. I’m suffered most of the time by #2. I tend to write posts and publish without doing proper keyword research. But for a blog where I share experiences and tips, it feels too mechanical to collect a bucket of keywords first and then start writing, isn’t it?
That does not work like that for me.. I get the keywords, have a list with the main and LSI, then create from there…
This helps me get ideas and write to cover the subject entirely.
I always avoid looking mechanical and I always try to add a bit of flare to them..:)
The whole thing about writing content is a package deal and you have to balance it all.
All the points that you have mentioned in here are really good. The detailed explanation that you have given in point #8 is wonderful. Even newbies can get an idea about On Page SEO after reading this.
Hi Shree
This methods definitely works for me and I can only say I have the traffic to prove it…All you have to do is be consistent in what you do and produce quality content.
Good advice for a new blogger like me. Thanks for sharing. I have contractors who do the SERP-related work but I’m trying to do a better job during the writing process in order to save them some work after the fact. I have to admit that just understanding the terminology relating to SEO and actually knowing how to employ the techniques effectively are very different things.
Hi Kevin
I personally do not like fancy terminology and the actual meanings vary too much. It really depends on who is writing the post as to what terminology is used and what it is intended to mean.
I know what its like to not complete the writing process thoroughly and have repaired thousands of posts… I definitely put the effort into every post now so hopefully there are no repair jobs later.
Sounds like you have your business under control, outsourcing what you don’t know, and improving what you can. 🙂
I certainly won’t disagree about the flimsy use of all the jargon but I would say the same thing about other traffic channels I’ve worked in. You see the confusion it causes most easily when you talk with advertisers from outside the online crowds.
Great tips, keyword picking is an important part of the SEO, nice sharing….
Oooh, I’m surprised people don’t mention #5 (webmaster tools) more often because Google will even GIVE you reports on how to optimize your site – not just stats but actual analysis. You can dig deeeep into your site and see how it’s appearing in search engines rather than just looking at traffic numbers – lets you change up headline and increase CTR.
I know..I guess Webmaster tools does not look as pretty as Google analytics..It looks a bit boring but some of the info there is gold! Glad you agree Murray..I thought I was the only crazy one! 🙂
Creating a website is a matter of time but to maintain it and getting ranking of your site is a hard thing to do. The points you have mentioned to take care of your site and doing good seo is really an important things to do.
Your are just so right Andy! 🙂
These are all really important to keep in mind, I learn much better from knowing what to avoid than from being told exactly what to do, so this was a really helpful post!! Your #1 is definitely the most important one though, because SEO (while time consuming and complicated) is pretty necessary to get ahead.
I agree with you Luarie, SEO is important!
Great stuff (once again)…when tips are listed like you did, it is really helpful to newbies.
Thanks!
Thank you for sharing. I do contractor work on SERP, but I’ll try to do better job during the writing process to save a job after the fact. I must admit that only the understanding of terminology are in terms of SEO and how to effectively use the techniques very different things
Buying back links can be very expensive and also redundant at times.
Your post is always interesting. And I am waiting for this one. It is indeed that to increase the blog traffic is using SEO. I also use it and now I know more about the TribePro. And you post also about the result after using TribePro. Thanks.
There are 2 other killer SEO practices that one should be very aware of, one in particular if you are a blogger: remember to tick the “I want my blog to appear on search engines” box because I know of at least 3 friends who had this unticked and they were complaining their blog didn’t rank – it was a costly mistake easily fixed.
The second is similar – avoid playing with the robots.txt file or the rel=”nofollow” if you don’t grasp their use and possible pitfalls.
Thanks for the post Mitz 🙂
Hi Tim
Great tips!:) Thanks for sharing these. I really like the robot text file one…
Sound article, I was looking for a clear guide to start the SEO development of my website, this is a useful list. Do you really think that being sociable is a must?…I mean, when a websites starts growing there is not a lot of traffic, then being socialble is not easy without getting a lot of traffic…
Excellent list Mitz and I really ignore google webmaster tool and I will surely go through it. Thanks for providing valuable information.
Hmm.. this is a nice contrast to “SEO practice you NEED to be using” articles… it’s important to realize that certain marketing efforts may actually be detrimental to your marketing goals!! great tips..
………….Keywords…..1…Keywords in title tag ….This is one of the most important places to have a keyword.because what is written inside the title tag shows in.search results as your page title. It is best when the keyword phrases you optimize.for are popular ones so you can get a lot of exact matches of.the search string but sometimes it makes sense to optimize for 2.or 3 separate keywords SEO and services .than for one phrase that might occasionally get an exact match…. 1…..11…Secondary keywords…Optimizing for secondary keywords can be a golden.mine because when everybody else is optimizing for the most.popular keywords there will be less competition and probably.more hits for pages that are optimized for the minor words.
Great list of methods and practices that SEO should avoid in optimizing their page. Never use blackhat method aside from the fact that it is just a waste of time, it can also hurt your website’s search rankings.
Hi Mitz,
These really are SEO sins and I have committed all of them! But no more. It has taken me months to figure out that every one of these practices is a bad idea. Thanks for the tip on making relevant the anchor texts for backlinks and making sure to use variations. I assume this also makes sense for internal links as well?
Wow, this post really opened my eyes about alot of things! Thank you so much for writing it! I have a question about the “buying backlinks”: of course the “black hat” methods wouldn’t be useful in the long run, but please offer another way to get backlinks without MANUALLY commenting on at least 10,000 blogs/sites:-)! Also, I hope you will go more into the on page SEO you wrote about. For example, I have the SEO plugin All In One, but are there others that you suggest? Thanks, Kim
Hi Mitz,
I agree with all of your points. However, I dont think “Mass article distribution” is a black hat method. It’s article marketing and article marketing is a form of syndication and content syndication is by no means a black hat method.
Wow ! Great article. These mistakes will derail your SEO work. Steer clear of them at all costs and you’ll see your SEO work have fruit with regards to more website visitors and better sales.
Hi..Thanks for sharing very important tips. I will keep in mind all these tips.
This is an excellent list that even an SEO novice can understand and follow. Performing a periodic site analysis and tweaking as necessary will keep the site optimized, however, having quality content still reigns supreme!
Its a wonderful post I ever read on BBT. awesome tips i got here about SEO. Loved It.
I had recently redone my site map and it really made a great difference!
May I add #11? Stuffing widgets and scripts that makes loading the site takes decades.. 🙂
Thanks for the reminder on the sitemaps. Most people think it doesn’t matter but you’re right, it does matter. Do you have a guide on SEO that you sell? I’m sure many people here would buy it because you’ve got great tips.
Hi Deepak
I do not sell a SEO guide but I have one for free http://wordpress-websitebuilder.com/PDF/Search%20Engine%20Optimization%20Guide%20for%20Bloggers.pdf
I kinda have fun reading on the comments! Who’s the great? Who said they are experienced in SEO world? Hit or miss.
The success of any SEO practice depends on your way of implementing them. Some guys may have used some kind of advance SEO techniques and may have success on it. But how long? We must always be open minded to the different tweaks in SEO.
Thanks this post make sense to me. No matter what others say.
buying backlinks is consider as black hat technique. but how can I get number of backlinks without buying them. high PR sites does not allow you to post a link for free.
I am Working hard on real estate websites (link removed by Ileane)
I let your comment go through but I removed the link.
I did that because I sense that you really do want to learn more about SEO and you simply made an honest mistake.
Please continue to read more about SEO over on Mitz’s blog http://wordpress-websitebuilder.com/ and you will also see a link to a free SEO report on the sidebar.
In the future if you want to leave comments here on this blog or the vast majority of the blogs that use CommentLuv Premium, it would be wise not add links in the comment. Most people will mark your comment as spam but I’m in a good mood today 🙂
Google has gotten a lot smarter in the past few years. It no longer pays to try to manipulate the system through blackhat techniques.
Great post! Be skeptical of any SEO company that approaches you randomly via email. These emails are likely just spam. Further, it is impossible for an SEO to guarantee a ranking within a search engine. Some SEOs will claim to have an arrangement with a search engine (usually Google), that will allow them to submit a “priority” listing to the search engine. That is simply not true.
I agree with most all of what you said, but I think #3 should be #1. If you spend all of your time trying to get people to visit your site, and then when they get there your site is horrible, then what’s the point? I’m annoyed when I wind up on a site like that.
Hi, Mitz!
Thanks for the great post! I am a newbie in SEO. I found your article very informative.
i really enjoy reading this article and let me tell you i am satisfied with each points made by you,out of these i think black hat seo is most dangerous among all
Mitz those tips were a shocker. Heading over to google webmaster right now 🙂
thanks this is really impressive
an article with style and full of knowledge
Forgetting about SEO is one of the mistake that many people do in the initial stages of blogging and they regret it later on.
Thanks for the article. It is very helpful. It is quite difficult accomplishing decent SEO if you’re new to this game – knowing what to do. I am only trying to write a simple film blog, but have been told that SEO is very important for readership.
I am so thankful and very pleased to find this site. And I wanted to thank you for this great article cos I definitely enjoyed every little bit of it and I have you bookmarked to check out the new stuff you post. After reading this article and when I tried to search and tried to picking up the right keywords just want to make my site more visible to search engines, I am not sure about it. Do you have any suggestions where I can search of what engine optimization is?
I didn’t focus much on SEO… but in the past few months I have been optimizing the site (OnSite) and I noticed 300% traffic increase and 300% improvement in Alexa rank as well. Now, am focusing on OffSite SEO.
Aloha.. amazing post with so many valuable tips here. Gosh I know that so many folks aren’t sure what to do with SEO anymore or their leery about what to add. So many different opinions on this topic, but this is the most simple one I can say makes a lot of sense. I’m glad I came by and thanks for sharing! Mahalo, Lani 🙂
PS.. social sites do work, that’s why I’m here. 🙂
On page seo
Totally awesome
My blog ranks high in google for my keywords
Thanks To Good Seo i did