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For my presentation at SEMpdx's SearchFest 07, I will present "Overcoming the Top 10 SEO Mistakes " by Web site owners and developers.
In this online article, I have compiled 10 lists of 10 SEO mistakes, and added my own list, derived from 10 years of search engine optimizing experience and observions of Website owners and their developers. Top 5 SEO Deadly Sins
Let's organize these mistakes into the "Top 5 SEO Deadly Sins." - Don't Plan to Win
- Don' t Design for Search Engines
- Don't Author Enough Content
- Don't Optimize Layout and Content
- Don't Test and Continually Improve
Top (10) SEO Mistakes
- List by Stanford Davis
Don't Plan to Win the "Search Engine Wars" - We describe this as winning a war because you are in a fierce competition for top place
- Plan a level of SEM effort great enough to beat your competition
- (1) Don't Start planning for SEO's when starting to design a new site
- Include SEO/SEM expert work In their budget
- Plan for both on-site efforts like optimization and off-site activities such as link development
- (2) Don't include content on your Web site highly worth linking to and visiting repeatedly.
Do not Design for Search Engines
- (3) Important messages have not been defined, reduced to popular keywords phrases, relevant to your products and services and that can win.
- (4) Keyword phrases have not been assigned to groups of pages organized in themes with the strength, focus, and concentration necessary to rise above the competition.
- Community elements such as a forum are not planned for the site.
- (5) HTML SEO features such as unique <title>'s, Meta tags, image ALT tags, <h1> tags, file names, and link text are not included and designed with search engines in mind.
Author Rich Content
- (6) Not enough content is authored. Content is too scarce and does not support goals for winning the search engine wars for important keyword phrases.
- Limiting information to a product catalogue, and "About Us" rather than keyword rich articles of interest to your customers such as technical support, application notes, user experiences, tips
Optimize - Page layouts don't contain the necessary elements to support optimization such as a unique <title> for each page, headings which use <h1>, and <h2> tags, ALT tags on images, title tags on links.
- Content which is written for search engines is not done with the skill and discipline necessary to win.
- (7) <titles> - do not convey the main message and keywords for that page and are not unique to that it.
- (8) Not applying the keywords in all of the important elements of the page including <title>, Meta description, Meta keywords, <h1-h3>, first sentence, text, link text, and image ALT tags
- (9) Keyword phrases are not applied just enough frequency, density, and prominence to win without being penalized for over doing it.
Test and Improve - Folks who are not SEO professionals, and perhaps some who are, do not use tools to test how the pages they are optimizing will stand up to the competition. They do it, publish, wait and watch.
- Actually they may not even test their search engine results periodically to see success and where to improve
- (10) After publishing the page for the first time, developers stop optimizing and improving the site for people and search engines, and don't take into account their changing competition and opportunities to do better the next time.
Now that you have seen my lists, take a look at 10 more lists of top 10 SEO mistakes. They are in two groups of 5.5 Lists of the Top 10 SEO Mistakes | Peter Da Vanzo | Sumantra Roy Mistakes | PublisherAid | Free Links Direct | Search Engine Optimization for Beginners | | No Marketing Plan | Optimizing your site for the wrong keywords | Not Targeting The Right Keywords | Poor Keyword Analysis (or non-Analysis) | Wrong Keywords | | Selecting Keyword Terms Based Only On Traffic Volume | Putting too many keywords in the Meta Keywords tag | Not Using Robots.txt | Keyword Stuffing | Wrong Page Title | | Selecting Keyword Terms That Have Very Little To Do With Your Service or Product | Repeating the same keyword too many times | Not Making a Google Sitemap | Identical Meta Data For Every Page | Wrong Meta Description | | Failure To Use Keywords That Your Target Market Is Actually Using | Creating lots of similar doorway pages | Using Non-301 Redirects | Using Images in Place of Text | Wrong Meta Keywords | | Thinking All Search Engines Are The Same | Using Hidden Text | Using Black Hat SEO Techniques | Inappropriate URL Anchor Text | No "H" Tags | | Relying on Keyword Density | Creating Pages Containing Only Graphics | Bad Accessibility | Expecting a Miracle | No "Alt" Tags | | Poor Titles | Not using the NOFRAMES tag in case your site uses frames | Making Your Site For A Computer As Opposed To A Human | Ignoring The Importance of Links | Wrong URL's | | Not Getting Links | Using Page Cloaking | Not Making Use of Title Tag, URL, or H1 Tags. | Not Filling Pages With Enough Relevant Content | Not enough Content | | Thinking That Hacking Code Will Solve All Problems | Using Automatic Submission Tools | Not Placing Targeted Keywords In Document | Not Creating or Updating Sitemaps | No Content Keywords | | Not Thinking Beyond SEO | Submitting too many pages per day | Not Using In-Page Links Properly | Changing Filenames or Removing Pages of an Established Website | No Text Navigation | | | Devoting too much time to search engine positioning | | | | 5 More Lists of the Top 10 SEO Mistakes Website 101
Mike Banks Valentine | E2 Solutions | webroksite | SEOlogs.com | trendmx | | Removing a high traffic page | Site entirely made of graphics | Non-descriptive page titles | No Title or Bad Title | images of flash for navigation | | Not paying attention to Web Analytics | Text in Flash | no Meta tags | Representing text with images or flash | frames | | Never searching for your own stuff | Invisible Text | If you build it, they will come | keywords that are too difficult to win with | Stuffing Meta tags | | "Click Here" links instead of using keywords | Doorway or Gateway Pages | It has to be pretty | Keyword stuffing and hidden text | irrelevant or too many keywords in Title | | text on image gif's | No Keyword in Title Tag | too much animation | No alt attribute in img tags | Not using H1-H3 tags, <strong> or <i> | | Optimizing for MSN or Yahoo not Google | Inconsistent and Ambiguous | cannot resize text | Generic anchor text | No sitemap | | Having Secretary Write Headlines | Not using WordTracker | different design on each page | generic file names | Not optimizing navigational elements with target keywords | | No sitemap | Bad Link Exchange | background music | changing file names after they are established | not enough or too many keywords in body text | | Same title and description on each page | Numerous Frames in Site | poor maintenance, orphaned pages | Using JavaScript only navigation | not enough inbound links from relevant websites | | Redesigning site for a fresh professional look | Ignoring SEO Algorithm | more than one main focus per page | Linking to bad neighborhoods | Not participating in your community, blogging, forums, article distribution white papers, web casts. | | | | | No sitemap and Major HTML Validation Errors | | |
