Chalking out a sound search engine optimization strategy has never been easy for website owners and bloggers. This becomes all the more difficult because there is no one rule book which they are expected to follow.
To top it all, there are certain things some websites can get away with. While others get penalized for the same.
This makes it very difficult for any blogger or website owner to chalk out the right seo techniques.
Most of us regularly watch videos by Matt Cutts to see what the guy himself has to say about the latest SEO tricks, and plan our course of action accordingly.
In a recently released YouTube video, Matt cuts listed the top 5 SEO mistakes which are likely to cost webmasters dear.
Read on to know about these mistakes:
Not having a crawlable website:
Having a website which is not crawlable is, according to Matt Cutts the biggest blunder any webmaster could make.
Now for those who do not understand that, let me make it easy.
We all know that Google has crawlers, spiders or bots which visit websites from time to time and index the content therein. Now you, as a webmaster, have to make sure that you make this task as easy for these crawlers as possible.
Here are some things you need to keep in mind for that:
- Use a robots.txt file to instruct the robots regarding the pages you want them to index and the ones you want them to leave out.
- Make sure you do not have ‘hidden’ pages on your website i.e. pages which have no links pointing to them. It will be very difficult for robots to get to those pages, thereby increasing the chances of such unlinked pages being left out altogether by them even when they visit your site, because they simply could not locate them! To avoid this, you should have links that point to the pages which you want to get ranked by the search engines.
- The spiders understand only one language. And that is the HTML. They cannot see any images, non text content and java files on your site. To make sure that your non-text content gets indexed, consider adding alt+text attribute to the images you use. As for the audio and video files, you must also include a text transcript of the files you are attaching.
2. Not using the right words on website/ blog pages
The second SEO mistake, according to Matt Cutts, is not using the right words on your page.
The example Matt gave is: don’t just write, “Mt. Everest Height” but write, “How high is Mt. Everest?” because that is how people search.
When you are writing for your website, think of what terms or keywords other internet users would be having in mind when they search the world wide web for information.
If you are, for instance, writing a review about a book titled “XYZ”, make sure to include those words on your page so that it is possible for an internet surfer to get to your site.
3. Worrying too much about link building.
Matt Cutts wants to encourage webmasters to think beyond building backlinks and to focus on creating fabulous content.
Add value to your content. “content is the king”. We have all heard it very often, but fail to attach much importance to it. Just another reminder to all of you that all your efforts at link building will fall flat if you fail to put up quality content.
4. Not Optimizing the Title and Meta Description
You need to attach special importance to the title of your post and the meta description you are giving. It can make all the difference to the search engine rankings of your article and thereby increase your chances of being read out by a larger number of people.
A little on-page SEO can get you fabulous results.
Read these this post by Atish Ranjan mentioned below to get the best titles and meta description for your blog posts.
Well optimized titles and meta description can do more for you than creating backlinks for those posts. This is one of the simplest seo tricks that can help you get ranked faster, and yet the most underrated one!
5. Not bothering to look up the webmasters resources
It is very important for webmasters to stay updated with the latest algorithms rolled out by Google and stay abreast with the latest developments.
Not knowing about the latest SEO tricks and sticking to the age old optimization techniques which have long been penalized can see all your hard work going down the drain.
Conclusion
These, according to Matt Cutts, are the 5 SEO mistakes, which every webmaster should take care to avoid.
Do write to us if you found this article helpful. Meanwhile, we do hope knowledge of these simple SEO tricks will help you avoid the SEO mistakes if you had been making any so far!
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