In this article we will focus on the common mistakes that beginner webmasters usually make and which could lead to a penalty in one’s search engine rankings (SERPS).
1. Too much focus on links – Links are the strongest ranking factor of any website. The more quality links you have the higher your chance is to rank well in the search engines is. However many webmasters charge into link building tactics without caring much of what their site’s on-page optimization is. If your website is poor in on-page optimization, any link building effort would be in vain. Make sure you have well written quality content with proper keyword density (1.5% – 2%) and nice looking design and user interface.
2. Too many exact anchor tags – On April 24th, Google rolled out their latest “Penguin” update that analyzes a site’s link portfolio (as well as a good number of on-page metrics). It is not natural for a site to have 100% of its links with exact anchors. Furthermore it is not natural to have a high percentage of the total pie of links for a single anchor. Try to build naked urls links and always rotate anchors in order to avoid triggering a Penguin penalty.
3. Not enabling commenting under posts – Comments are usually associated with spambots. However this is not always true. Allowing your users to interact with your site is something that can be truly beneficial for you. Each comment will add up to a page’s value in the sense that it could be posted from a professional who can give an argument or discuss a different perspective to your statement. This automatically means free high quality content for your page.
4. Not synchronizing the key on-page settings – The best way to optimize your site in terms of on-page is to utilize properly your title, H1 heading and the body text. In order this to be truly effective it would be best to select 2-3 keywords per page and ensure that they are present in your title, at least as one H1 heading and to be present in your body text with a proper density.
5. Aggressively interlinking – Some webmasters try to interlink too much in their hope to boost the ranking of their internal pages. Some even use plugins for popular CMS (such as Word press) where predefined anchor is being linked to a specific subpage. This results in an over optimized internal linking that could result in a Penguin penalty.
Remember that SEO is a process that involves the influence of over 200 factors. Always start from your site and once your site is ready move on with careful link building. Don’t spam exact anchor tags…as Google has changed. The world of SEO has changed as well and if you want to be truly successful, you need to stop thinking of how to stay under Google’s radar. Try to think how to add value to your site and to do link building at the same time. Writing quality posts is one way to do it. Google in its core is always about chasing high value sites/pages.