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High Rankings Question of the WeekMay 30, 2012
By Jill Whalen
This week I asked my social media followers: ++What's a common SEO rookie mistake that you often see?++ Here's how they responded: ChrisF79: I see lots of SEO keyword stuffing regarding SEO and keyword stuffing when people start SEO. SteveOllington: Cannibalised keywords through pages and titles. (Targeting multiple pages with the same keywords. Like having the site's primary keywords in every page title of every page.) DigitalPromoter: I would say the canonical www to non-www duplicate content. It is bush league. :) click_finders: Using the exact match anchor text ONLY, and not varying it. Timmarchant: Thinking they are "experts"? Emzuniga: Actually using KWs in the KW meta tag thinking it makes a difference. Title tag left empty or simply left as "Home."  NathanSchubert: This is a pretty general one: people stop short far too often, thinking that the 5% they did is going to be enough. Never is. leebeirne1: Super long titles! Like, 140+ characters. dan_shure: Completely ignoring the user and instead trying to "trick" Google. Matt_Siltala: Being told by a designer/programmer that "insert whatever an SEO told them" isn't possible. smindsrt: Believing in all the misinformation or outdated info out there. ashbuckles: Robots.txt /Disallow JHTScherck: Mot using ~ and * during keyword research. SamJohnAllen: The one I see all the time is over optimisation. Listing the same word 50 times on a page. kenjansen: Not reading enough before starting in. Google+ Duane Coleman: Lack of detailed keywords research and analysis, and lack of proper application thereof. Covers many areas. Julien Simon: Duplicate versions of pages under different URLs. Last month, I had a client with 8 "different" home pages. This month, a client with http and https competing. Happens all the time. Kevin Gallagher: By not understanding that there is no such thing as SEO copywriting. Jill's Comment: Kevin, that's a bit of a loaded answer. I would argue that SEO copywriting is using the words used by people looking for your products or services (rather than your own internal jargon). Kevin Gallagher: Yes you should definitely do that but don't create it for search engines that where IMO people get confused. Why not just call it copywriting instead of SEO copywriting? Jill: There is a wee bit of difference in that you sometimes do need to be slightly more descriptive when doing SEO copywriting. Although, I notice that radio ad copy also tends to be more descriptive since people are listening and not reading. Want to participate in the High Rankings Question of the Week? Follow @JillWhalen on Twitter Like High Rankings on Facebook Circle Jill Whalen on Google+ Post Comment  Jill Whalen said: @sam sometimes there are technical things that need to be done and sometimes developers say they can't do them Sam said: Oh gotcha, that's what I thought. Yes, that happens all the time. Tell them you'll find another developer who will make it possible :) Add Your Comments |
 
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Hi Jill, Could you explain what you think user Matt_Siltala meant by: Being told by a designer/programmer that "insert whatever an SEO told them" isn't possible.