10 SEO and Link Building Mistakes
mistake 1 – Neglecting on-page optimization:
I think more people are starting to understand the importance of on-page optimization when it comes to ranking their web pages. However, with so much focus on keywords and link building, I often see webmasters focusing too much on things “off the page”, not realizing that what they do “on” their website is the same. of important. Proper internal linking, keyword density, LSI, image text, no tracking tags, just to name a few, are also very important to search engines. There are free plugins available to help you with many of these things, so do your due diligence and implement whatever strategies are necessary.
mistake 2 – Freaking Out When Rankings Plummet:
Go to any internet marketing forum and you’ll see this every time. People literally freak out when they see their ranking drop. Most of the time this is due to something we call the Google dance. All new websites go through what is called a “honeymoon” period where their websites rank very well at first, but after a couple of weeks they settle in the search results…for usually in a much lower ranking, again, this is natural. .
If your websites age and have fallen in the rankings, you may need to work harder to regain your position, you may need to update your content more often, you may need to build more backlinks, or you may need to come back. to evaluate your SEO. strategy. Google’s algorithm changes a lot these days, so it’s important to figure out what they want and go give it to them. The days of gaming the system through black hat techniques are coming to an end.
mistake 3 – Writing for search engines:
This is one of the biggest mistakes I see being made day in and day out. Webmasters are writing terrible content that is full of keywords for bots. While it is important to have a certain keyword structure within your content so that search engines know what your content is about, it is very important that you write FIRST for the human visitor. Some say that for every 100 words, you should insert your keyword once. So if you have a 1000 word post, you will place your target keyword in the article 10 times. I think this is a good rule of thumb to follow.
Make sure that when you read your article out loud, it sounds natural and not robotic. Always remember, if inserting your keyword too often in your post takes away from the natural flow of the article itself… then don’t do it. Google is clamping down on over-optimized websites. Always write with your target human visitor in mind.
mistake 4 – Building thousands of low quality links:
I can’t believe this is still happening with all the changes Google has made. There are still idiots out there throwing thousands of links to their money making sites in hopes of scaling the snakes. The other day I was offered 10,000 free links to my website and I told the person to run and jump. Those kinds of links will have an adverse effect on your rankings. It has to be very obvious that Google hates these types of links and if your business depends solely on this type of strategy, then you are playing the fool’s game. One strong PR5 backlink from a relevant site will be much more powerful than a million links from non-relevant, low-quality crappy sites.
error 5 – Not being aware of Nofollow and Dofollow:
When I started in this industry, I had no idea about these two terms. I built a lot of links to one of my first websites and it took me forever to gain traction on the serps. After doing some research, I found that almost all of my backlinks were placed on non-tracking web pages. Needless to say, those links weren’t nearly as effective for rankings as the dofollow links I needed. I’m not saying nofollow links don’t have their place, in fact it’s important to have diversity in your link structure, but the majority of your links should be dofollow for maximum benefit.
mistake 6 – Expecting quick results:
I know when I started online, I expected to make a lot of money pretty quickly. Boy did they bring me back to earth for the next 6-12 months. I almost gave up on more than one occasion because it got so frustrating trying to make this work for me. I’ve created website after website, built tons of backlinks, written hundreds of articles, and participated in every single social networking site, but it just wasn’t happening as fast as I was led to believe it would.
I later realized that NO ONE makes money online fast. They all have to put in hard work. Your progress can be slowed if you’re willing to spend some money and outsource a lot of the hard work, but in my experience, expecting to make money online very quickly usually works against you in the long run. The failure rate is so high because people find this out the hard way.
Mistake 7 – Not being consistent:
If you really want to make money online, you have to be consistent every day with your efforts. This may be the biggest stumbling block for many, it almost was for me. You can work very hard to get top search engine rankings for a particular keyword, but even after the fact, you still need to be consistent with your efforts, otherwise your competitors will overtake you pretty quickly. Everything you do regarding your online business has to be consistent. You must work every day if you want to see the results you are looking for. Go read “The Slight Edge” by Jeff Olsen and practice what you learn.
mistake 8 – Not diversifying your link building:
In order for your link building to look natural, it’s important to get backlinks from many different sources. Backlinks from only article directories and nowhere else, for example, don’t look natural and can hurt your rankings. You need to get links from social networking sites, article directories, blogs, blog comments, forums, etc. Diversifying your link building looks natural and can put you ahead of your competitors in search results. A naturally good website will get links from many places, not just one or two.
error 9 – Not getting high page rank links:
Every day you are backlinking, you should be looking to place your links on high PR websites. Google values links placed on websites with higher PR exponentially more than websites with low PR. Obviously these links are harder to come by, but that’s exactly the point. The more difficult it is to get a link, the more valuable that link will be. This is why all these button software programs that can get thousands of links are bullshit. You won’t find any software program that will give you high-quality backlinks at the push of a button, anyone who tells you otherwise is either lying or a jerk.
mistake 10 – Not updating your content often enough:
Obviously, the more high-quality backlinks pointing to your content, the higher your search engine ranking will be. Then you will get a lot of traffic for free. While this is the basic approach that everyone uses to scale serps, there is another way. Google loves websites that are frequently updated. I’ve built a website that has very few backlinks pointing to it and gets 10,000 visitors a month from search engines. The reason for this is because I regularly update my content.
I see webmasters spend a lot of time building backlinks to their websites every day. This is important, of course, but if they actually spent an hour each day writing a new post for their website, they would get a lot more traffic later on. I know this works because I have used this approach many times in the past. With all the Pandas and Penguins these days, I have found that my websites get higher search rankings, simply because I always have fresh content on my sites. If you don’t want to write every day, then write at least 3 times a week, it helps.