7 Deadly Mistakes That Could Cripple Your Search Engine Rankings

Search engine optimization is very important to maintain online visibility. Making the following 7 deadly mistakes could cripple your search engine rankings.

 

1. Duplicate Content – Although you probably already know this, it is worth mentioning again just in case. Having duplicate content on your site is a sure-fire way to kill your search engine rankings, so make sure that every bit of content that you add to your site is completely unique and original. The problem with having duplicate content is that all those pieces of content will compete against each other for ranking so in the end you are just creating unnecessary competition for yourself and your content will not rank as well.

 

2. Poor Quality Content – In the past, a lot of people used spinning software or paid poor-quality writers to create the content for their websites, but this is a horrible idea. Since search engine algorithms have changed, the major search engines have made it so that this type of content won’t rank high. Instead, it is important to pour your heart and soul into your content or to hire a competent writer to write it for you, and you should make sure that it is useful, informative and free of spelling and grammar errors.

 

3. Keyword Stuffing – Although keyword stuffing did work for many a long time ago, it is a horrible idea now. The search engine spiders will be able to tell that you stuffed your website or blog with keywords and you will then be penalized for it. So, use keywords sparingly and in the right places instead of just stuffing them onto your page as many times as possible.

 

4. Not Making the Most of Your Links – When linking to various internal pages on your site or blog, it is always a good idea to use keywords in your link text or sometimes known as anchor text. Anchor text is the keyword you are linking back to your content with. This is a simple way to get the most out of your keywords — and your SEO campaign — without stuffing the keywords too many times.

 

5. Poor Quality Backlinks – Backlinks can help you bring in a lot of traffic and can boost your search engine rankings exponentially, but only if they are valuable ones. When creating backlinks for your site, work hard to build a few really good, strong backlinks instead of making as many as you possibly can. Poor quality backlinks can actually destroy your search engine rankings.  As a rule of thumb, the easier it is to get the backlink the lower quality it is and the harder it is to get that backlink the better quality it is. For example, a press release backlink is much better than a forum signature backlink.

 

6. Frames – Although frames were very popular in the early 2000s, they are a death wish for your SEO nowadays. Instead of using frames just look for a clean theme that is well arranged and not crowded. A site that is crowded with ads everywhere will not be very good for your website visitors and it will not be SEO-friendly. So as a general rule of thumb your site should be sleek and easy to use as well as easy to navigate.

 

7. Tag your images with your keywords – Whenever you upload an image to your website you should use the keywords that you are trying to rank for in Google as the file names of those pictures. That means before uploading it to your site rename the images with the keywords you are targeting and then upload it to your site to use on your webpage this will help deliver better rankings for your site.

 

Avoid these 7 deadly mistakes and see your search engine rankings improve. Moreover, regardless of the changes search engines make they will always keep these components in mind so it’s a good idea to have these items tuned right.

7 Deadly Mistakes That Could Cripple Your Search Engine Rankings