10 SEO strategy blunders and how to avoid them

A summary of SEO techniques you should focus on

Some basic SEO mistakes are all too easy to make. Here are some problems with the overall approach to SEO that I've seen. Do you recognise them?

• 1. Putting all your eggs in the SEO basket.

SEO can be an extremely fruitful internet marketing strategy for any business, but depending solely on SEO is a dangerous game to play.

Here’s why:

• Marketing is not 'one size fits all'. What works like gangbusters for one business may produce almost nothing for another. That’s why companies should use a multi-faceted marketing strategy to test the waters with a variety of tactics, and continue to evolve their strategy over time as results are produced.
• SEO is not instant. Results from SEO don’t come overnight. It takes time (sometimes lots of it!) and patience. Other marketing strategies can fill your pipeline in the meantime and help you reach your target audience through multiple channels in the long run.Pay-per-click (or PPC) marketing, for example, typically produces results much more quickly and is highly controllable. When your organic traffic starts to take off, you can scale down PPC spending if you like, and the option to increase spending again is always available.
• Once isn’t enough. Typically, it takes more than one view or visit to entice a user to convert. Generally, the more times they see your brand or product, the more likely they are to visit your site again and convert or buy.Remarketing is a tactic that allows a company to show ads to users based on behaviour. So, if a user finds you through organic search but doesn’t convert on that first visit, you can serve them ads as they browse the web to encourage them to visit your site again and, hopefully, become a customer!

While SEO is certainly a major component of any well-planned marketing strategy, it is still only one component and should be used in conjunction with other complementary tactics.

• 2: Skimping on body content.

It can be all too easy to get caught up in the mechanics of SEO. Every page needs a unique title and description tag, both for proper indexing and to distinguish your page from the thousands of others displayed for every Google search.

Remember, though, that the content of a page is much more than just optimized title and description tags. Awesome meta tags on their own are not enough to increase your site’s visibility or convert users once they’ve arrived on your page.

Be sure to take the time to craft unique and useful content in the body of the page as well. Body content matters just as much (if not more) as those header items and it’s the 'meat' of where you will engage users once they have arrived on your site.

Matt Cutts (a well-known Googler known for occasional cheekiness) recently illustrated the importance of body content by creating a video with his body missing.

Google is known for being somewhat secretive about its algorithm but when Matt Cutts goes to this kind of length to make a point it’s worth listening.

• 3: Status quo

Change can be difficult in any aspect of life, so it’s understandable that moving away from dated SEO techniques that once worked  and might even appear to continue working – is not easy. After all, if a keyword stuffed list of every single town you service hasn’t caused a drop in traffic yet, why change?

Eventually, using outdated SEO strategies will lead to consequences. That doesn’t necessarily mean a penalty; it could simply mean competitors catching on to newer techniques sooner and overtaking your site. Either way, marketing builds your business so you don’t want to get stuck in a rut and risk compromising the flow of new business into your company.

Stop optimizing content for a small and very specific set of keywords. Focus on writing helpful and useful content that has an obvious theme and intent.

Write for your users and not to toot your company’s horn. Don’t judge success by your site’s exact ranking for a specific key phrase (because that no longer exists). Instead, track trends in traffic and conversions.

Don’t buy links. Don’t create unnecessary lists just to stuff keywords into your content. Don’t use a 'Helpful Links' page. Don’t don’t don’t!

• 4: Duplicate URLs

Many are aware that duplicate content is a no-no in the SEO world, but it doesn’t always happen on purpose. Did you know you might unknowingly be creating duplicate content through multiple variations of the same URL?

For example, if you have both www.mysite.com and www.MySite.com, or www.mysite.com/widgets and www.mysite.com/Widgets, and one doesn’t redirect to the other, you actually have two separate URL’s containing the exact same content.

Yes, upper case versus lower case does make a difference!

If you don’t have proper redirects in place, this can occur even if you are only publishing one version of each URL. It tends to happen especially when other sites link to you and use non-standard formats (e.g. any format they want!).

Your web designer can add a lowercase redirect rule to prevent this from happening.

• 5: Blocking your own site

Has your organic traffic suddenly dropped off the map? Sure, it could be a penalty caused by an algorithm update, but it might be simpler than that.

It’s very easy to accidentally format your robots.txt file to disallow your entire domain from being indexed by search engines. (Oops!) Double and triple check this one, and check it often!

• 6: Overly complex or non-useful structure

Trying to ensure all the finer technical details are in place sometimes leads to making things more complex than they need to be. The simpler route is almost always a better route. This goes for nearly every element of the site. Simplicity helps both users and Google understand how to navigate and interact with your site.

URL structure
Instead of:
http://www.abccompany.com/cat12/prod345

Use this:
http://www.abccompany.com/sneakers/nike-air

• Navigation

Make it text-based so that Google can see it and categorize your sections logically. Try not to make users search for the category they need.

• Internal linking

Link to other pages of your site within the page content where it makes sense, but also provide other tools to make things easy for users. This might include a sidebar with links to all the pages within that category to make navigation simple.

• 7: Doing keyword research once…and never again

Just like SEO tactics change over time, terms in your industry and the way people search for your products or services evolve as well.

Doing keyword research once and never again is like buying a new car and never changing the oil. SEO, just like your car, needs ongoing maintenance and care, and its specific needs may change over time.

Check out the changes in search volume between 'canvas shoes' and 'espadrilles' over the last ten years.

Both have their regular cyclical patterns and become more popular over the summer months, but 'canvas shoes' never comes close to matching 'espadrilles' (which look to be more popular than ever) in volume.

• 8: Not creating link worthy content

Some call it 'link bait', but no matter what you call it, the idea is the same to create content that will be loved by your target audience and is also worthy of other sites linking to it.

Link worthy content can include pieces like whitepapers, infographics, videos, tutorials, how to articles and lots more.

'Regular content' is, of course, the starting point that every site needs to flourish, but many times users are itching to be further engaged.

Developing a link bait arsenal is like killing two birds with one stone because your site becomes more and more attractive to users and potential customers, and positions you as an expert in your industry, worthy of those precious inbound links you’ve been coveting!

• 9: 'Click Here'

As a web-based society, we’ve (fortunately) moved past the need for using the words 'click here' on every link. Most users understand what links and buttons look like and, as long as your user experience is simple and logical, they will click on the links you provide.

Using the anchor text 'click here' also provides absolutely zero SEO value…unless your page content is themed around the phrase 'click here'. Instead, let the anchor text be part of the natural content on your page.

Example:

• Click here to see our selection of red sneakers.
  Instead - Check out our red sneakers!

Give Google a strong hint about the content of the page that you’re linking to and make your content more logical and pleasant to read for your users.

• 10: Skipping data markup

One area where Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! have actually collaborated is for schema.org. Schema.org is a joint effort to standardize website data markup for the major search engines. Basically, structured data markup is coding that makes it easier for search engines to understand the various elements of a website.

Data markup helps search engines better understand websites in order to return the best quality search results, and it can also enhance the user experience by displaying rich snippets as part of search results.

Google currently can display rich snippets for items like recipes, reviews, breadcrumb navigation and a few more.

Even though you won’t see all data markup displayed in search results, it makes sense to give the search engines as much information about your site as possible.

It’s also very easy for a web designer to add this markup to your site.

Thanks to Cheryl Ambruch for sharing her advice and opinions in this post. Cheryl is Director of Content Strategy at Miles Technologies You can follow the marketing team at Miles Technologies on Twitter or connect on LinkedIn.