The Top 5 Don'ts for SEO
Search engine optimisation (SEO) is one of the most important disciplines you need to master to make the online channel work hard for your business. But there are no shortcuts in SEO - you'll also need to work hard at it over a period of time before you'll start to see your efforts bearing fruit. It's all too easy to make a misstep that sets your SEO efforts back by months.
Our SEO expert, Michael Walker recommends five things that you shouldn't do if you want to get the best results from the search engines.
Don't try to fool the search engines
There are many SEO outfits out there selling various 'black hat' and 'grey hat’ SEO techniques. They will use a range of spammy and dodgy techniques to build your ranking up in a short space of time. These techniques might work for a while - for a week or a month - but the search engines quickly wise up to them.
At best, you'll be knocked off your perch at the top of the search rankings; at worst you'll get banned for a period of time by the search engine. The risks of getting caught out mean that it's just not worth trying to trick the search engines.
Don't forget about usability
The best SEO in the world won't do your business any good if your website isn't in good shape. You'll get a lot of traffic - at least for a while, but will achieve poor customer conversion rates. If your Web site is well-designed, easy to navigate and contains the information people are looking for, then you'll be able to make the best of the traffic that comes your way. Usability also creates 'spreadability' - users that have a good experience with your website will share your links, and that will boost your ranking on the search engines.
Content - quality VS quantity
It's tempting to regurgitate the same content as everyone else, or even worse, to scrape content from other websites in a bid to keep the content on your blog fresh and to drive traffic around hot search terms. But once again, that's not the way to build up your traffic, natural search results and credibility in a sustainable manner.
Rather invest your time in creating original content that adds value for the reader. Even if you must cover popular topics, try to find angles or insights that no one else has addressed. This will boost visitors to your site, generate links from blogs, social media and other sources, and help your site to be picked up by the search engines.
Only optimise Metadata tags that the search engines use
Don't waste time on keyword metadata tags. Keyword metadata tags are no longer important from an SEO perspective and are being ignored by most search engine algorithms due to repeated abuse. That means it's a waste of time to try to create unique and meaningful keywords on every page. Rather concentrate your efforts on optimising the metadata tags that the search engines do use - the title and description tags.
Don't obsess over the PageRank metric
Getting obsessed with your PageRank is pointless. It can easily fool you into a false sense of SEO security. But you should remember that the PageRank metric that you see is a couple of months out of date and that the personalised and universal search engine results page has devalued this metric over the past couple of years. Rather spend your time using the Google and Bing webmaster tools to analyse meaningful search information.
Closing words
SEO work takes time, so it's important to adjust your expectations. You're not going to see day to day changes in your SEO standings, but will instead see them improve over month-to-month periods if you're doing the right things. Remember, delivering good content in a usable website is the most important SEO technique to master. There's no black magic that will keep visitors coming back to your website or sharing your links if you don't give them a good experience once they click through to your site from a page of search results.
