Tired of people telling you what to do with your website? No matter where you
click, there are tips and tricks to "do this" and "optimize that" to your
website, and sometimes it is absolutely exhausting! Here are five tips: what NOT
to do with your website:
SEO Bizarre Tip #1: Duplicating Title
Tags.. or anything
First rule of thumb for SEO best practices:
have a unique, keyword-focused title tag for every page of your website. Second
rule of thumb for SEO best practices: do NOT use the same title tag for more
than one web page. I know what you're thinking: "but but but..." no
buts.
If you want to use the name of your company in the title tag,
put it at the end. Unless your business or brand is a household name,
it won't get a significant amount of searches. Use your tagline or slogan for
the home page and work your way through your website.
Remember
to use your primary keywords in the appropriate page title. Personal Injury
Lawshould be used on your personal injury law landing page and so forth.
SEO Bizarre Tip #2: Ignoring the Power of Local Search
Do you have a landing page or section of your website dedicated to a store
locator or list of office and store locations? Does your company have a physical
location? Then you need local search engine optimization.
Did
you know a staggering 97% of local shoppers do research online before hitting up
the store? With the recent launch of Place Search - a special new display of
business listings appearing when users submit search queries related to local
businesses - local SEO has become more important for both businesses and end
users.
Businesses, even if they are international scaled,
should have-at minimum- a Google Placesaccount and a small Google Boost
campaign. Just because you are rocking a product with international appeal, or
350 stores located nationwide, doesn't mean you should ignore the people who
just happen to live within driving distance of your home base. Our advice?
Ignore local SEO at your own risk, my friend.
SEO Bizarre Tip
#3: Becoming Obsessed with PageRank
One thing we see all too
often with clients is an unhealthy obsession with PageRank. Unhealthy because
they use it as the overall indicator for how successful their entire SEO
campaign is going. PageRank is just one minuscule part of the ranking algorithm.
In fact, a website with a lower PR can outrank a website with a higher PR. If
you are a little fuzzy on the topic, check out my recent post: What is
PageRank?.
PageRank reflects the perceived importance of a
webpage in the eyes of Google. This "importance" factor is determined by more
than 500 million variables and 2 billion search terms. And while it is a factor
in your ranking, it is only a one element in the complicated equation of
Google's algorithm. It's not worth losing any sleep over, especially in the big
picture of a full SEO campaign.
SEO Bizarre Tip #4: Letting
Content Get Stale
Once you have your website how you want it,
your site's main content may not change too often. But Google's indexing spiders
crawl your site a little over once a month, on average, and they love to feast
on new, fresh content. If your site's content output hasn't changed in over a
month, search spiders consider it stale. If your homepage copy hasn't changed in
nine months to a year, consider knocking the dust off your messaging.
Too many websites keep the same homepage messaging for more than a
year, and this could potentially hurt their readership. When repeat visitors
come to your site, seeing something fresh and new sends signals to them that
there may be more nuggets of knowledge, know-how, and crazy deals that they can
find that didn't exist before. And everyone wants repeat traffic,
right?!
If your site isn't publishing new web pages, blog
posts, or content of any kind on a regular basis, it could start to fall down
the rankings. Create a blog and post to it at least three times a week, maybe
even once a work weekday, in order to produce enough fresh content for search
spiders to feast upon.
SEO Bizarre Tip #5: Using
Non-Descriptive Anchor Text
When you are giving out link love,
building links, and dropping respect for other bloggers and experts in your
business, don't use "non-descriptive" anchor text. It's like staring at blurry
holiday lights. Instead, use keyword-rich, descriptive text so that your users
(and Google) has a better idea of what you are linking to. By using
non-descriptive anchor text, anyone can get confused. Even computers.
