How not to do SEO

There are many ways to over-optimise your website. Here are a few:

1) Keyword stuffing

This is largely a thing of the past thankfully. Gone are the days when you used to open a webpage and see the word 'plumber' repeated numerous times, out of context, making the whole page meaningless and an effort to read.

However, it is still possible to add too many instances of the same keyword or keyword phrase sometimes without even realising that you are doing it. I use Website Auditor to check my optimisation level for specific keywords and this will always tell me if I'm stuffing my pages with the same keyword too many times. The tool uses data from competitor sites to see what the ratio is between the total number of words on a page and the number of times a given keyword appears. If my ratio exceeds the normal ratio amongst my competitors then the tool tells me that fact and flags up that I may well be stuffing keywords into the text. Sometimes I don't even realise that I am doing it until I run the tool. There are plenty of other tools that will do the same thing.

2) Using meaningless keywords that are not appropriate to the content

You probably wouldn't do this unwittingly but if you find yourself adding a keyword like "Taylor Swift" to a page about a nail bar business then think again. Although this keyword may attract a lot of visitors when used appropriately, when not used appropriately then search engines will quickly come to the (right) conclusion that you are trying to game the system.

3) Having multiple pages all optimised for the same keyword

I know from my own experience that it is very easy to unwittingly fall into this one. It is easy to see the Home page as the main landing page and try and optimise this for multiple keywords, however, the structure of the metadata fields is such that it is impossible to populate them with more than one or two relevant keywords. Building other pages it is tempting to use similar keywords to reinforce the Home page rankings because each page is linked back to the Home page by the menu. This works to some extent because any links into a page help if they have relevant content but by far the best strategy is to have individual pages with discreet content and their specific keywords which can all then feed back into the Home page with their link juice as it's referred to.

As a worst-case scenario, I saw a site last week built about ten years ago that had multiple pages that were inaccessible from the menu on the Home page. The pages themselves were populated with dummy text and the occasional keyword. This was probably done to try and build in links from within the site itself, back to the Home page. Needless to say, the ranking score was pretty dire. 

4) Packing keywords into the URL

Thankfully this doesn't happen very often. The key to a good URL, otherwise known as a domain name is to choose something that is:

a) Short enough to remember

b) Has a suffix that is easy to remember. So '.co.uk' or '.com' are still favourites as everyone (in the UK at least) knows these.

c) Contains a keyword combination that is meaningful ideally so for example 'locksmith York', if available would almost certainly have an edge over using the name of your company as the URL.

If you make the URL too long then almost certainly people may have difficulty remembering it and even if they have it written down in front of them may have difficulty typing it into a browser without making typing errors. 

5) Overdoing it with outgoing links from your pages to other sites

Most webmasters will know that outgoing links provide link juice to other websites and so they are not keen on providing too many of those. On the other hand, having links to reputable sources can be a signal of authority so used sparingly they are probably a good idea. 

6) Flooding your site with poor-quality backlinks

All webmasters know that having multiple links into a website is a good thing but to be effective:

a) The links need to be relevant to the topic of the page that they are directed at

b) The content on the page linking to yours needs to be well-written, easily understandable and not full of spammy content

c) The links need to come from a source website which is not classed as providing spammy content by search engines

d) The growth pattern of links needs to be as natural looking as possible. Suddenly flooding a website with hundreds of incoming links looks like spam and probably is. 

7) Having lots of pages with thin content

I sometimes get frustrated when one of my own pages doesn't get indexed by the search engines. It is often because it doesn't have enough relevant text content. 300 words should be considered as a minimum size to aim for and really to get a decent chance of the page getting indexed and contributing to the ranking of your site, consider doubling or trebling that figure. Don't be frightened of having very long pages of text content either. As long as the page is relevant to the topic it doesn't hurt to have a lot of text content as long as it is well written and easily understandable to the average person. Think of a high school student reading your page. Will they understand what you are saying? If the page is full of meaningless jargon terms then they may well switch off so put yourself in their shoes and write jargon-free quality content.