Top 15 Search Engine Optimization (SEO) mistakes I commonly make

Top 15 Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Techniques I Forget to do

Categories: Featured, SEO

Search Engine Optimization is a very hot topic in the World Wide Web. After all, everybody wants to rank higher and come up on the first page of Google search and get more traffic. I have identified and made a list of top 15 SEO practices that I tend to forget quite often. These simple SEO techniques if practiced properly can make a significant difference as to how my pages are ranked in the Search Engine Queries.

Use rel=”nofollow” tag on low value links to not pass the page rank juice. For example ‘Read the rest of the entry’, ‘About’, ‘Contact’ etc.
Use proper anchor text for interlinks. Don’t use ‘here’ or ‘there’.
Optimize the images, always create alt tags and write description in the alt tag.
Use search engine friendly permalinks. Make sure the URLs do not have ‘&’, ‘?’, ‘!’ etc characters.
Use hyphens (-) between words to improve readability.
Do not use underscores (_), use hyphens (-) instead.
Do not use session id in URLs.
Use sticky posts.
Use tag clouds.
Have a category description paragraph.
Let the visitors subscribe to category specific RSS feed. (Use category specific RSS plugin for WordPress)
Use internal linking when possible and appropriate.
Use sub-directories rather than sub-domains when possible. Sub-domains do not share link love from the main domain as it is treated as a different domain.
Research the target audience and aim the site content appropriately.
Keep the content up to date. Visitors don’t like outdated content. Updating the content frequently also attracts the Search engines spiders to index the web pages frequently.

Going forward I will try to use this list to optimize my web pages for search engines.

Don’t forget to read the 6 SEO Strategies That Can Generate Highly Targeted Traffic and Blog Commenting Strategies to Improve Search Ranking articles.

Have you identified any SEO mistakes that you commonly make?

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#1 by Sandy Allain on January 26, 2012 - 10:40 pm

That’s a nice list of tips, some of which I had absolutely no idea of. I can’t claim to be a seo expert yet since I mostly do manual submissions, so I will try out these on my site and report back with the results. Thanks for sharing!

#2 by Mark on January 3, 2012 - 12:45 am

How about keyword mapping?
It is so easy to link all your keywords to the home page but that won’t stick in a competitive term.

CozyWeb

#3 by cursus photoshop on November 2, 2011 - 4:06 pm

How are sticky posts going to help? I always thought fresh content was the key to having more regular visits from Googles spiders, noticing you updated content?
Great list of tips, really helpful. thanks!

#4 by Banta snabbt on October 18, 2011 - 1:54 pm

16. Not using a tool, like Seomoz’s Open Site Explorer or Majestic SEO to identify links from compeditors! Add it

#5 by PriyaMehta on August 29, 2011 - 4:44 am

If you are a new to internet marketing, search engine optimization (SEO) is sometimes hard to understand in the beginning. SEO is the ability to make an article or a web page optimized for the search engines. Once the article or webpage has been SEO optimized the search systems such as Google, Yahoo and Bing now have the ability to rank and index the page or article appropriately

#6 by cterrell on August 21, 2011 - 6:22 pm

I have been trying this SEO for about 6 months. I have 2 pages rank well in google, but can’t seem to get the rest to do well.I need to do a better job of researching my audience. Thanks for the info

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#8 by SpearHead SEO on August 14, 2011 - 11:57 pm

This is a great article. I always forget about subdomains. This is something Im going to be experimenting with shortly. If a website is fully optimized, are could tags truly useful? Im curious your opinion. Thanks.

#9 by ComputerSpot on August 9, 2011 - 2:12 pm

Great article on the right things to do to keep SEO at the front of the site. Anchor Text is the one that I keep forgetting, but makes such a difference if you get it right.

Thanks for the reminders and the list.

#10 by Mark Sim on July 13, 2011 - 3:34 am

Even though I know all these tips and school my clients on them incessantly I still find myself slipping up now and then. My most common mistakes come from falling back on the time-saving shortcuts of my early website designing days, when brevity was favored over breadth, and of course prior to anyone thinking about SEO.

#11 by admin on June 3, 2011 - 11:13 pm

@Kiash, meta description and meta keywords are two separate things. Meta descriptions should not be longer than 160 characters. Keywords should be 2 to 5 words long.

#12 by kiash on June 3, 2011 - 10:57 pm

Thanks for sharing those valuable seo tips. I have a question that is, “How long I can give meta description or meta keywords? shorts forms are good or long ones?
Thanks Again!

#13 by admin on June 1, 2011 - 10:38 pm

@Bob, tagging your posts will help your visitors find your content easily. Things that help your visitor find your content can also help the search engine find your content.

#14 by Bob on June 1, 2011 - 3:07 pm

I wish that you had went into greater details about the tag cloud. I have seen that alot, however I don’t get it. Is this an SEO trick? Is it a gimmick? Is it for styllistic purposes? I just don’t get it.

#15 by Biggest Loser on May 25, 2011 - 10:02 am

I don’t really agree with using tag clouds. By doing so you will get a lot of new links with the result that all of your other links lose some value. It’s not really worth it and personally I don’t believe the users ever use it.

#16 by sherry nadal on April 29, 2011 - 3:04 am

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#17 by sac ekim on April 6, 2011 - 4:34 pm

thanks for sharing this information with us.
tr….

#18 by Anuj@webtricksblog on April 4, 2011 - 3:00 pm

Your post touches upon a lot of great points, but ultimately I think the most important thing is that as writers we should always write for the reader and never for the search engines

#19 by Cam on March 29, 2011 - 4:31 am

Thanks for taking the time to post this info, very useful for us types who just cant work out why their blogs/sites are on page 10 of Google!!

#20 by SEO Colorado on February 28, 2011 - 3:45 am

I can’t believe the number of clients I have who simply refuse to tag their photos properly. It’s such a simple and beneficial strategy, yet so often neglected. It’s a real shame as it couldn’t be easier to do, especially with todays CMS backends making tagging, and captioning so damn simple. I guess some folks just never learn.

#21 by BERKYS on February 20, 2011 - 7:28 pm

One of this tips was missing in my blog : the category description paragraph,
i think is very important

#22 by Promoafaceri on February 19, 2011 - 6:33 am

Very good article. I think perhaps most importantly, with relevance to Google, entering the title tag an expression of words or keywords, that is optimized for that page.

#23 by Stacy Renee on February 19, 2011 - 12:06 am

I love this article, why because I forget to so many of the same things, hahaha. I think I’ll copy this article and make a checklist out of it, thank you so very much.

Stacy Renee

#24 by Chris Quinn on February 15, 2011 - 4:12 pm

This is great. I was looking for a quick list of SEO tips and this hit the spot. These are easily forgotten search engine optimization tips that definitely need to be incorporated into your strategy. Excellent article.

#25 by Prince Zermic on February 7, 2011 - 11:07 am

There are few ways to give your content a boost. You can add to the current content or re-write it. If you’re going to add to your content just continue where you stopped writing. How? Just add two or three new tips or pieces of information and write a paragraph on each. This will naturally strengthen your article or post. After re-publishing remember to ping your site. This will let search engines know that you have updated your content. It might take a few days for all the spiders to crawl your site but once they do you should see an improvement.

#26 by Greg on February 3, 2011 - 10:17 pm

Great Information, O try the SEO but i cant see the difference.

#27 by Ryan on February 2, 2011 - 9:10 pm

I’m constantly forgetting to add the rel=nofollow tag to my outlinking links, which is a drain on the juice. Helpful reminder list.

#28 by Stacy Renee on January 22, 2011 - 12:24 am

Very cool, I am just starting to learn about search engine optimization, so I am reading every article I can find, thank you very much for sharing yours.

#29 by John Gamings on January 2, 2011 - 5:06 am

“# Use tag clouds.
# Have a category description paragraph.”

How exactly do those things improve SEO?

#30 by SirSEO on January 1, 2011 - 6:08 am

Great tips, i won’t forget to set them in my SEO strategy. thanks

#31 by Rick Thomas on November 17, 2010 - 10:58 am

I should post your list above my computer and double check before I post or update anything. I have been committing several of these errors. Thanks for sharing!
.-= Rick Thomas´s last blog ..Search Engine Optimization Puts Your Business “On The Map” =-.

#32 by Roshith on November 9, 2010 - 10:38 pm

very useful tips you provided. I will try to use the same for my websites.

#33 by Instyle Furniture on November 4, 2010 - 6:52 am

I adore when someone reveals such an information. This is really nice and useful for all of us. Thanks!

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#35 by Nisha Shah on October 19, 2010 - 2:54 am

Basic and important tips. Thanks for this information.

#36 by Sam on September 28, 2010 - 1:39 am

With so much stuff out there it’s easy to forget the most fundamental of things. This is a great list to keep in mind and remember! Thanks!
.-= Sam´s last blog ..WordPress Templates – Yay or Nay =-.

#37 by Ford CT on September 10, 2010 - 12:58 pm

Good information. SEO is changing on a daily basis, but the stuff you covered here has been true forever and I suspect will continue to be correct for some time to come.
.-= Ford CT´s last blog ..SOLD – 2007 Audi A4 20T in Madison- Connecticut =-.

#38 by Ayush Kumar on September 2, 2010 - 7:35 am

You have mentioned almost all essential seo tricks, whats new?
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#39 by Terbooz on August 8, 2010 - 4:48 pm

Simple but important .. thanks allot
.-= Terbooz´s last blog ..The Specifications for a Toshiba NB100 =-.

#40 by Travel Blogger on August 3, 2010 - 5:39 pm

Very useful quick tips here, thanks! and some useful ones in the comments also
.-= Travel Blogger´s last blog ..Cheap Holidays Under £100 =-.

#41 by edinburgh photographer on August 1, 2010 - 4:24 pm

Great tips here. Also worth remembering to noindex your categories to avoid any dupe content issues – something I always forget!

#42 by admin on July 26, 2010 - 7:54 am

@Gina, thank you for sharing the in depth SEO techniques.

#43 by Gina Gaudio-Graves on July 26, 2010 - 5:43 am

You missed a few really important SEO techniques for your blog so I thought that I would add them for you here:

1) Use the EXACT same keyword in 4 places in every post — the title, the tags, anchor text for an internal link (that goes to another post or page on your blog or site that uses the same keyword), and anchor text for an external link (that goes to another site that uses the same keyword). Note that if you want to improve your page rank and search engine rankings, you need a combination of internal links (these say that your site is well organized for the searchers who get there), outbound links to other well organized sites (this says that you know who the experts in your market are) and backlinks or inbound links (this says that other experts know who you are). So, if you put your keyword in all 4 places, then you have at least 2 of these 3 types of links in every post!

2) Don’t just link from your post to another post using your keyword as anchor text. Instead, create DEEP links that go from post #1 to post #2, from post #2 to post #3, from post #3 to page #4, etc. Each time, use the same keyword as anchor text. You should be creating deep internal links, deep outbound or external links, and deep inbound or backlinks. With as few as only 40 backlinks (about 30% were deep) and only 25 to 30 internal and external links, I’ve been able to EASILY get a page rank of 5 and it sticks too!

3) If you want to rank well in Google, use a ? at the end of your post’s title. The algorithm will actually reward you with higher search engine rankings when you do. What’s even better is that most people using search engines are looking for how to solve their problems. They’re thinking in terms of questions anyway! For example, a typical search might be for “how to do you get rid of blah blah blah?” where “blah blah blah” is your keyword”. While the searcher may not include the ? in the search phrase, the searcher will be a lot more likely to click on your search result when they use your title phrased as a question!

I hope this helps! A systemized approach to blogging can make it a lot easier to get great search engine rankings easily!

#44 by Adam@How To Make Money Online on July 22, 2010 - 11:47 am

Thanks for this advices ,but may you miss some tips like:

1-don’t use pictures unless you optimize it for seo
2-don’t the same keywords.When you use the same keywords over and over again (called keyword stacking)
3-dont try to hide your keywords or keyword phrases by making them tiny. or make size very small
4-Submitting Identical Pages (duplicate content).
If you want more tips about seo mistakes visit this link=>
10 Seo Mistakes To Avoid

#45 by Jason Hein on June 22, 2010 - 10:59 am

Great list. Thanks for sharing this post. If you get the chance, feel free to visit my site.
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#46 by beyondokc on June 10, 2010 - 11:00 pm