Nowadays there is a whole host of information found online in relation to SEO. In terms of tricks and tips to use in your SEO campaigns. However I have seen little in the sense of advisory on what to avoid in your SEO Campaign. Here are a few pointers that we picked for you:
Overoptimize - Am sure you all have heard about the term optimization before. Well over optimization is when your keyword becomes diluted on the webpage and used many times on the same page. Do not cry to fit in all keywords in one page as it will become difficult for the search engines to pick on what you are trying to say. Stick to one topic per page as that is best for SEO.
Keyword Stuffing - We have this all but too often with clients asking us why they cannot add X amount of keywords on their webpage. Well there is something called Keyword Stuffing, which is repeating the keywords or adding in excess of keywords into the web page. Best practice is to avoid doing this and stick a keyword density below 5%. If you continue doing so then you are at a grave risk of getting penalized or banned from the search engines.
Limitation of words - It is good practice to have your keyword in your URL and domain if possible but sometimes people go overboard and have more then 10 words in their URL. This will appear to the search engines as spam links. We're are not saying that this is bad practice entirely, but it will be a problem if you're site is fully made up of long URL's. Best advise is limit is to maybe just a few pages only.
Dynamic URLs - Generally speaking, the search engines prefer static URLs to Dynamic ones. Try to have static URL's if possible. It is possible to rank with Dynamic URL but it will be easier if they're redirected to shorter static URLs.
Text links and Images - Try to avoid using images instead of text links. Search engines will find if difficult in ranking your site if you have used images instead of text. Search engines crawl your site via the links and the links present on the images are not easy to follow at all. Best advice is to use text as that will best for SEO and getting you ranked faster.
Adsense and Adwords reliance - Adsense is an easy way to earn money on your site, but this will not improve or enhance your rankings in search engines. They will have no effect at all so do not expect anything positive from them. Now Adwords is just a medium to advertise on Google. The higher you pay, the higher your ad gets displayed on the search engines. This too will not have any effect on your rankings at all so please do not be in the misconception at all. Best advise is to focus on organic or what we refer to as natural ranking.
Link farms - Get it straight, you should never link to a link farm. Try your best to keep away from them as by associating with them you will simply ruin your chances of getting ranked higher. Google states that all spamming sites are bad neighborhoods and if you link to them then you will indirectly end up with a lower pagerank. Follow our advise check the pagerank of the site you want to link and see if they are right or wrong for you.
Broken links - Make sure your site does not have any Broken links on it as that will simply make the site look bad and will be a wrong impression to your customers or target audience. Search engines penalize sites that have lots of broken links so make sure you use a link checker regularly to keep all your links in check.
Content changes - Make sure you do not make constant changes to the content of your site. While it is very important to add new content to your site regularly hence this does not mean you can cheat the search engines by simply correcting spelling errors or changing some words around and think you have updated your page. Avoid this and be sensible.
Copyright violation - Its simple, do not copy and think you will get away with it. Search engines take copyright infringement very seriously and will ban such sites who break the law. Always play safe and do not try to cheat your way up.
Duplicate Content - Avoid using the same content all over the website. If you have created content and added it on one section of the site, try to avoid using that content on numerous other places on the site or on another site. Search engines are against duplication of content as that is simply misleading and misguiding the customers. It also implies that the level of content you have is weak and you do not have the ability to produce good high quality content that is required. If you are spinning content then please STOP at once and you will surely get your site banned.
Use of robots.txt - Make sure to use the robots.txt wisely on your site. Do not use it in a way so that certain sections of your site are unaccessible which can cause the spiders to see your site as being forbidden and then stop crawling your site as often as possible.
HTML Code - Make sure that the HTML code on your site is correctly written so that it can be read easily by the search engines and indexed. Be sure to get your HTML validated regularly too.Don't write bad or incorrect HTML (AVOID).
Flash pages - As mentioned earlier, search engines cannot read images and they will see Flash as huge image too. Your site will simply not rank well on search engines as a result of this. You can test your site with a browser with Flash disabled to see what exactly the search engine sees and you might get surprised.
Domain re-direction - This is very bad SEO practice, avoid at once. Never re-direct to another domain as it is 100% sure that you will get banned from search engines. When setting up a redirect that goes to a new domain, you need to write it as 301 http redirect. This will notify the search engines that the intended re-direct is permanent.
Invisible Text - Do not try to trick the search engines by including invisible text on your pages as the search engines are able to read this and consider this as spam. This will result in your site getting banned for sure so kindly avoid this.
We will share more SEO tips with you in our next blog very soon. If you have any questions please feel free to ask.