Top 5 Mistakes SEO Webmasters Do – Avoid them on Your Website

A question was asked of Matt Cuts who is the head of Google search quality team as to what in his opinion are the top 5 mistakes when it comes to looking after your own website or if contracting for a customer. For those who expected a super-advanced answer, you’ll be disappointed. It just goes to show that most solutions in life are simple.

It’s fair to say that whether you are an advanced and professional SEO expert or you just have a low key blog or a website and look after it yourself, why not find out what the man who lives and breathes Internet sites and search engine optimisation says.

1. So, Matt goes on to say that the number one mistake is not making your website crawlable or not having your own domain name (a website) at all. No surprises at all here, just means that unless you specifically blocked search engines from crawling (indexing) your website you should be okay. Not having a domain is a little too simple if you ask me as it would be the same as saying that the worst thing about not looking after your car is not having a car at all!
2. Include the right words on the page. This is also a no brainer here meaning that as appealing to the visitor your page copy needs to be, it also needs to be search engine friendly – it needs to be related to your business/service/product. Ideally have lots of plain text instead of images with text on it as the earlier is the only one Google for example can read.
3. Don’t think link building but compelling content and marketing. This is a factor that is external to your website and whilst backlinking used to work in the past, SEO professionals and site owners need to expand their thinking and not limit themselves on building inbound links. A complete new strategy of quality and unique content and marketing is needed for continued success.
4. Title tag and Description tags of your really important pages. Basically, make sure you have them and make sure they are relevant to the particular page and it is more likely to draw a searcher into clicking and viewing it. Important pages would normally be Home, About and Contact pages.
5. Use a free Google Webmasters tool. There are very intuitive tools that will help you optimise your website, blog, tips, videos and other goodies.