Top 5 SEO mistakes

"On-page" SEO mistakes

Read these SEO tips by top SEO company, Status Media. Here's a list of five common search engine optimisation mistakes to avoid when marketing your website.

1) Non standard page titles and keyword stuffing in the page title.

Search engines only recognize about the first 60 characters of your page title. If you're stuffing too many keywords in the page title you risk a Google penalty and don't use non-standard characters or commas either - they're not going to help.

2) Missing or non-optimized Alt Tags

In short, use the alt attribute to describe, with keywords, the image content. No keyword stuffing. Also make sure you have search engine friendly tags on your internal links too.

3) Targeting the wrong keywords  

This might sound completely obvious but take a look at the traffic volumes for the keywords which are most relevant to your business, (you can use Google's ppc keyword tool to give you a rough guide), then check if these keywords are actually in your URL, page title, description and meta keyword tags. It's almost unbelievable the number of websites which are trying to rank for keywords which are not mentioned in the page title or description tags. 

High value "generic" keywords such as "mortgage" require a very substantial budget to rank in Google. By targeting a more specific or "tail end" keyword such as, "mortgage broker in norwich" will be less competitive and easier to rank for. You may also find that "tail end" terms have much lower search volume but higher conversion rate. Employ a balanced strategy using some high value keywords and some 'tail end" more localized or specific search terms.

4) Lack of relevant keywords in actual page content

It's simple, if you hoping to rank for "compare current accounts" make sure that the phrase "compare current accounts" appears in the page content a few times. You can also use "compare current accounts in the page title, heading, page description and meta keywords too. Again no "keyword stuffing", unless you want to appear on page 50 of Google!

5) Non indication of content hierarchy and header elements

Header tags (h1, h2, etc.) establish a web site's important sections and the content hierarchy. Google states that web masters should "make a site with a clear hierarchy and text links". Top seo tip - using CSS allows you to modify the display of hierarchy tags.

Bonus mistake 6, Using JavaScript by mistake

Don't use spider illegible JavaScript where basic code would do. Search engines love fresh, changing, original content make sure your content is legible to the robot. 

For a full SEO report and recommendations for your website, call Status Media on 0845 054 2529.

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