We see a lot of articles about “the top 10 SEO hacks” or “The Secret to Ranking High in Google”, all telling you what you should be doing to optimize your website. However, did you know the key to ranking high might not be in doing more, but actually less, because what you are currently doing could be damaging your SEO without you knowing?
Our top 10 SEO don’ts
Incorrect keywords
To successfully use keywords you need to do your research. For example, if you have a beauty advice website and you are using “beauty tips” as the keyword, it will likely not work as well as “dark spot removal tips”.
Overlooking title tag
There should never be a reason for leaving a title tag blank. This is one of the most prominent places to have keywords, and the first thing a potential visitor sees on a search result page.
Flash website with no HTML alternative
Flash websites may longer be mainstream, but there are still a few out there. Flash is one of the biggest SEO killers because without an HTML alternative version of your site is unable to be indexed in Google.
JavaScript menus
You should never have JavaScript menus without sitemaps or non-scripted tag links as search engines cannot read or index the scripts.
Ignoring maintenance
SEO is a continuous effort, you need to keep optimizing, testing and putting out content for optimum results.
Overloading on meta keywords
Do not overload the Meta Keyword field with keywords, although they are important, too much will damage your ranking.
Text in images
While this is a big no-no for accessibility reasons, having text in images is also SEO suicide as search engines can’t detect text in an image.
Neglecting URLs
Never have a URL without keywords in it, a keyword-based URL is one of the top items used for ranking.
Backlink spamming
Do not focus on the number of backlinks to your site, it is much more to do with the quality backlinks than anything else.
Overusing keywords in content
Do not overuse keywords in content, instead use them sensibly and naturally, too many will have a negative effect on your ranking.
