Common SEO Mistakes You Can Make
EVERGREEN, COLORADO- Recently one of our clients started losing his #1 positions we helped him achieve. Slowly, his ranks dropped to #5, then #7, and so on until he was dropped to the second page. He constantly complained that our team was incompetent and we needed to do more to get his ranks back.
This phenomenon is rare in our company and we couldn’t figure out why this was happening. Finally, the truth was revealed: our client was “helping” with the SEO process by doing what he “read” on the Internet.
What he had read was outdated and now wrong. We quickly identified his SEO missteps and made the necessary to corrections to restore his rankings. However, during the two to three months our client was busy “helping” us, he was missing out on the opportunity to continue his reign at the top position of Google for his keywords.
If you are hands-on with your site’s SEO or want to help your SEO company and make the process faster, you should be aware of what is good for SEO and what is bad. Beware of the following techniques and know that they WILL damage your rankings:
- Reciprocal Linking
Links are the backbone of your site’s SEO success. Everyone knows that without back-links, your site cannot rank well on Google. There are dozens of ways to get links for your site, but you should be aware that reciprocal linking is a practice that has been looked down upon by Google for many years now. - Buying back-links
This is a big no-no. If you participate in any “scheme” to buy links for your site, including what are called “sponsor listings,” you will sign yourself up to be penalized by Google. Stay away from paying anyone to place a link to your site. - Using your keywords as text-links
We know that if you want to rank well on Google for a particular keyword, you need to have that keyword as text link from sites that link to yours. But overdoing this WILL PENALIZE your site for that particular keyword. - Over-optimization
Anything that looks unnatural to the human eye or to Google’s algorithm is bad SEO practice. There are many examples of over-optimization, but here are a few: - Keyword stuffing
- Redundant blog tags
- Redundant image tags
- Same header and title tags
- Multiple Google profiles
Having your Google profile is a must, but if you have multiple Google profiles or Google Places accounts, you will certainly damage your rankings on Google. - Plagiarism
We all learned in school that plagiarizing results in an “F.” But for some reason, we think copying someone else’s text and putting it on our site is OK. This is very true in the case of e-commerce sites. Most have products that use the same description as the manufacturer or another competitor’s site. After the Google Panda update(s), sites that are plagiarizing are no longer ranking well. So, hire a copywriter and re-write your site’s content, even if it has 10,000 different products. That’s the only way your SEO efforts will succeed.
Thanks for reminding us the most basic lessons of SEO, Ali. I’d especially second you on the point of plagiarism. Genuine content not only pursauades search engines of your worth, but also makes your readers realize that you respect their quests and queries and try your best to answer them. It may also be beneficial for search engines’ own credibility if they refer a visitor to your site and you satisfy him.
Anyways, had a good time reading your discussion. Thank you!
Great points there, thanks. But what if my e-commerce website has 500,000 items, and is constantly growing?? This is not feasible to write descriptions even for half of those.. We do have a blog with a lot of unique content, but product descriptions are pretty standard, provided by the manufacturer. There are also many other websites that have very similar or same descriptions, the only difference is that the lines get switched around. Doesn’t Google have any way of telling that same or similar product descriptions are not really plagiarism? From the consumer point of view it does not matter how the same item specifications are presented, as long as the information they need is there, why should such product descriptions be treated as plagiarism by Google??
The reasons you mentioned are very true that can be the cause of drop in rankings..I dont adopt any of these methods..I always try to get natural links which can help to get good rankings.
Wow, interesting!
Over-optimization can be avoided using a keyword density tool.
But, reciprocal link building is a way complicated matter and most times is misunderstood.
Thanks for clarifying everything about SEO malpractices.
great suggestions and tips to avoid such commom mistakes.
Thanks for sharing with us
I should be more active learning, good information
such a interesting topic and content…….good clarification about the seo optimization mistakes……..thanks!!!!!!!!!!!………………..
@Tanya
You are Tanya. But Google penalizes sites that have duplicate content even if they are e-commerce websites having products with the same description.
We think SEO dead in 2013, it time for Social SEO … is that right Mr. Ali
SEO is alive and breathing… but Social SEO is becoming more important…
These are very helpful note you try to point out in your article, love it.
Thanks for sharing .
the reasons you mentioned are very true We think SEO dead in 2013, it time for Social SEO becoming more important
@Raheel Farooq
Hi, Raheel I agree to you its really the content which gives more value, with out that posting else unrelated gives nothing and readers looses interest . thank you for your post.
Thanks for sharing this, it is easy to avoid such common mistakes.
Thanks a lot for having share. As a newbie like me there are many things are confused me, but your article very helpful for me.