Common SEO Mistakes

Broken information architecture

There are sites that fail to map the nature of the information they are providing into an understandable hierarchy. It is bad for users and search engines.

Poor site usability

Poor site usability results in poor conversion rates, poor lifetime value per visitor, and a less attractive site for linking to.

Mismanaged internal links structure

Some sites allocate their links structure poorly, resulting in not enough of it going to their most important pages.

Content getting buried over time

A surprising number of sites that create huge amounts of content use publishing systems that buries stuff over time. It is a huge opportunity loss. People and crawlers are looking for this content, so do not hide it!

Bad redirects

Most site builders who do not have a background in SEO defaults to using a 302 redirect. Do not use 302 redirects, use 301 instead.

Poor titles and headers

You need to make sure you have pages and content that addresses the major topic areas that relate to your business.

Insufficient content

No content means no links, means no traffic. It's that simple. What unique value are you offering a visitor to your web site? Why would someone link to your site? Make sure your pages contain enough content on the topic.

Duplicate content

Having duplicate content is a very big factor resulting in poor page rank. Please have this issue addressed.

All flash site

Flash site looks great but not a great experience for a crawler. This does not mean you can't have an (almost) all Flash site. Just make sure you offer text link navigation options and use a technique like Scalable Inman Flash Replacement (sIFR) to tell the crawler what is in the movie.

Same Meta description (and keywords) on every page

These elements are included in duplicate content filter checks by the search engines. And, of course, the Meta description is important because it often gets used as the description that the search engine uses for your web page, so make sure it describes the unique info to be found on that page.