5 Bad SEO Mistakes

There are a million contradictory informational websites out there on the internet regarding what to do to achieve a successful SEO campaign. In many cases, these sites ignore the topics of what makes for bad Search Engine Optimization. Orange County SEO company, Select Web Solutions offers these 5 things you should not do when building a Successful SEO campaign:

1. Hidden Content: Above all, it's just bad practice to hide text or links either by making the font color match the background or via the use of hidden text.


2. Keyword Stuffing: I cannot stress enough, do not overload your page or metadata content with repeated keywords. As I've explained many times to my clients, using keywords in moderation and assigned sparingly to specific landing pages is one of the key elements to a successful website.


3. Unfriendly URLs: Using bad URL naming conventions for the pages of your website, i.e., 'page1', does not help your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) efforts. I recommend you make sure to avoid general naming conventions such as this and instead, use descriptive path names to your pages like 'house-painter-in-long-beach'.


4. Ineffective Linking: Navigational links on your website should be used frequently in menu bars, submenu bars, dropdowns, text links, anchor links, and strategically placed, standalone buttons. These should be placed intuitively where visitors will need them most… it also makes your content readily available to crawlers. Linking only to your homepage from your internal pages is absolutely an SEO no-no! You want to easy flowing navigation throughout your website in such a way that the visitor is guided to your 'call-to-action'. Take time to engineer the best navigation solution for your website before you even think about coding it.


5. Bad Navigation Structure: This is especially true for corporate websites, it's important that your website's menu methodology is structured and prioritized. Some pages simply are more important than others. High priority pages would include your main product or service pages. If you have 3 distinct services you offer, 'Service 1, Service 2, and Service 3, these should all be under your main “Services” page, which should be under your "Home" page or related parent category that makes sense. Avoid placing less important content pages in a top level position on your website.

These are only five items of many that we focus on when developing a SEO solution for our clients. Like many things in life, if you map out your plan before beginning a project... implementation is a synch.

R. Bass - Select Web Solutions, LLC