What In The Name Of SEO Are You Doing?
When examining SEO work done by many so called “experts”, it never seizes to amaze me how much time and effort they put into minor optimization factors. In most cases, these “experts” aremerely attempting to charge more by beefing up the services they provide instead of spending their time on more critical areas.
In order to prevent you from paying extra for unnecessary SEO tactics that hold little to no bearing on your search engine rankings, I have come up with 10 optimization aspects that SEO specialists should not be wasting your precious money on.
1. The Keyword Meta Tribe:
It has been at least 10 years since Google or any other major search engine has acknowledged the existence of this meta tag. Yet to this day, many SEO specialists still feel it necessary to waste time inputting these onto every page.
2. The XML Sitemap Submission Buffs:
For some reason, plenty of SEO specialists make it seem as though they optimize your sitemap. First of all, you should already have a sitemap in place from when the designers created your website. Secondly, an XML sitemap literally takes 2 minutes to create and should automatically submit new pages to search engines on its own. If you have a WordPress site there is absolutely no reason to ever worry about this, as there are plenty of plugins specifically designed for generating a sitemap. It is so simple a monkey could do it. I am uncertain as to why they make it seem as though it is some lengthy process, but I promise you it isn’t. If your website navigation is terrible, then it doesn’t make a difference either way. In other words, if your viewers can’t find your pages, chances are neither can Google.
3. The Link Title Tag Society:
I am not sure as to why SEO experts still waste time adding unnecessary keywords into title tags that link to other pages on your site, but I assure you it isn’t imperative. While the links to other websites should be descriptive, the links you provide to your pages should be labeled appropriately, in a way that helps the viewer to better understand what information is provided on the page they are about to be directed to. All you need to remember is that Google and the other search engines don’t care about them and haven’t in quite some time.
4. The Header Tag Gurus:
SEO experts still seem to spend a fair amount of time inputting keywords into the H1 tags on every single page. Today these are primarily only used to enhance the readers ability to navigate through the topics of each page with ease. Although they do add extra content on the page, it does not mean that you should fill it up with absurd keywords that have absolutely nothing to do with the topic below. As long as your keywords are in the content it does not matter one iota where they are placed and has no affect on your rankings. Just make sure the headers go along with the rest of the content and you will have nothing to worry about.
5. The Content Junkies:
I still see a few SEO experts that think it is wise to stuff website content full of keywords. Let me assure you that this has never been an effective strategy and I highly doubt it ever will be. When it comes to the search engines, less is more. If you are having issues ranking for an important keyword phrase, check to see how many times you have placed it within your content of your page. Chances are you may have over looked it when you originally created the content or you used it too often. Distribute your keywords properly and you’ll be good to go.
6. The Single Keyword Kings:
If you thought it was tough to rank well for a two-word phrase, think again. Unless it’s the name of a very specific product, organization, or person, there is no way you will ever rank well for a one-word keyword phrase. SEO companies may tell you they can get you to the top of the search result pages for just one word, but that just means they want to waste your money while they attempt a nearly impossible feat. Of course if you consider the bottom of page 50 as ranking well then by all means go for it, however I don’t know too many that would ever go past page 10. Start by finding keyword phrases that are at least three words long and go from there.
7. The “Do Every Page The Same” Gang:
There are SEO experts out there that feel it necessary to optimize every page of a website for the same keyword phrase. To me it seems as though these experts are lazy and cutting corners which saves them time and costs you money. This technique rarely works and is not recommended. If you want every page the same then you should have just one page. Having similar content on every page may appear as spam to the search engines and is not beneficial. It is very easy to find multiple valuable keyword phrases that can be used throughout your website, so don’t limit yourself to one.
8. The Linking Bandits:
Some experts think that linking to other websites is helpful when it is actually the exact opposite. It is the relevant links pointing to your site that matter to the search engines. Only link to other sites that are relevant to yours in hopes that they might link back to you.
9. The Redirecting Clan:
Don’t let SEO experts fool you into believing that you need separate domains because yours does not contain keywords. Even though Google and the other search engines like to see keywords within the URLs of sites, it is completely unnecessary to redirect domains. The only time it is plausible to do so is when you have changed domain names and need to direct the visitors to your new site. The redirected domain names are not important because they are never looked at by the search engines.
10. The Copy Cats:
As an SEO specialist it always surprises me to see other specialists who think copying and pasting blog articles from other sites to their own will benefit them in someway. It is okay to republish articles as long as you link back and give the proper credit for the work, however this does not assist your site in any way. It is much better to give a summary of the article in your own words and then link to it. You could also create your own unique articles or rewrite others’ articles using your own words.
