8 deadly mistakes that could kill your search rankings
March 18, 2008
The search engine industry changes more quickly than most. Something that used to be a sure-fire SEO trick can suddenly become worthless - it might even get you kicked off the listings! Or the search engines can suddenly start giving added weight to new elements… without telling anybody.
So let’s clear the air and debunk a few myths. To make sure you don’t get penalized by the search engines - or just plain IGNORED - watch out for these eight deadly mistakes of SEO…
Deadly mistake #1: Improper use of your title tag
Your title tag is the piece of HTML code that tells the search engines what your page is about.
Not only do the search engines use it to assign relevance to your website, they also display it in the results as your hyperlink:
And it’s what visitors see at the top of their browser while they’re on your site:
So this is DEFINITELY where you put your best keywords.
Here are some of the most common errors people make with their title tags.
1) Not including a title tag at all
If you leave your title tag blank, the search engines will show "untitled document" in the results and at the top of the page, like this:
This makes you look careless and unprofessional. Besides, who searches for untitled documents? You’re squandering an opportunity for better SEO and you’re missing out on sales.
2) Using the URL as the title
In the attempt to stay organized and keep track of many different web pages, some site owners have been known to use the URLs of individual pages as the titles.
A title tag like "Sally’s Beauty Shop/Cosmetics/product123.html" does contain the business name, the product category, and the product name itself, but it’s not very helpful to your rankings.
If you have a catalog site, you have to watch that your shopping cart software doesn’t automatically generate something like this for your title tag. If it does, find out how you can change the settings so you can title your pages yourself.
3) Using a friendly greeting instead of a keyword-rich title
A lot of people make this mistake and it doesn’t tell you what the page is about:
There’s nothing wrong with a friendly greeting… in person. Your title tag is the wrong place to say hello to your audience. And again, who searches for welcome messages?
4) Stuffing the title tag with single words
Don’t take the shotgun approach and fill your title tag with a list of words off the top of your head in the vain hope of attracting traffic. Your chance of ranking for a general word like "cats" is very small.
Your title tag should NOT be something like this actual site:
Instead, use one or two of your top keyword phrases, but be mindful to keep it under 70 characters or it won’t fit on one line. This is how we do it, and it works well for us:
We use a combination of words and phrases (SEO, Search Engine Marketing, Marketing Tips, Search Marketing…) that all get searched regularly.
We’ve arranged them to make sense as well as pull traffic from several different keyword searches. If you were looking for advice on search marketing, you’d know you were in the right place after seeing that title.
Your title tag is easy to find and easy to change in your HTML code. On most web pages, your title tag (and meta tags) are right at the top, below your "head" tag:
<head>
<title>Internet Marketing Course - Proven Internet Business Strategies</title>
When writing your title tag, use your two or three best keyword phrases and keep it under 70 characters. These are the keywords you’ve already researched and decided to optimize your page for, so put all that work to good use and make sure they’re in the right place.
Every page on your website needs its own title, and its own title tag. If your headline is the first piece of text a person sees, your title tag is the first piece of text the search engines see, so make sure it’s a good one!
You need to put your best keywords at or near the beginning of your title tag. With the limited number of characters you’re permitted, your keywords at the end of the tag could get cut off and visitors won’t see them.
Your title tag is prime real estate, and a few minutes (or less!) work here can make a HUGE difference to your overall search rankings, traffic, and business.
Deadly mistake #2: Misusing your keywords meta tag
The keyword meta tag is probably misused more often than the title tag.
Meta tags only appear in your HTML code, not anywhere on your site. They’re usually placed very close to the top of the page, near your title tag, and look like this:
<meta name="Keywords" content="Keywords and keyword phrases you’re optimizing this page for, including applicable synonyms and misspellings, and keep this tag under 170 characters">
Many people seem to think that the search engines place a high value on meta tags and assign relevance based on the keyword content. While that was true many years ago, it’s definitely no longer the case.
Having a concise, well-written meta keyword tag containing two or three of your best keyword phrases will NOT help you rank better for those terms. The search engines don’t pay a lot of attention to this tag for ranking your site. But a meta keyword tag stuffed with too many irrelevant words WILL get you penalized!
The best advice is to use the meta keyword tag for what it was intended: to help the site owner quickly and easily identify, in one line of HTML code, what keywords that page was optimized for.
Deadly mistake #3: Keyword spamming or stuffing
If people are searching for your keywords, and you have more of them in more places on your website, then
Google will rank your page higher, right?
That’s exactly how it used to work ten years ago, until too many people overdid it, searchers started seeing irrelevant results at the top of the search engine rankings, and Google changed the way it ranked pages.
These days, Google’s algorithm (the formula it uses to figure out where to rank pages on the search results) is much more complex than that, thanks to years of dealing with people trying to game the system.
Don’t bother with these outdated tricks:
- Typing your keywords over and over again in very small font at the top and bottom of your page - blocks of tiny text either in the copy or the header tags don’t improve your relevance
- Increasing your keyword density above about 10% - you end up with a page full of text that doesn’t make sense to anyone reading it
- Invisible text or keywords in white text on a white background - this one is so frowned-upon that it can get you delisted from Google altogether
The only foolproof strategy is still to find out what kind of quality, relevant information your customers are searching for, and then give it to them. In the long run, it’s by far the best strategy.
Deadly mistake #4: Using irrelevant keywords to attract more traffic
So, you found some great keywords with low competition and great traffic numbers… but not quite on target with your website?
Just because Paris Hilton was the most searched-for term in the country (according to Google’s 2007 stats), that doesn’t mean that an article about her on your website will increase your traffic and sales.
I know it’s tempting to get high-traffic keywords on your page just for the increased traffic, but you need to either junk them or start another website.
Don’t confuse the search engines (or your visitors) about what your website is really about.
What happens is that people may come to your page or website in search of a keyword phrase and find that your site has nothing to do with it. So they leave! All the traffic in the world won’t help you if it’s off target. Sure, it may get you a few more visitors, but it will definitely lower your conversion rate.
You can even end up diluting the theme of your website and irritating people so much that they report your website as spam to the search engines. And that’s not worth any number of extra visitors!
If these tasty-looking keywords are somewhat related to your niche, it may be worthwhile writing an article or a content page that uses them and directly ties them in to your own best keywords, but be careful not to stretch the truth.
Deadly mistake #5: Useless content
I can’t tell you how many low-quality articles and blog posts I see every day that are just there to get better rankings.
It can take a potential customer 6-8 visits to your website and exposures to your content before they feel comfortable enough to make a purchase from you. If the only content you’ve posted is just a few keywords repeated without any real substance, why would anyone bother coming back to read more?
This tactic can harm your reputation and your credibility. Once those are gone, it’s almost impossible to get them back.
Deadly mistake #6: Doorway pages
Don’t write only for the search engines. When was the last time Google or Yahoo purchased a product from you?
Doorway pages are generated with the needs of the search engines in mind. They typically have very little text but a very high keyword density.
For example, if the page only has four words on it and two of them are "sailboat," that gives the page a keyword density of 50%! But if you’re searching for the term "sailboat" you’ll have to click through to the "real" page if you want to see some actual content.
Doorway pages are really frowned upon by the search engines because they clog up the index with junk. It’s just too easy to produce thousands of these pages that have a very high keyword density but no real purpose other than trying to build links and direct traffic to a single site.
In fact, I remember a discussion forum a couple of years ago where someone pointed out that one spammer had produced more than 3 million of these pages in under a week!
Before you put a doorway page up, remember to ask yourself if it’s actually providing useful information to your potential customers. If so great, if not, DON’T.
Deadly mistake #7: Bait and switch - "magic" pages, redirects, and cloaking
Search engines want to make sure that once they’ve indexed a page, the visitors they send there see the same thing they did. However, this isn’t always the case.
Some site builders build two versions of their sites. One for the spiders full of the kind of stuff the search engines like. The one that regular visitors see is full of the flashy, off-topic effects that look cool, but it isn’t the relevant, content-rich site it’s advertised as.
Again, this is a strategy that will end up hurting your business: your customers end up at a website that may not contain the keywords they were searching for, and instead get to one with animation and all the bells and whistles that may not be important to them.
If I were that visitor, I’d feel ripped off.
More importantly, the search engines feel ripped off too.
When customers start pointing this kind of fraud out to them, the search engines are pretty good at delisting the offending sites. A few weeks of increased traffic isn’t worth the risk of getting booted off Google for good.
Finally, don’t use spammy redirects on your site. These redirects send you from a page you think you’re going to (one that’s been optimized for the search engines) to another one altogether.
It’s a line of HTML code on your site, like so:
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="10; url=http://DifferentSite.com/">
This deceptive method has been overused, and the search engines no longer fall for it. It can get your site penalized or delisted. 301 redirects are the only kind of redirect you should ever use.
Deadly mistake #8: Using social media to spam the Internet with your website
Social networks are websites that allow users to post their own content. They come in a wide variety of formats, like Facebook, blog comments, forums, social bookmarking (e.g., Digg), answers sites (e.g., Yahoo Answers), MySpace, or any other social sites.
Take the time to use them properly and give yourself a good name so you can become part of the community and reap the rewards.
Community building should be a part of your SEO strategy but you need to be sincere in your desire to help your fellow community members. If you show up on Yahoo Answers and start blatantly selling your product with every post, everyone will quickly learn to avoid you.
For example, when answering questions (or asking them), don’t go for the hard sell:
It’s much more effective to give a reasoned, measured response and use your website name in the sources and signature area. I would have used the questioner’s name or alias and said:
Hi Person-who-asked-the-question,
My favorite paid directories to help with search engine ranking are:
- www.paiddirectorynumberone.com
- www.paiddirectorynumbertwo.com
- www.paiddirectorynumberthree.com
Hope that was what you were looking for!
Nicole
http://www.searchmarketinglab.com
It takes time and dedication to build up your credibility, but when you do you can get all kinds of people out there talking about your product, linking to you, and sending all kinds of traffic your way.
There’s a reason the acronym IMHO ("in my humble opinion") is used so often on discussion boards and forums: people are sick of anonymous Internet surfers ranting, raving, and telling them what to do. Politeness and civility go a long way on social sites, so get in on the conversation, and mind your manners. 
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I just stopped by your blog and thought I would say hello. I like your site design. Looking forward to reading more down the road.
Robert Michel
Brilliant post with some very important points that most people miss. I’m re-checking my site today to check whether I have too.
I am just trying to get started with no experience, and I am sure that every example you pointed out means alot for me. Thank you.
The intern program that I have just started speaks about the same things. I have a number of websites and have attempted the “spam with millions of pages” route and discovered that the value of the adsense clicks steadily fell to less than a cent a click.
I dumped the junk sites, cleaned up my act and the click value has begun to rise again. The good thing about Google is that they do restore your value rating if you restore your site value to their customers.
Remember, your customer is NOT Google, it is their customer you should be targeting. Google are adjusting their algorithm to reflect what they think their customer is looking for. We live in interesting times.
Regards
Hello, I built this website with be biz.. It took me exactly 2 days to complete it. Long days, I might add. It is #4 on page one of google if you type “basic house cleaning” in the search engine. It is on page 5 in google if you type in”house cleaning basic” . This is all exciting but I have had no conversions yet again. This is my 2nd site I have built thru or with the assistance of Internet Marketing Center. So, what seems to be the problem I am encountering? I know this works for others but what am I doing so wrong? I have been at this since February when we attended the 5 Day and built the first no producing site there. I cannot afford to keep putting out money as we paid 11,000.00 for the class and over 1000.00 in adword with no conversions. We are going to be bankrupt soon. I really need your help to succeed at this. It is my dream to retire my husband. PLEASE HELP ME. I also have a salescopy that has not been put on yet as i am relucant to spend what we do not have, BUT CANNOT MAKE MONEY WITHOUT PUTTING IT LIVE!
Thank you for your time..Paula Smith
The information here is relevant and accurate. Thanks for the tips. I need some work to do on my sites !
Adding relevant content and building quality is soooooo important.
Hi
great advice except for 1 thing…
Whilst Meta Tags are not used (so much) by all search engines, they are still used by some.
Also other analytic software and directory sites can look for meta tags too.
While the general opinion is that Google does not use meta tags at all, recent empirical tests suggest this is not totally correct.
The thing about search algorithms is that they can and do change.
Meta tags are a legitimate HTML standard and cost nothing to implement.
There is no reason to not use them and if it even helps you get 1 more click, that may be the sale, or deal, or talent spotter, that you needed.
Peter
thank you for your tips. i find them very interesting, because most of the times people write about what to do, but not about what to avoid.
Hi,
I am always looking for new Advice and Strategies. I found your “8 deadly mistakes” very helpful and useful, I have made a few changes already in my pc games and electronics store, as I read through the 8 steps. I add Internet Marketing Tips blog to my Bookmarks and I will be back for more useful Strategies. keep the tips coming guys.
Thank You Karen
As some guy said, may the best blogger win (not me)