Many times in our efforts to accomplish the ultimate in internet marketing, e-commerce business owners do more harm than good, SEO-wise. Enthusiastic website owners might do everything they can think of, or have heard of to achieve page one rankings, without regard to possible damage.
There are some common SEO Mistakes frequently seen on the internet. Take a look at this list and ensure you are not doing your site more harm than good.
SEO Mistake 1. Detrimental Link Building Strategy
You have undoubtedly heard that links that are a key factor in SEO. The more incoming links to your site, the better your search engine ranking, right?
Yes and no. Links coming from high quality and high ranking sites are valuable. Links from link exchanges and directory submission services can actually be detrimental. This assertion is based on the fact that you have no control over where those links are posted and if you get inbound links coming from spam sites or one that has a zero rating, this negatively affects the ranking of your pages on some search engines.
Another way you may be shooting yourself in the foot is by posting spam comments in forums and on blogs. There is arguably nothing worse you can do than to join a forum associated with your marketing niche and use it as a vehicle to post endlessly about how great your company and its products are. Not only do you risk losing your membership, you alienate a great deal of potential clients who will undoubtedly remember to steer far clear of your company when it comes time to make a purchase.
SEO Mistake 2. Stealing Content From Others
Too often when website owners need keyword rich articles and are not confident about writing it themselves – or simply too lazy to do it, they begin scouring the internet for appropriate content. This is one of the most commonly used SEO Mistakes made online and definitely something to stay away from.
It is one thing to provide a link to someone else’s content that may be of interest to your site’s visitors; it is another thing altogether to copy and paste that content onto your own pages. In fact this is a double whammy of detrimental SEO – you could be caught plagiarising, a serious offence, and search engines will give you negative ranking plus you could lose out by being banned from your monetisation programmes and you could even have your web hosting service cancel your account!
Be careful when you copy anything from other sites, such as wikis. This is seen as having duplicate content by the search engines which is another point of debate among SEO professionals but could harm your rankings. Plus, the quality of Wiki is questionable; it is not regarded as an authority site by many internet users. If there is truly some great information there you want to include on your site, place a link to it within your own content.
SEO Mistake 3. Multiple Domain Names
It may be that when you bought the domain name for your company, you were offered a great deal on the same name with .info, .biz, .net, or .org extensions. If you were pulled in by this offer and purchased all these domains with the intent of building one website for all (mirror sites), you will be penalised by the search engines. Instead, do a 301 redirect for all URLs other than the main one.
The moral is that if you are using SEO techniques without regard to quality, your website could suffer. Those listed here are not necessarily black hat techniques, but they could have a negative impact on your site. Staying up to date on SEO trends could help you not make bad decisions or give you information to reverse potentially harmful SEO Mistakes you may have made.
About Sean Rasmussen
Hey Sean, always something new to learn. Some interesting points here. Thanks.
Learning and applying what you learn is the name of the game Jan
Great see you getting stuck into it.
Regards – Sean
Hi Sean, excellent advice as always. Quality is what we should be thinking of when posting content to our sites whilst trying to avoid common SEO mistakes. Thanks
I couldn’t agree more Tania, content is king and good SEO is a very close runner up
Regards – Sean
I think that many people who first launch their sites are a little too “excited” and want their sites to rank high on Google and have 5000+ visitors a day, etc and take whatever action they can to get the results. They do not realize the negative affects that taking these actions could have on them in the long run.
One thing that I have learned from Sean is that if you are focused on what you are passionate about, you will see the returns eventually.
Too right Cemil
Slow and steady wins the race. No matter what sort of business you have, if you try and build it too fast, chances are it will not be successful…especially online.
Regards – Sean
Great advice Cemil
This list of common SEO techniques to avoid is very informative and helpful so that we don’t go barrelling in and make a mess before we start. Slow and steady seems to be the key as always and stay focused on your passion.
Great points to remember & I’d never heard of 301 redirect, that I will have to look into!
Thanks!
Hi Kimley,
301 redirects can come in very handy. Basically you will need to add a code similar to this: “redirect 301 /old/old.htm http://www.you.com/new.htm” to your .htaccess file and upload it to the root folder of your server.
Regards – Sean
Great information again Sean,
I have been focusing on original quality content but there is one thing that still puzzles me.
Where does articles that are kept in tact from article directories sit with duplicate content?
The 301 sounds a bit too technical at this stage. I will get a handle on it one day
I would also like to know, what can you do about dodgy incoming links? How do you control them and or get rid of them?
Another SEO mistake it to get lured by businesses/people who promise quick backlinking strategies, or any kind of “quick result” tool, like article spinners or friend building on social media… The most likely “quick result” will be banning by google/the site or some other negative consequence.
Hi Sean,
Thanks for the list of common SEO mistakes. I’ll try to avoid doing them. The last time I registered a domain name I did buy all the others as a package. I thought this was the best way to protect my brand.
I’m not sure how the 301 redirect works. I’ve only used the .com and I thought the others would stay parked. Is this not right? Should I be using a 301 redirect instead?
It’s a great way to protect your brand Jazz. What the article is referring to, is people who post duplicate content on all of their websites. Your other sites will stay parked until you do something with them. If you want, you can do a 301 redirect within your domain account, this will then forward someone who types in your url with a different extension over to your active site.
Hi Sean,
I am so please to have had the opportunity to read this article. I believe I have made a mistake as mentioned here. I copied info from Wikipedia to my blog. It was a small amount however I will be more aware now knowing that negative consequences could occur, due to this action.
Also Sean, when writing a new blog post I am not sure the copy rules. Is it okay to transfer content from Wordpad to my UWCblog and back? I think I heard you say not to copy and paste from my own blog. Do I need to be careful here as well?
Hi Sean
Grammar error in sentence construction:
SEO mistake 1: You have undoubtedly heard that links that are a key factor in SEO.