This article was originally published under Search Engine Land.
No, these arenโt โmythsโ disguised as โcommon mistakes.โ Iโve already beaten the SEO myths theme to death with my previous three articles.
What follows are innocent mistakes that many SEOs make. Some of these things catch even the best of usโฆ
- Google AdWords Keyword Tool Set To Broad Match
The Google AdWords Keyword Tool defaults to โBroad matchโ mode, which yields useless data from an SEO perspective โ useless in that the numbers are hugely inflated to include countless phrases incorporating the search term specified. For example, the Keyword Tool reports 30.4 million queries for โshoesโ, but that includes multi-word phrases such as โdress shoes,โ โleather shoes,โ โhigh heeled shoes,โ and even โhorse shoes,โ โsnow shoes,โ and โbrake shoes.โ
In Exact mode, the search query volume for โshoesโ drops to 368,000. The difference between those numbers is striking, isnโt it? So always remember if you are doing keyword research for SEO in the AdWords Keyword Tool: untick the box next to Broad match and tick the box next to Exact.
- Disallowing when you meant to Noindex
Ever notice listings in the Google SERPs (search engine results pages) without titles or snippets? That happens when your robots.txt file has disallowed Googlebot from visiting a URL, but Google still knows the URL exists because links were found pointing there. The URL can still rank for terms relevant to the anchor text in links pointing to disallowed pages. A robots.txt Disallow is an instruction to not spider the page content; itโs not an instruction to drop the URL from the index.
If you place a meta robots noindex meta tag on the page, youโll need to allow the spiders to access the page so it can see the meta tag. Another mistake is to use the URL Removal tool in Google Webmaster Tools instead of simply โnoindexingโ the page. Rarely (if ever) should the removal tool be used for anything. Also note that thereโs a Noindex directive in the REP (Robots Exclusion Protocol) that Googlebot obeys (unofficially). More on disallow and noindex here.
- URL SERP Parameters & Google Instant
I just wrote about parameters you can append to Google SERP URLs. Iโve heard folks complain they arenโt able to add parameters to the end of Google SERP URLs anymore โ such as &num=100 or &pws=0 โ since Google Instant appeared on the scene. Fear not, itโs a simple matter of turning Google Instant off and URL parameters will work again.
- Not using your customerโs vocabulary
Your customer doesnโt use industry-speak. Theyโve never used the phrase โkitchen electricsโ in a sentence, despite the fact that its the industry-accepted term for small kitchen appliances. Your customer may not search in the way you think makes intuitive sense. For example, I would have guessed that the plural โdigital camerasโ would beat the singular โdigital cameraโ in query volume โ yet itโs the other way around according to the various Google tools.
Sometimes it is lawyers being sticklers that gets in the way โ such as a bankโs lawyers insisting the term โhome loanโ be used and never โmortgageโ (since technically the latter is a โlegal instrumentโ that the bank does not offer). Many times the right choice is obvious but itโs internal politics or inertia keeping the less popular terminology in place (e.g. โhooded sweatshirtโ when โhoodieโ is what folks are searching for).
- Skipping the keyword brainstorming phase
Too rarely do I hear that the siteโs content plan was driven by keyword brainstorming. Keyword brainstorming can be as simplistic as using Google Suggest (which autocompletes as you type and is built into Google.com) or Soovle (which autocompletes simultaneously from from Google, Bing, Yahoo, YouTube, Wikipedia, Amazon, and Answers.com). The idea is to think laterally.
For example, a baby furniture manufacturer discovers the popularity of โbaby namesโ through looking at popular terms starting with โbabyโ and decides to build out a section of their site dedicated to related terms (โtrends in baby namesโ, โbaby name meaningsโ, โmost overused baby namesโ etc.).
- Mapping URLs to keywords, but not the other way around
Itโs standard operating procedure to map all oneโs site content to keyword themes (sometimes referred to as primary keywords, declared search terms, or gold words.) Whatโs not so common is to start with a target (i.e. most desired) keyword list and map each keyword to the most appropriate page to rank for that keyword and then optimize the site around the keyword-to-URL pairs.
For example, โvegan restaurants in phoenixโ could be relevant to five different pages, but the best candidate is then chosen. The internal linking structure is then optimized to favor that best candidate, i.e. internal links containing that anchor text are pointed to the best candidate rather than spread out across all five. This makes much more sense than competing against oneself and none of the pages winning.
- Setting up a free hosted blog
Free hosted blog platforms like WordPress.com and Blogger.com provide a valuable service. Over 18 million blogs are hosted on WordPress.com. Theyโre just not a service I would sign up for if I cared about SEO or monetization. They arenโt flexible enough to install your own choice of plugins or themes/frameworks to trick out the blog with killer SEO. And for Heavenโs sake, donโt make your blog a subdomain wordpress.com. For $10 per year, you can get a premium WordPress.com account under your own domain name.
Did you know putting AdSense ad units on your WordPress.com blog is against the serviceโs Terms & Conditions? Much better to get yourself a web host and install the self-hosted version of WordPress so you have full control over the thing.
- Not properly disabling Google personalization
Not long ago, Google started personalizing results based on search activity for non logged in users. For those who thought that logging out of Google was sufficient in order to get non-personalized results, Iโve got news for you: it isnโt. Click on โWeb Historyโ in the Google SERPs and then โDisable customizations based on search activityโ. Or on an individual query you can add &pws=0 to the end of the Google SERP URL (but only if Google Instant is off, see above).
- ย Not logging in to the free tools
Some of the web-based tools we all use regularly, such as Google Trends, either restrict the features or give incomplete (or less accurate) data if not logged in. The Google AdWords Keyword Tool states quite plainly: โSign in with your AdWords login information to see the full list of ideas for this searchโ. It would be wise to heed the instruction.
- Not linking to your top pages with your top terms on your home page
The categories you display on your home page should be thought through in terms of SEO. Same with your tag cloud if you have one. And the โPopular Productsโ that you feature. In your mind translate โPopular Productsโ into โProducts for which I most want to get to the top of Google.โ
- Not returning a 404 status code when youโre supposed to
As I mentioned previously, itโs important to return a 404 status code (rather than a 200 or 301) when the URL being requested is clearly bogus/non-existent. Otherwise, your site will look less trustworthy in the eyes of Google. And yes, Google does check for this.
- Not building links to pages that link to you
Many amateur SEOs overlook the importance of building links to pages that link to their sites. For commercial sites, it can be tough to get links that point directly to your site. But once you have acquired a great link, it can be a lot easier to build links to that linking page and thus youโll enjoy the indirect benefit.
- Going over the top with copy and/or links meant for the spiders
Countless home pages have paragraphs of what I refer to as โSEO copyโ below the footer (i.e. after the copyright statement and legal notices) at the very bottom of the page. Often times they embed numerous keyword-rich text links within that copy. They may even treat each link with bold or strong tags. Can you get any more obvious than that? I suppose if you put an HTML comment immediately preceding that said โspider food for SEO!โ (perhaps โInsert keyword spam for Google hereโ might be more apropos?)
- Not using the canonical tag
The canonical tag (errr, link element) may not always work but it certainly doesnโt hurt. So go ahead and use them. Especially if itโs an ecommerce site. For example, if you have a product mapped to multiple categories resulting in multiple URLs, the canonical tag is an easy fix.
- Not checking your neighborhood before settling in
If youโre buying a home, youโd check out the area schools and the crime statistics, right? Why wouldnโt you do the same when moving into a new IP neighborhood. Majestic SEO has an IP neighborhood checker. This is especially important for the small-time folks. You donโt want to be on the same IP address (shared hosting) with a bunch of dodgy Cialis sites.
- Doing too much internal linking
Donโt water down your link juice so much that only a trickle goes to each of your pages. An article page should flow PageRank to related topics not to everything under the sun (i.e. hundreds of links).
- Trusting the data in Google webmaster tools
Ever notice Google Webmaster Toolsโ data doesnโt jive with your analytics data? Trust your analytics data over the webmaster tools data.
- Submitting your site for public site review at a conference where Google engineers are present
Doh! (Insert Homer Simpson voice here.) Unless youโre absolutely sure you have nothing weird going on within your site or link neighborhood, this is pretty much a suicide mission. Corollary: talking to Matt Cutts at a conference without covering your badge up with business cards. Note this mistake was contributed by a guy weโll call โLeonโ (you know who you are, โLeonโ!)
- Cannibalizing organic search with PPC
Paying for traffic you would have gotten for free? Yeah thatโs gotta hurt. I wrote about this before in Organic Search & Paid Search: Are they Synergistic or Cannibalistic?.
- Confusing causation with correlation
When somebody tells me they added H1 tags to their site and it really bumped up their Google rankings, the first question I ask is: โDid you already have the headline text there and just change a font tag into an H1, or did you add keyword-rich headlines that werenโt present before?โ Itโs usually the latter. The keyword-rich text at the top of the page bumped up the keyword prominence (causation). The H1 tag was a correlation that didnโt move the needle.
- Not thinking in terms of your (hypothetical) Google โrap sheetโ
You may recall Iโve theorized about this before. Google may not be keeping a โrap sheetโ of all your transgressions across your network of sites, but theyโd be foolish not to. Submitting your site to 800 spam directories over a span of 3 days is just plain stupid. If itโs easy enough to see a big spike in links in Majestic SEO, then itโs certainly easy enough for Google to spot such anomalies.
- Not using a variety of anchor text
That just doesnโt look natural. Think link diversity.
- Treating all the links shown in Yahoo Site Explorer as โfollowedโ
Donโt ask me why YSS includes nofollowed links in its reports, but it does. Many YSS users wrongly assume all of the links reported under the โInlinksโ tab are followed links that pass link juice.
- Submitting a Reconsideration Request before EVERYTHING has been cleaned up
This may not be โsuper-commonโ because many SEOs have never submitted a โReconsideration requestโ to Google. But if you have or plan to, then make sure everything โ and I mean EVERYTHING โ has been cleaned up and youโve documented this in your submission.
- Submitting to the social sites from a non power user account
Nothing goes flat faster than a submission from an unknown user with no history, no followers, no โstreet credโ. Power users still rule, Digg redesign or not.
Bonus tip: Stop focusing on low- (or no) value activities
Yes Iโll beat on the meta keywords tag yet again. Google never supported it. All it is is free info for your competitors. Guaranteed there are items on your SEO to-do list like this that arenโt worth doing. Be outcome-focused, not activity-focused. Focus on what matters.
Of course this wasnโt an exhaustive list. There are many, many more. I could easily make this a three article series too. I will try to resist the temptation. ๐
What mistakes are you seeing your co-workers, clients, and competitors make? Share them in the comments!
