SYLVIANE NUCCIO

6 Things That Can Destroy Your SEO Strategy

6 SEO Mistakes
July 5, 2015 Blogging, Content Strategy for Business

6 SEO Mistakes

I know this is not the second Monday of the Month, but as I’ll be traveling to Spain this week I thought it was the perfect time to have a guest featured on my blog today.

Here is a guest post by Nisha Pandey about the mistakes that you should be avoiding with your SEO strategy. Be sure to check what they are.

Take it away, Nisha…

You have an SEO strategy in place and you think that you have all the elements to help you succeed. But is it actually so? Search engine algorithms are always changing and you can no longer continue using the same old methods to rank high. What worked a few months ago may in fact adversely affect your SEO if you used it today. That added to the fact that they’re so many things that you might not be doing when running an SEO campaign.

In this guide, I will list 6 such strategies that are destroying your SEO, either because you are following them or because you are not following them.

 

Poor Keyword Research or No Keyword Research

Proper keyword research involves checking out all the monthly searches for each relevant keyword and using these keywords in your content while ensuring that the keyword density is ‘healthy.’ I often come across people asking me if keyword optimization is ‘dead.’ But I say that keyword research and optimization is the most important step in your on-page SEO strategy. When done the right way, it can bring you lots of benefits.

On the other hand, if you don’t do keyword research (proper keyword research), I would say that it’s not worth wasting your time on SEO. You are going to miss out big on your SEO strategy and lose big in rankings.

This may come as a surprise to many but I say that Google still requires proper keywords to be able to determine what results should be displayed. The Google Keyword Planner is one of the best tools you could be using to perform your research.

 

Keyword Stuffing

While keyword research and use of keywords in the right density is extremely important to SEO, going overboard with keyword density could just kill all your SEO efforts and place you under Google scanner.

Search engine crawlers used to like this several years ago. A few years ago people were churning out hundreds of thousands of articles every day and these articles were nothing more than a jumbled bunch of words with keywords stuffed through them in high density. And the bad thing was that they used to get through it without any difficulty and ranked high on search engines.

You can’t spin content nowadays and load your jumbled content with keyword density of more than 3% and get away with it. Google is going to penalize your site!

Keyword density has become so advanced and challenging that you have to be perfect for using them well. Not only has the keyword density to be minimal, it has to be perfect. The keywords should be placed technically and naturally and they should be perfect. It is no longer about using the same keyword in all the places – use synonyms and variations, but keep the density low. Using 1.5-2% keyword density isn’t ‘unhealthy.’

Here are some more tips for proper keyword usage:

  • Make minimum use of long-tail keywords – While they are important, the long tail keywords should be used minimally. A few instances here and there will be more than enough. So if you are using the main term 4 times in a 500-word article, don’t use the long-tail versions more than 3 times. Use them more and you stand a good chance of being penalized.
  • Use related keywords – Google keeps changing the terms of use of LSI keywords. Whatever it may be currently, the use of related keywords will help you avoid keyword stuffing and improve your SEO.

 

Use of Duplicate Content

If you think that posting already existing content on your blog or site is going to help drive traffic, you are wrong.

If you do this, you are doing more harm than good to your blog.

Your page is either going to be banned or else it will fall drastically in its rankings. When I say duplicate content, I also refer to ‘rewritten’ content. It is an easy strategy for most new writers to churn out content faster.

Personally, I think creating fresh and informative content is far more interesting and involving than copying and rewriting existing content from the web. It’s more time consuming but the ‘mileage’ is unmatched in terms of visibility and feedback. Your target audience will most likely have visited your competitor sites, and if they view copied or rewritten information with same content, they are less likely to trust you.

There are some more valuable points about duplicate content in this post by Joel Cordle.

 

High Quantity of Links

A few years ago, we could have driven as many backlinks as possible to our site and pushed up our search engine rankings. If you do this today, you are simply asking for trouble.

More backlinks don’t mean better SEO. There are hundreds of websites that claim to offer highly targeted backlinks – they will sell you hundreds of backlinks for dirt cheap prices. I would say paid links are the easiest road to derail your SEO strategy. There are SEO companies that will promise you that they can build dozens of links within a few weeks, all pointing to your pages, but rather than doing any good, this strategy is going to harm you.

Today you should get links only after evaluating the relevance and authority of the site. If the link doesn’t meet these two conditions, you are just wasting your time and ranking. It requires just a few high-authority and relevant links to do the magic for you.

At a time when more and more webmasters are busy removing the irrelevant backlinks they were served with in the past, you shouldn’t consider backlinking in terms of quantity.

It’s all about quality and you don’t need many links.

 

Writing for the Search Engines

Google doesn’t want you to write for its crawlers. It wants you to write for its searchers.

Don’t write your content for search engines, but write in a way that pleases your target audience.

The format should be easy to read and navigate – it should be written in a way that readers can also skim through it in an instant to get a grasp of what you are trying to say. Today if you want to please Google and other search engines, you can begin by pleasing your readers. If it’s not good for the readers, neither will it be good for search engines.

 

Not Optimizing for Mobile

There are many reasons why people will entirely ignore mobile optimization.

Many think that they don’t have many searchers from mobile devices and others simply ignore those devices because “they never mattered before and will not matter in the future.

The fact that smartphone traffic has already outgrown desktop search is reason enough for optimizing for the mobile. Many businesses are already generating up to 40% of their sales from mobile, many even more than 50%.

So if you are not optimizing your site for smartphones and tablets, you are missing out big.

You can find more information on mobile optimization in this post by Gaurav Sharma.

In Conclusion

These are some of the biggest mistakes that I have seen when people try to optimize their content for search engines.

So I would say that instead of optimizing for the bots, you should rather optimize for the readers.

Deliver value in everything – from the content to the format to the links, and search engines will become generous to you!

Please, leave your comments below.

 

34 thoughts on “6 Things That Can Destroy Your SEO Strategy”

  1. Hi Sylviane/ Nisha
    Nisha, you have pointed out some important points. On page SEO takes time to build up. It takes time to create quality backlinks. It is useless to buy links. In the end, you will definitely get penalized from the google.
    I have realized the importance of LSI keywords. We must not underestimate them. By mixing our main keywords with related keywords, we can easily improve our rankings.
    Thanks Sylviane for sharing Nisha’s thoughts. Have a great day, buddies 🙂
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    1. Hi Yatin,

      Thanks for the comment. Really happy to help. Make sure you share with others as well.

      Yup, LSI keywords are very helpful to rank easily on the top of google SERP. I am very glad that you benefited from my post and learned about it.

      Thanks again for visiting here. Have a nice day!
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  2. Hi Nisha and Sylviane,

    Great pointers there Nisha!

    I’m a new blogger and I am beginning to realize how important SEO is. Thank you for providing helpful and detailed links providing in-depth discussion on the matters at hand.

    Off to reading the other artcles you cited.

    Have a great day Nisha and I hope you have an awesome trip Sylviane!

    Luna
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  3. Hi Nisha,

    So good to see you here on Sylviane’s blog. When it comes to SEO, you sure know so much about it.

    I remember the days when almost everything was key word stuffed and the content made no sense at all. Thank goodness Google has changed that.

    Yes, we do need to research our keywords, sprinkle them in our blogs, but not be overbearing.

    As for back links….I see too many people accepting almost anyone. You have pointed out a very important back link explanation here and it is so true.

    Thanks for the tips!

    -Donna
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    1. Hi Donna,

      Thank you so much for coming by. I’m not online much this week, but will be back full time when I get back to the UK.

      Have a wonderful day!

      Sylviane

    2. Hi Donna,

      I really appreciate your feedback. It is really appreciable.

      Yup, Google has announced the nice update. Now, people take care about duplicate contents as well as keyword stuffing. Some people still spinning the article and submitting on multiple sites. Hope, Google will teach them few lessons soon, lol.

      Thanks again Donna for your awesome feedback. Enjoy your day!
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  4. Hi Nisha!

    Great points! I’ve been doing a lot of audits recently and I’ve been seeing sites with tons (literally tons) of duplicate content that has been holding them back from reaching their full potential.

    It’s amazing how big companies can have highly paid tech teams that allow this.

    For mobile, my hair has been turning gray from talking with business owners that do not want to change anything on their old unresponsive/non-mobile websites… I’ve practically given up on those clients LOL

    Great round up of tips overall.

    A BIG shoutout to Sylviane for having you here 🙂
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    2. Hi Dennis,

      I’m very sorry for the late reply. Thank you so much for the valuable feedback. I am grateful.

      Yes, some business owners don’t care about Google’s update and they don’t want to walk along with. They used to stuck with old things only. Please share this post with your clients. Hope, they will understand the importance of mobile friendliness sites.

      Thanks again for the wonderful comment. Have a nice weekend!
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  5. Hey Nisha,

    You’ve made some valid points here. Speaking of that I can remember using a program called Article Marketing Robot which enabled you to get backlinks back to your blog. But right around that time is when Google started getting smart with their algorithms, so it didn’t really help too much. As I result I laid this program to rest.

    Also I use to keyword stuff even though my posts made a lot more sense than a lot of other’s I’ve came across. It helped to a degree at the time, but as I mentioned before with the search engine updates, I didn’t gain too much from results.

    So what I have seen is the best thing to do is to write for your audience and make sure you comment on other blogs to get the traffic you want. As far as keywords, my organic traffic has gotten better because of this, as well as getting sales conversions.

    Thanks for the share Nisha and thanks Sylviane for inviting her! Have a great rest of the week you two!
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    1. Hi Sherman,

      Thanks for coming and I’m glad you enjoyed Nisha’s post. It’s a bit hard for me to be online much this week, so forgive my absence for now, will be back on track next week when I’m back to the UK 🙂

    2. Hi Sharman,

      Thanks for reading my post and sharing your personal experience here. It can be a good lesson for all of us.

      Writing for your readers can benefit a lot. And a perfectly optimized post can help you to rank well in search engines. So, you can focus on both points while writing and can boost your traffic.

      Thanks again for dropping by here. Have an enjoyable weekend!
      Nisha Pandey invites you to read..Ninja Blaster – Simple, Affordable and Highly Effective Online Marketing SolutionMy Profile

  6. Golden points these are to understand completely and follow on constant basis.

    Mostly people are aware most of these things by now, except newbies. Making one’s blog/website responsive is a necessary step by now as it is considered in ranking factors by google and if your blog do not comply with it, you’ll get no traffic from the from google searches on mobiles.

    Thanks for sharing Nisha & Sylviane. 🙂
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  7. Hey Sylviane,

    Nice to see Nisha on here as your guest.

    Nisha, this was a great post. As a person who is now starting to take SEO seriously and make a strong attempt to optimize my content and each post, everything you say here is spot on.

    It was through a Brian Dean post that I learned about LSI keywords and now I’m seeing them everywhere — and making sure I have them in my post too. SEO takes time, just like everything else but if you do it correctly, like you said, you’ll see the benefits.

    Great stuff.

    – Andrew
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    1. Hi Andrew,

      I’m glad you enjoyed Nisha’s post. She sure is an SEO expert.

      Like you I have got to know about LSI about a year ago, and I’m not sure if I always use it, but I’m trying anyway.

      Thank you for coming.

      ~Sylviane

  8. Hi Nisha and Sylviane

    So great to see you here at Sylviane’s blog and the topic you discussed here is no doubt your forte as you are widely known as an SEO expert apart from being a wonderful blogger and content writer. So who can do full justice with this topic more than you.

    Very valid points you mentioned here that may mar the entire SEO strategy if one does not take care of them.

    Thanks a lot Sylviane for getting her here as guest author to let us benefit her expertise.
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    1. Hi Mi,

      I’m glad you enjoyed Nisha’s post, and thank you for coming. I haven’t been at your place for a very long time, and have to get back there soon.

      You have a great day!

      ~Sylviane

  9. Hi Nisha and Sylviane,

    Nisha, what a great topic and guide to what is destroying SEO strategies! Each and every one is essential to know.

    You are so right. The search engine algorithms are always changing. What worked in the past may not be working now and could negatively affect our SEO now. For example, I still see some keyword stuffing or including white text on white backgrounds.
    I love your advice to deliver value in everything.
    Thank you, Sylviane, for featuring Nisha on your blog. I hope you both had a wonderful week!
    ~ Robin
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  10. Hi Sylviane,

    Another awesome post from you.

    I’ll comment on 2 points from your post.

    1) Keyword research

    It’s amazing how some bloggers just go ahead chunking out one post after another with doing keyword research. Not doing keyword research is tantamount to setting out on a journey without a destination.

    There are basic things you should find out through keyword research before you put pen to paper. They are;

    – How competitive is the keyword (Is it going to be easy to outrank the sites on page 1?)
    – How many competing sites are optimizing for the same keyword (the fewer the better)
    – What is the monthly search of the keyword (I normally look out for monthly searches of 700 or more)
    – How profitable is the keyword (If you serve AdSense ads on your site)

    2) Quantity of links

    Like you rightly said, the time for quantity is far gone, quality backlinks are the key. Just one backlink from a relevant authority site will do better than hundreds from mediocre blogs.

    I wrote an article I titled “How to Get Domain Authority Backlinks for Free” where I went into detail on how to get backlinks from authority sites.

    Thanks for this awesome post.
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  12. Hi Nisha Pandey,

    Glad to see you here.

    First, your article is good and most points are clearly. You have write in this niche for a while and I just want to ask you some other experiences about local SEO.

    Do you have any experience to rank for other region of Google such as India, UK as well as others; alongside the main geotarget ?
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  15. It is all about being authentic. There is no quick fix. Do your keyword research and drop the keywords like sprinkling a little bit of salt. Make sure that your post is all about content – that it is informative and helpful.

    I incorporate my keywords but my articles speak to the needs of my readers. I have no more than one or two links in my posts that again, are helpful.

    Just be real!
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  16. Hi Nisha,
    Good to see you here.
    This is a great post and all the points are clearly explained and discussed. The 2 major points is Keyword Search and Backlinks and quality backlinks no matter how few they are can fetch you good rankings if they are from authority blogs. Once again thanks for sharing this awesome post and thanks to Sylviane for publishing it ..:)
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  17. Hi,
    All the SEO mistakes mentioned in the article are valid; these are the common mistakes that bloggers make, it’s common knowledge that the era of keyword stuffing is far gone, but unknowingly some writers do indulge in it, and predictably it does more harm than good.

    Also, we have realised that when it comes to backlinks, quality and not quantity matters, a few quality and relevant backlink is far better than hundreds of very low quality and irrelevant backlinks, in fact, you will cause more harm than good if Google finds such links in your backlink profile.

    Avoiding all the SEO mistakes listed in the article is a must for any blogger that intends to go far with his or her SEO and link building strategy. Useful info I must confess, thanks for sharing.
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