Tag Archives: links

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Avoiding and Correcting Common SEO Mistakes

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Having even a basic of SEO can allow you to better optimize your website, which in turn will make it rank higher in search engines. This ultimately will allow the scope of your business to reach a broader audience and is arguably one of the most important aspects to running a business in this day in age, both online and at a physical location. With SEO being such a crucial part of a successful business website, it’s also important to be aware of the multitude of mistakes that are commonly made while trying to improve SEO.

Some SEO mistakes are easily avoidable, while others take a significant amount of effort to avoid or resolve. Although making some of these mistakes may be detrimental to your business in the short term, if correct, your business or website can begin to be prosperous in search engine rankings. Below are some common SEO pitfalls and how to either avoid or correct them.

Duplicate Content or Unoriginal Content

Duplicating content or creating unoriginal content are two of the most common mistakes that website designers or content creators make in efforts to improve SEO. Always double or triple checking your website for duplicates before posting new content. Although there is no direct negative consequence to duplicating content, it affects SEO rankings because search engines will have trouble determining which pages are landing pages. Your duplicate content may begin to compete against itself through search engine rankings, which lowers the ranking of the content itself as a whole. Unoriginal content will give you less of a chance at ranking higher with search engines and gives content less value, which in turn will negatively impact your SEO.

 Keyword Mistakes (Keyword Stuffing and Using the Wrong Keywords)

Keyword stuffing is a common mistake in which keywords are “stuffed” into content with the intent to improve SEO, when in fact it actually lessens the effectiveness of the content in search engine rankings. Stuffing multiples of the same word or phrase into content not only gives that content less value but is also now recognizable by search engines. That’s right, search engines are now capable of determining if the content is keyword-stuffed, and may ultimately rank that content lower in search engines rankings.

Using the wrong keywords may also have detrimental effects on SEO. Keywords allow search engines to identify your content and rank it. If you don’t use the correct keywords in your content, search engines won’t be able to find it. Not using trending keywords or words that rank highest is also a very common mistake that can be avoided by checking keywords on Google Trends or another similar keyword analytics tool.

Irrelevant Content (Content That is Not About Keywords)

Creating irrelevant content or content that does not align with targeted keywords is a mistake that people tend to make while working to improve the SEO of their website. Creating irrelevant content is easily avoidable by checking which keywords (preferably the most optimized) should be used while creating original content on a topic that is specific to your business or organization.

Lack of Quality Links in Content

A lack of quality links within the content may have negative effects on both the value of that content and on search engine rankings in general. Quality links not only bring more value to your content, but will also help rank you higher, as both a website that is linking to other websites and as a website that is linked within other content.

Ignoring Analytics

One of the most common mistakes that businesses or organizations can make on their websites is ignoring analytics and making no efforts to adapt their website using this important metric information. While creating or redesigning content for a website, it’s important to view and know current analytic outcomes and trends specific to that site in order to improve upon its rankings.

Not Making Website Audits

Allowing for audits of your website, especially in this fast-paced, ever-changing digital landscape, is a necessity. Taking a step back and letting someone with a fresh perspective check to see how your website could improve is always beneficial and could have great positive impacts on search engine rankings in general. Website audits are important for all websites want to keep up to date on SEO.

Not Researching SEO Trends

Knowing current trends in SEO is a critical aspect of website development and content creation. Again, the internet is always changing, so knowing what trends within the SEO world are working and are best for the optimization of your website will keep you ahead of the game.

 Not Including Meta Descriptions in Title Pages

Including Meta Descriptions for pages not only makes your website more appealing but increases your SEO as well. Giving descriptions for each page is important, and is worth the effort to create or update them.

Not Including Alt Tags For Images

Alt tags for images are another very important aspect of SEO that are commonly not included in many websites. Alt tags are especially important on website images, especially in attempts to meet ADA compliance. This mistake can be avoided by either putting in the extra effort to create alt tags for your images or hire someone else to do it.

Each of these mistakes are easily avoidable or correctable, and by no means should anyone consider their SEO to be a failure if they find these mistakes applicable. Improvements can always be made to SEO, as it is a constant work in progress.

If you’re interested in improving your website’s search traffic, get in touch with us today. SeoTuners can offer an affordable solution for your business to increase exposure and SERP rankings with organic SEO strategies. We’re confident we have a solution for all your marketing needs.

 

cartoon computer

Using Backlinks To Your Advantage

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Everyone is trying to make a website that is search engine friendly in order to rank higher. It’s a no-brainer that people get in the SEO game since it’s still the number one way for a business to be seen. However, if you want to rank higher, you have to play by the search engine’s rules.

The more links you have coming into your site, the more people refer to you for something you’re good at. Your number of links is how Google can see how valuable your site is to searchers. The truth of the matter is that even if you have a lot of amazing content if you aren’t being linked by other people, search engines won’t acknowledge your site as valuable.

A backlink is a reference from another web page to your own web page. This is very different from the “outbound” or outgoing links from your page. Do not confuse the two. A backlink is also called an inbound link (IBL) and these links are very important in determining the popularity (or importance) of your web site for search engines.

website graph

It is better to have fewer high-quality links, than thousands of links that bring no value to your backlink profile. Weak or risky backlinks won’t help your rankings at all. It can even hurt you as these links can get you a Google penalty!

Because not all links are created equal, you need to be very careful when you start a link building campaign. Build links for your business, for your customers, make them relevant and associate them with great content. Your users will be happy, and Google will keep you in the search results causing your business to grow.

Here are some guidelines to keeping your backlinks beneficial:

Make Sure The Link Comes From An Authoritative Site

Search engines want to see links that come from high-quality sites that are associated with the outbound link given. Therefore, if you have a link from a completely unrelated site, it won’t be as valuable as a link from a related site.

For example, if you are a flooring business and you are getting links from an internet forum about baked goods, something would seem off to the search engine. And rightly so! Why would a forum discussing the types of cupcakes available want to link to your flooring company? It doesn’t make sense to users and it won’t make sense to the search engines either.

Make Sure The Anchor Text Is Specific

The anchor text for your backlinks is extremely important. Hyperlinking to a page with clear, specific anchor text is a big win for both the user and search engines. Constantly throwing sites the same anchor text will not help you. Google wants to see organic links being built and any attempt to trick the search engines will be frowned upon and isn’t worth the risk.

Make Sure They Are Relevant To On-Page Content

Backlinks aren’t just there for no reason; they serve as an SEO metric and they should enhance a reader’s experience. Backlinks need to be relevant to the content they’re in and actually provide supplemental information. Think of it from the reader’s perspective—backlinks won’t add any value if they’re bringing readers to completely unrelated sites.

Google aims to provide users with helpful, relevant content that answers queries. Unrelated and distracting backlinks get in the way of that. Google considers relevant backlinks to be much more valuable than a backlink from a random, unrelated site. A dermatology clinic site that links to a used car Q&A forum would probably send a red flag to Google (and also confuse readers browsing the site).

Make Sure They Don’t Come From One Site

Having a variety of sites that link to your site is a productive goal. If a site has a lot of backlinks, but they all of them come from one site, this will look spammy to Google.

You should actively strategize to build strong backlinks from a range of relevant sites.

However, Google has no problem with websites linking to each other for legitimate reasons. It is a natural occurrence on the web if a news story on the BBC cites an article on CNN, then a few weeks later CNN cites a story from the BBC.

This is technically a reciprocal link, but should Google penalize for it? No, because there are genuine reasons for these websites to link to each other and they are doing it in a natural way that is good for users.

Make Sure You Are Selective About Hidden Or Paid Links

A hidden backlink is exactly what it sounds like; it is invisible to a user and the search engine. Sounds sketchy, right? It is. A backlink that is hidden—whether by manipulating text and background colors or hiding the link in a punctuation mark—is a “black hat” SEO strategy that clearly defies Google’s best practices.

Paid backlinks are a grey area in the SEO world because certain methods of paid links are viewed as legitimate, while some aren’t. If a link has been paid for that doesn’t automatically mean it’s bad. Since this a grey area, you should be picky with paid methods. If the site’s content is related to your industry, you won’t be penalized for paying for ad space. Paid directory business listings are also fine, as long as they’re reputable.

The best directories are the ones that also provide useful information for your customers. The directories that provide no real value to the internet user are to be avoided.

Make Sure Your Backlinks Are Not Spammy

Spammy backlink tactics can cause real harm to your domain. The longer you allow the spammy techniques to continue, the more work you will have to get those spammy links removed. If you notice that your current SEO service is building spammy backlinks, you should notify them immediately and discontinue service. These tactics will harm your rankings!

Spammy backlinks lnclude:

  • Article Marketing Spam
  • Poorly Executed Guest Blogs
  • Single-Post Blogs
  • (Paid) Site-Wide Links
  • Linkbait and Switch

If you’re interested in improving your website’s search traffic, get in touch with us today. SeoTuners can offer an affordable solution for your business to increase exposure and SERP rankings with organic SEO strategies like keywords. we’re confident we have a solution for all your marketing needs.