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10 Major SEO Practices to Avoid Like the Plague

Mitz

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:

#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:

#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:

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?

 

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