The internet has no shortage of so-called experts offering search engine optimisation advice, but when one of the world’s leading experts offers some tips about SEO mistakes, it’s time to listen.
So when Google’s head of webspam Matt Cutts made a short video listing the top 5 SEO mistakes he comes across, web masters and marketers should take stock of his comments.
So here are those five awful errors – which Matt describes as the most common rather than the worst possible SEO mistakes:
- Not making your web site searchable for web bots that want to index the content. If they can’t see what’s there, your site just comes up as a black hole for Google and other search engines,
- Failing to include the right keywords on each web site page. Matt’s example was: “Instead of using, “Mt. Everest Height” write, “How high is Mt. Everest?” as the most likely way a web user will search for information online
- Good content and marketing is more important than link building establish page ranking
- Put your keywords in to web page titles, descriptions and other to lure users to click on them. Test different content for the meta description to see what works best
- Don’t work in isolation. Understand how search engines work and how to design pages for for users, not robots
Cutts was talking to a business audience, but pointed out the same rules apply to information portals and personal bloggers as well.
His main point was explaining that if you cannot bring potential customers or web users to your site by harnessing SEO, a competitor will gladly scoop up your traffic.
“SEO is not nice to have, but a must have if you want web users to see your site,” he said
Cutts has worked for Google for more than a decade, and as a software engineer wrote the first version of the family filter safesearch.
Watch a video of Matt Cutts talking about the five most common SEO mistakes
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