May 31, 2011

The other day I had a meeting with a potential client and we got into a discussion about search engine optimization. She had done a bit of reading about it and had a couple of questions about what she should and shouldn’t do to help SEO her websites. One of the first questions she asked me is whether or not she should throw a bunch of her keywords in the footer of her page and hide them by making them the same color as the background. This is a HUGE no-no when it comes to search engine optimization. It did give me a good idea for a post though! Here are 5 SEO mistakes beginners tend to make.

1) Overusing keyword(s) in content – Even people with a minimum amount of SEO experience tend to know that you want your keyword(s) in the content of your site. This makes them think the more they use it in the content of the site, the better it is. That’s not the case. You definitely want to use your keyword in content, but you definitely don’t want to overuse it. I usually say 3 or 4 times on a page is more than enough.

2) Doing too many link trades too quickly – Google changed the search engine when they decided that the more links your website has going to it, the more your page will climb up the rankings. This started the world of link trades. No, Google doesn’t want you doing link trades – Yes you should still do them. Just don’t go crazy. Mix up the keywords you get for your trades and DON’T get too many trades all at once. If Google sees your site go from 0 links to 100 in a week, they’ll penalize you.

3) Only using keywords in meta description – The meta description tag is just that – a description. You don’t want to use a bunch of your keywords in your meta description, separated by commas, pipes or just spaces. You want to write out a full description for you meta tag in paragraph form.

4) Hiding keywords in the footer – I touched on this in the opening. You don’t want to place a bunch of your keywords in the footer of your site and hide them by making them the same color as your background. This type of thing worked for maybe a month or two back in 2004, it definitely doesn’t work anymore.

5) Only targeting one keyword – I understand that most people only want to target one keyword like “wedding shows” by why limit yourself? When acquiring links from link trades or creating content for your website, you should target 2 or 3 keywords. Why not go with “wedding shows”, “wedding dresses” and “wedding planning”?

There are probably another 10 SEO mistakes beginners make, but these are a few glaring ones. Stay away from these 5 and you’re on the right track. The last thing you want is Google to penalize your site or even worse – ban it from their search results all together!