3 Most Common Mistakes People Make When Optimizing Their Sites
In the online world search engines are gods and we merely follow the rules they set for us, mortal beings. No matter how visited your site is, if it were to suddenly disappear from all search engines, that would strike a mortal wound in the heart of your success and your online prosperity will become a thing of the past.
The same is true for the other way around – if your site appears on the first page of a search engine, then you will definitely start getting more visitors and consequently your chance of improving your financial state will grow exponentially.
That’s why many people try to optimize their sites according the requirements of search engines. This process is known as SEO (search engine optimization) and is becoming significantly more complex as search algorithms develop and become more complicated. However, performing SEO means walking on a thin ice.
Search engines want to display only relevant and organic content and they hate it when people try to deceive them. You can easily bury your site if you get too many black points. There are three popular mistakes people tend to make when looking for a shortcut to the first page and we will explore them below.
#3. Spinning Articles
Article spinning is the process of writing the same article over and over again, but using different words. It’s an SEO technique that used to be more successful in the past but with the last few updates, search engines have started catching up to the deception. Realistically speaking, spinning articles means you are betting on quantity instead of quality. None of the articles are truly unique and original.
The problem is that search engines want to present new and fresh content and they abhor the use recycled texts. Of course, you can still hope to run a popular website and bet on quantity instead of quality but you can be sure that your hopes will never become reality.
What you need to do is use truly unique and original content. The more diverse it is, the better. After all, how much time readers spend on your site matters as well, and you can be sure that nobody would spend more than a few minutes on a site that has 500 almost identical articles.
#2. Keyword Bloating
The only thing worse than a poorly written, spun article, is a poorly written, spun article bloated with keywords. You can’t use the same word over and over again in the hopes that your site will rank better, because it won’t. If your content is bad, no matter how much you try to artificially inflate it won’t be beneficial. You’re hurting your site more than you are helping it rank. Keywords need to be used organically, naturally.
#1. Irrelevant Anchor Texts
It’s honestly surprising to me how people can get this one wrong but it happens more often than not. Using a good anchor text is crucial for your links. Anchor text is the name you give the clickable hyperlink text on your website. I’m sure you’ve read different texts on a variety of topics and you’ve seen “click here” on numerous occasions. “Click here” is your anchor text in this case and it’s a terrible one.
If you want to make people browse your site some more, you always need to create smart, original and engaging anchor texts. You want people to stay on your site as much as possible, not bore them to death and make them leave. Even if they like the content they’ve just read “click here for more” is hardly attractive, so the person is very likely to leave.
Those are the three most common ways in which people unintentionally deviate from the established rules. If you manage to avoid those mistakes, then you will be well on your way to the first page of search engines. Keep in mind that SEO is dynamic field what is true today might not be accurate tomorrow so don’t forget to keep an eye on changes and new updates.
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