10 SEO mistakes that may harm your blog

SEO stands for search engine optimisation. Briefly, it’s an acronym that is used to group a number of techniques to improve a site’s position within search engine results.
As a developer of an open source content management system (now closed) and author of various blogs, I’ve made the effort to learn a lot about SEO while never claiming to be a specialist, let alone an expert.
So while I’m not the best person to tell you about SEO, I do know a thing or two – such as when SEO is being overused, or when poor techniques are implemented. This post lists 10 of the most common SEO mistakes that I’ve seen – these may harm your blog if you do them.

1. Allowing user experience to suffer.

I’ve seen far too many sites that think you can “do” some SEO and it’ll automatically give you great results. Well, guess what – if the user experience stinks, SEO won’t bring it up to scratch. Focus on making your site a joy to use first, with clear goals and a well-defined user journey (whether it’s a blog or a store – people need to know how to get around the site). SEO can be done at the same time, but it shouldn’t take precedence over user experience.

2. Bloated content due to SEO techniques.

Right, so you’ve got some content on your site, but it’s a bit too brief, and doesn’t mention any of your keywords. Instead of writing the content to include keywords in a subtle way, an alarming number of sites throw masses of keywords into the content – or they put a long list of keywords at the end of the page. This looks incredibly spammy and is a major turn-off. Not to mention, you may incur a search engine penalty.

3. Using every possible technique.

Just finished reading “The 101 SEO Techniques You MUST Use! No, Really! Honest Joe Knows All!” ? Feeling a bit embarrassed that you can’t really remember any of the tips, let alone why they might benefit your site? The answer is not to work through the list, ticking off the ones you’ve done, and noting the ones you haven’t. It’s not a contest to see who can implement every technique first.
Incidentally, if you do SEO for a living, and you come across a site that’s actually doing pretty well – don’t screw it up by polluting it with dodgy tactics that will turn the site into a link farm. If you’re worried about not being paid because there’s nothing left to do on the site, either find a site that actually needs your input, or add some other skills to your portfolio so you can cover yourself if your work runs dry.

4. Mixing up accessibility and SEO.

The alt attribute on an image allows you to include alternative text in case the image doesn’t show up. It’s not an SEO playground where you stuff a zillion keywords.

5. Link overload.

Navigational links, tag clouds, related posts and the like can enhance the user experience for visitors, when used appropriately. However, if these links just take you on a merry-go-round with a wide range of different link text taking you to the same six pages, it’s going to seriously piss people off.

6. Social media madness.

Want people to share a post or link to the site? Yeah, we’ll have a Twitter link, and a StumbleUpon link, Digg, Reddit, Facebook… hmm what else is there? Oh stuff it, let’s add them all – and why not add a “recent tweets” widget too…
With so much third party crap on a site, you may as well just write “Welcome to my homepage” at the top, and put various smilies, blinkies and marquees on there too. In other words – if this is a business site, lose the junk and keep it clean.

7. Putting everything on the homepage.

So, your site has a few pages of content, linked from a navigation bar at the top. Hey, what if someone only visits the homepage? We should tell them everything in case they don’t think to click anywhere else, then we’re sure to sell them something – right?
Wrong. Aside from the fact it’ll look like poo, some people may not even start at the homepage. Yes, your other pages can show up in search engines too. You’re far more likely to get people clicking around your site if you keep the navigation simple and the content organised nicely, instead of dumping the whole lot on the homepage and hoping it’ll make your homepage rank for lots of keywords. Which brings me nicely to the next point…

8. Failing to set sensible boundaries.

If you don’t know the niche you want to target, you may as well give up now. You have to start by targeting certain keywords – preferably a few – and work on others later. But if you have a 6 page business website, you’re not going to rank for every possible keyword. So don’t try to. Target a few – and consider adding a blog to your site if you want to target a few more. That said, you shouldn’t post about anything and everything – much like using every possible SEO technique, having too broad a focus for a blog means you’ll be a jack of all trades – and a master of none.

9. Abusing related links.

Right, you’ve got someone to your site, what can you do now? Push them in a totally different direction? A tourist who comes to your site for tourist information probably won’t benefit from a local service that only residents can apply for! It’s all about knowing your audience – why not show them some souvenirs instead? Simply showing the same links to everyone might seem like a clever way to get sales for the products you’re hoping to sell, but failing to tailor the results to a visitor’s preferences (which could be built up over time) means you’ll never quite reach your full potential.

10. Spending more time on SEO than anything else.

There comes a time when the time spent on optimisation far outweights the benefits. An SEO expert can make great inroads for your site if there are major issues to sort out, or missed opportunities that could yield great results without sacrificing the quality of the site. But endlessly tinkering with a site for negligible gain isn’t a worthwhile use of anyone’s time. Don’t be afraid to call time on search engine optimisation once you aren’t really seeing any difference.