Three SEO Mistakes You’re Probably Making

Over the last fifteen years I’ve been interested in SEO – yes, I may be young but I’m old in Internet years. I started building websites back in 1995 – if only I had bought some domains back then! Over the last three years I’ve evaluated over a thousand websites for SEO through my consulting business. Along with this, blog readers like yourself email me all the time with a link to their site and I’m always happy to put-together a quick evaluation. What has surprised me over the years is that the fundamental SEO concepts have changed very little – yet so many people still make the same fundamental mistakes.

I’ll be the first to say that making mistakes is a good thing! It’s how we all learn. Learning can mean changing the way you do things, and with it the results you are seeing. Below are a list of what I consider to be the top three fundamental SEO mistakes that I see every week.

If you are a Domainer that is just getting started with development these three SEO fundamentals can make the difference between your site ranking well and being buried ten pages into Google. After you read this go look at your sites and see if you are making any of these mistakes – if so, congratulations – this is a good thing because it means you could be ranking better than you are right now!

1. Poorly-constructed Title Tag
The title tag is one of the most important elements of good SEO and the most often overlooked. This is the first things that a search engine crawling your page will see – so you want it to be perfect! Make sure to use the top keywords you are targeting in your title and don’t make the title the same on every page. You should be spending a good amount of time on your title tags – it may seem like a small thing but it’s actually a BIG deal.

2. Targeting Weak Keywords
If you are targeting the wrong or weak keywords you might be missing you audience and with it your rightful place in the search engines. It is essential that you use a tool like the Google Adwords Keyword Tool to determine which related keywords are the most popular. So many new developers just guess which keywords they think are popular which can lead to ranking well for the wrong or weaker keywords.

3. Duplicate Content
Google is constantly on the lookout for duplicate content and having a lot of duplicate content on your site could even cause your to get de-listed. If you really want to rank well you’ll need fresh unique content to do it!

Now there are many more SEO mistakes that are commonly made but these three I see more than any – and they are easy to fix. The title tag and keywords you can take care of yourself, and if you’re not much of a writer you can get articles written for $10-$15/each. This is just the icing on the cake – if you want to learn more feel free to contact me for a telephone consultation.

Morgan Linton

Morgan Linton