Top Ten Mistakes made by Amateur SEO Developers
30 August 2010
You certainly don't have to go to college or specialize in any certain area to become an effective
SEO developer, but there is a certain amount of knowledge you must possess in order to effectively market. Amateur developers are making a lot of costly mistakes that can easily be avoided with a good bit of knowledge.Here are ten of the top mistakes made in the SEO field, in no particular order they're all important and all must be corrected.
1: Using the wrong keywordsMany people figure that simply using the most common keywords is the way to market, but they fail to realize the stiff competition involved here. Some also choose keywords that they think will work but that aren't even ranked. Choosing the
right keywords and phrases is a crucial step in SEO marketing, and many amateurs fail to do the proper research here.
2: Title tag problemsSEO developers know a little bit about tags and their importance in search engine rankings. However, some are leaving their title tags (<title>) empty. This is one of the most important places you can have a keyword. Never leave it empty.
3: JavaScriptNever rely on JavaScript to be noticed by search engines. When they crawl to check out your content, engines aren't building your web pages based on JavaScript, so be sure to construct a sitemap so every link you have will be crawled by the spiders.
4: Flash without HTMLSetting up a Flash-based site is just bad news if you're planning on marketing it to customers. HTML is a much more attractive offer. Even well optimized Flash sites turn people off, and search engine spiders cannot even read Flash, so you're just wasting your time.
5: Image headingsThe heading of your site should always be text and never constructed with an image. Your header is the perfect chance to work the single-most important keyword/phrase into your text. Don't ruin this by using an image. Spiders won't crawl images; even text images. Make sure you go with text.
6: The wrong orderEveryone getting involved with SEO should know full well that the site needs to be built around SEO and not the other way around. Even still, some are making the mistake of first building a site and then attempting the SEO.
7: No janitorial serviceSome SEO developers give up on a site after it's initially optimized. This is a huge mistake. The site always needs to be kept clean and tidy. Optimize the website every chance you have.
8: Too much Meta focusWhile Meta tags are still used, some SEO developers are putting far too much emphasis on them. By focusing on tags, you're essentially losing ranking. Engines aren't crawling these like they used to.
9: Wrong amount of keywordsObviously, you never want your site watered down with keywords. Not only are you running the risk of coming across as phony to visitors with too many keywords, but some search engines will outright reject the pages. However, not using enough will result in a site that isn't ranked highly. A good tip here is to write the content around the keywords instead of trying to fit keywords into the content.
10: SpammingYes, of course spamming makes the list. Even some of the so-called expert SEO developers out there still make the mistake of spamming through backlinks and the like. Because of the misconception that backlinks are better, some developers go crazy with this and come across as uberspammers. You need quality here, not quantity.
