New To Search Engines, Here Are The 7 Things You Must Avoid

The internet is the information hub of the world. To navigate this sea of information, there are sites known as search engines. These are sites that allow a user to enter a keyword and search the internet for all websites that contain information relevant to that key word. The results come in form of a page. Some sites rank higher on the page than others. For a site to rank high, it must have very efficient Search Engine Optimization done on it. However, webmasters should avoid making SEO mistakes.

SEO mistakes to avoid when optimizing

Mistake 1: Issues with placing links to other websites

It is great to have links to other websites on your own website. They help the user of your site to get more information about things of their interest. Moreover, if you have an outbound link on your website, the website that it points to more often than not has an inbound link to your site as well. However, when placing links on your site during SEO, it is important to ensure that the links are to reliable and comfortable websites. Do not place links to spam sites or hack sites in your website.

Mistake 2: Stuffing  too many keywords in the website

Search engines look for keywords in the copy or text of a website so as to identify it and rank it in the results. As such, some webmasters may want to fill their website text with keywords so as to let the search engines identify their sites and rank them high. If a webmaster does this, the search engine will identify their site quickly. However, the search engine will notice the repetitive use of the keywords and label the website as containing web spam. After this, the website will be ranked low due to poor content quality. Therefore, the webmaster should use the keywords sparingly.

Mistake 3: Leaving the title tag blank

The title tag is like the heading of a web-page. It summarizes what the web page is about in one phrase or word. Some webmasters leave these tags blank when developing the web-pages. This is a big mistake because search engines begin indexing at the title tags. As such, if there are no tags then the website is indexed low due to low quality construction. The title tags should always be there and posted clearly with the relevant keywords in them.

Mistake 4: Broken Links

A link is a set of words that direct you to another website or web-page when clicked. A webmaster can place a number of links in the copy or text of a website. Users of the website can click these links to view extra resources. However, these links can be broken. This means that they do not direct a user anywhere after being clicked. This is very frustrating for the user. Moreover, it indicates that the website has poor text or copy. Thus, it is ranked low on the search results.

Mistake 5: Submitting your site to many search engines

Before your website can begin to be ranked, the webmaster has to submit it to a search engine. It is best to submit the site to only one search engine. This is because if it is submitted to many search engines, it will appear all over the internet. Thus, it displays the characteristics of spam. Thus, it is ranked low on the results. As such, submit the website to one dedicated search engine and stick with it.

Mistake 6: Duplicating or copying the title tags in your website

This type of duplication refers to having the exact same titles in a website more than once. This results in the pages of a website having the exact same titles. The title tags of the pages in a website should be unique from each other. This helps the user of the website to identify where to find specific information in the website. Moreover, this helps the search engine to index the websites properly. There are website management programs for example Joomla that auto-update the title tags. If you are using these programs, then you should ensure that you disable this and stop it. If the site has many duplicate title tags then it is regarded as having low quality content and is ranked low on search results.

Mistake 7: Making use of unreliable SEO companies

When choosing a company to do the SEO for your website, it is important to ensure that they are ethical and thorough. There are many SEO companies that claim to provide this service and then perform it unethically and therefore cause more harm than good in the long run. Moreover, the webmaster can do the SEO themselves.