Accidental penalization is easy to achieve when there are so many conflicting arguments among SEO professionals about SEO basics. Further, getting indexed and then gaining enough rank power to actually turn a website into a thriving business becomes increasingly harder after each Google update. While it may seem that search engines are doing everything to keep great websites with great information and products from getting the rank they deserve, the opposite is true. Google is looking for ten basic SEO techniques before they rank your website where it belongs. What are the ten organic SEO mistakes most webmasters make?
Frames and Slash Screens
It should be common sense, but these not only impede bot crawlers, but also purveyors of your content. Most bots will fail to read your content with any frames in the script or slash (also called animated or flash pages). The bots struggle and fail to read flash and cannot follow links embedded within fancy intro pages.
Keyword Stuffing
This doesn’t just mean using a set of keywords and phrases too many times, this also means using anchor text for subheadings and links too often repeatedly. And using the same keywords and phrases in too many articles across the net, even where link creating from other sites is concerned. Remember, use keywords sparingly and write for your readers instead. Also, simply make sure your major keywords match those on your meta tags, update any time you publish new keywords too.
Repeated Webcrawling
This is a habit of most spammers. It doesn’t matter if you submit them by hand or use an auto program. Once per site is enough. And if your site’s traffic starts diminishing, only consider it weeks or months apart. So use a program that submits to the major or minor search engines and link directories just once.
Invisible Anything
Invisible text is the worst thing; spammers also use this to hide keywords in the background behind texts and frames. Hiding links, texts or anything really, can get you instantly de-ranked. The best approach is making it uber easy for page crawling programs to find everything your readers can see and making all of that visible to your readers.
Link Exchanges
While it may seem great on the surface since link backs act as votes for search rank, search engines are being configured more and more to be aware of the quality of where those links are coming from. While article marketing and guest blogging still work for link building, social media and link exchanges are now a sure-fire way to get your site penalized or sandboxed.
What is the sure-fire way to not get penalized? Write for your audience and go look for your audience the old-fashioned way with regular relationship building and advertising.