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5 common SEO mistakes that will only hurt your website



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5 common SEO mistakes that will only hurt your website

When it comes to SEO, there isn't a specific method that you can do that will make you outrank your competitors, which I like.  It leaves us to be free when building out websites and businesses and doesn't require us to submit X amount of links on XX platforms in order to have top rankings.  There are no guidelines which makes it similar to the Wild West lol.  But when there aren't any guidelines, things can go very badly in a short amount of time.

There are various methods out there that we know for certain do not work, but that doesn't stop some people from using them.  Whether it be that they are "testing" or they simply don't know what they're doing, it doesn't matter.  Google will always see these methods in a bad light regardless of who you are, they're not polite to people who break the few rules that are out there lol.

The following 5 practices should be avoided at all costs, unless you want to harm your website.



1. Keyword stuffing
Keyword stuffing is when you add too many keywords into your content which will make it unreadable.  Sure it will be legible, but people will not like what they're reading because every 5th word is your main keyword.  Google became wise to keyword stuffing a long time ago and they do not treat people nice if they're caught doing it.

The reason for keyword stuffing back in the day was to increase your search engine rankings for tha specific keyword.  The more times it was on your page, the better chance you had to rank highly in the SERPs for it.  Now that simply doesn't work and if you go over 3% keyword density, which is 3 of your keywords per 100 words, you will not rank as high as you should be.


2. Link Schemes
When it comes to SEO, you will always need backlinks.  If however you are caught in a link scheme that shows you're just trying to abuse the system and increase your rankings by using something called a link wheel, you'll be pushed down into the abyss when it comes to search rankings. 

Now this is where it gets grey for me.  Google says that if you're building links for the sole purpose of increasing your rankings, it's considered black hat and you will be penalized for it.  But how many times have we put amazing articles on high DA websites with the sole intention of getting some traffic and a backlink from the website?  It's good to place links on high authority sites within content but it's bad to place links on other website if your only purpose is to increase your rankings?  Google increases our rankings for putting links on other websites but wants to hurt us if we do it?  IT DOESN'T MAKE SENSE!!!!  And a lot of SEO's argue about this all the time lol 5 common SEO mistakes that will only hurt your website


3. Vague Content
When you're creating content on your website, you're basically creating new listings in the search engines that will take up space and hopefully rank.  If you're only purpose in publishing content is to increase your rankings, you're likely going to be pushed down and not up.  This is because you're likely going to post a bunch of vague content that isn't optimized and that's not what Google wants.  Google doesn't mind if you add 1,000 new pages to your website every month, they encourage it!  But if you're adding 1,000 pages of random and vague content that your viewers aren't going to like, you won't see any benefit from it.


4. Worrying About Your Rankings
Don't get me wrong, I track my rankings all the time, but I don't worry about them as much as a lot of people do.  I worry more about getting high quality content on my websites as well as on other websites that are going to link back to me.  Focusing on your rankings will only make you push harder for specific keywords and that might not be what it needs.  There's something called the "Google Dance" and it's when Google is evaluating your newly acquired backlinks and your rankings start to Dance around in the SERPs.  Some people increase the link building because of this and focus specifically on a keyword that dropped off of page one, or even below page 20, because they think that's what's needed, but it's not.  Your rankings will settle and you don't have to worry too much about tracking them every single day lol. 

Tracking them may only screw up your SEO campaign or make you angry at the company you outsourced the work to because you might end up thinking they're not doing their jobs.


5. Cheap services get you cheap results
When it comes to a lot of things, the saying "You get what you pay for" usually applies.  With SEO however, it will always apply!  Cheap services or companies are cheap for a reason.  They don't do as much for you because you're not paying enough to get the premium services.  Sure there are plenty of $5 services out there that might work for you, but they're not a one stop shop and you'll have to buy a few dozen other services just to have a viable campaign.

I've actually gained a lot of my clients because they hired an SEO company to do work for them, but they didn't want to pay more than $100 a month.  Now that's a good amount of money for most people, but not when it comes to SEO.  Remember, I charge a minimum of $550 a month and if that seems expensive, you should see what huge SEO services are charging as a minimum lol 5 common SEO mistakes that will only hurt your website



In Conclusion:
You'll need to avoid doing any of what I mentioned above.  I fyou stear clear of all of these points, you will usually be ok when it comes to keeping your website in the good graces of Google lol 5 common SEO mistakes that will only hurt your website



Remember to follow me!
https://www.seoclerks.com/user/Razzy


Thanks!

Razzy

Comments

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Baburra
I was guilty of keyword stuffing before and I think many people were too because I saw so many people doing it with their blogs and even their videos on Youtube. I guess nowadays people are more knowledgeable about this because I hardly ever see it being done anymore by anyone doing mainstream content. Most of the time when I see this practice being done it's from people providing more obscure or even shady content.



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Corzhens
I guess keyword stuffing is the most common mistake of bloggers before they learned the proper way of SEO methods. That was also my understanding of keywords during that early months of my SEO learning. Tagging the new contents with many keywords, the better for the chances of traffic and you don’t really know which keyword is the most effective so might as well put in all the keywords that you can think of.



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Everett
Gonna comment on these 2 mistakes (my opinions):

1. Keyword stuffing
Keyword stuffing was a method used long long ago. This is back when keyword stuffing actually worked. Keyword stuffing kinda still works now, but you will be penalized for it. For instance, have you ever seen a youtube video that cotained a lot of keywords for the video? This is picked up by the search engines. However, if you were to keyword stuff on your blog, or website then this would probably result in you being penalized.

5. Cheap services get you cheap results
The thing is, is that a lot of people want the cheapest services as possible. You can not increase your SERPs with a service that is as cheap as dirt. Another thing to take into consideration is that quality is WAY better than quantity, quality will ALWAYS triumph quantity especially when it comes to SEO. 10 high quality backlinks are better than 10,000 spammy backlinks. More often than not, people buy SEO packages that contain thousands of backlinks only to realize that you will need to disavow those backlinks. You can not fool the search engines, you will be penalized.

If you follow the help articles written by google, and read all about the updates, then you should be fine.



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kgord
Yes, I think as usual your comments on the topic make a lot of sense. Even though I hate to say it, in many cases, it is too true that you get what you pay for. Keyword stuffing is something that shouldn't still be happening but it does, it really does.



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Adesuwa08
I agree with you on this, but if keypad stuffing is still being used, and according to what you said that it is what you pay for you get. Then how do you think keypad stuffing as penalizing of your article if it was being used before others came along?



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augusta
The above points listed are true,just like saying too many cooks spoil the broth, overly used of anything is bad in the bid to rank out page higher we shot ourselves in the leg. Too much use of keyword and vague content is bad for SEO.



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kgord
Yes, and I don't think many buyers are going to want to wade through all the keywords and the fluff to get to the content they care about. I just don't necessarily see that happening. It will negatively affect your SEO as well.



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Corzhens
This keyword stuffing is new to me. I know that some sites require keywords in posting but my idea was the more keywords, the better. So it's not good to put in too many keywords? With vague content, I understand that because my writer friends have been saying about quality content which means original and not copied, with substance which means having information, and relevant to the theme or the topic.



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Baburra
I honestly don't get it that much either since I also would think that the more keywords you put in the better as that sounds logical, but I suppose they just made the algorithm so that it would be discouraged since it doesn't look nice and is not as efficient as just picking the best ones. Probably picking too many would dilute the input in some way instead of making it more specified.



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Everett
So it's not good to put in too many keywords?

Keyword stuffing is never ever good, ever. I like to limit my keywords to at least 3-5 keywords per page. This makes it easy whenever you're trying to rank for keywords because you can only focus on a about 3-5 instead of way too many. I do also believe that keyword stuffing results in negative SEO. I mostly see keyword stuffing happening in Youtubers videos, they will add the most ridiculous keywords.



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potentialwriter
Though keywords are the factors to online success as far as running a website is concerned, you still don't have to use too many keywords on a single page because this may hurt your site rankings and the purpose for which you are trying to make your contents keyword rich will prove abortive.

As you start building your site, you should not be bothered about getting ranked, but rather concentrate on building your site with a focus. Contents should make a lot of sense as search engines might not rank your contents if they are vague.



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TimothyAlex
It is #3 that I think most businesses think they can get away with. They believe that quality doesn't matter if they are following "good SEO practices>"



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DarthHazard
I agree. The best thing that has happened is how Google now looks at the quality of the content on your site and not just "good SEO practises" which means that the people that did this before, just cannot do it anymore which is great for us. You can't just post crap and vague content anymore and rely on "good SEO practises" to rank higher in search results.



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wiseagent
This - in my point of view - is a very childish attitude because good tips are nothing useful if you don't work in the right way to be able to take advantage of them. It's like having the gold in your hand and not knowing how to spend it.



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itommy
I don't understand your meaning.
Can you elaborate your sentence?
It is #3 that I think most businesses think they can get away with. They believe that quality doesn't matter if they are following "good SEO practices



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TimothyAlex
There are many businesses who believe that a large content library that targets a specific keyword and follows good technical SEO practices is all they need. But, if you have been following the trend of Google updates, they are increasingly looking for signals how people are reacting and engaging with content as a ranking factor. Google's ultimate goal is to feed the demand of their customers, the search users. So, their algorithm updates are working to better understand search user intent and serving content that the user wants to read and will find valuable. So, a website full of generic topics or thin on information, even if it does everything else technically correct, will find their rank will slip and organic traffic to go down with each new update.



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Tronia
Well, the keyword stuffing method was used ages ago, haha. So, if you haven't adapted from it by now and realized that it won't work like it did then that's very worrying. If you have problems regarding keywords, you have so many excellent tools and software that are completely free. The majority of them will help you determine if your keyword density is good enough or not as well. Quite useful.



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Judas2018
One thing to remember about SEO services is that ones that are extremely cheap - are just if not more unreliable as ones that are extremely expensive. A high price tag doesn't mean good results. Something in the middle that's priced professionally - but also is slightly more expensive than average - would be a better investment.



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wiseagent
The points discussed are very interesting and among them, I think the most damaging is the vague content because if there is nothing that can be considered useful / interesting in the project, there is no way to sustain it for a long time (not if the readers are demanding people).



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Barida
Once the information in those contents are vague, it is a red flag to the growth of the business. This is the reason bloggers and site owners should always take their time before writing any content for the site.



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wiseagent
I think the biggest concern shouldn't be the issue of receiving a red flag, but rather, valuing the work that is being done before putting your own name on it (but unfortunately, that's not how things work).



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vinaya
I don't do any of these. While publishing my contents, I always make sure that I have no more than 5 percent keywords, which is the recommended keywords usage. I never participate in link scheme. I always backlink my websites manually with the sites that are ranked higher. I also try for organic backlinking.
My contents are never vague. I write my own contents or hire a content developer. My contents have substance. ranking matters, however, I never publish contents for search engines.



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overcast
I think google can pretty much detect these mistakes easily now. Even they can check out the guest post swapping too. I guess it all comes down to what you wish to do with the content. Some people are making use of the SEO mistakes they have for the improvement. And some are making same mistakes. And this results in things not able to change for them. I personally think that those things affect SEO a lot. We just have to understand how badly it can affect.



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Soulwatcher
Thank you for this informative information as I am looking to improve my ranking on my website. I just did a complete website overhaul and now I need to drive traffic to my website in hopes of getting new members. Having said that if you had to pick one tried and true method of getting new visitors what would it be?



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cmoneyspinner
Good advice. I checked myself to see how I measured up.

  • Keyword stuffing? Never do that! At least, not intentionally. I do my best to stay true to my own writing style and adding too many keywords almost feels like I'm using somebody else to do the do the talking (or writing) for me.
  • Link Schemes are far more trouble than they are worth.
  • Vague Content? Guilty! … Uhhh … sometimes. 5 common SEO mistakes that will only hurt your website 5 common SEO mistakes that will only hurt your website
  • Worrying About Your Rankings ~ Well, I installed an extension in my browser and there's no need to worry. I just click every now and then to check my site's rankings.
  • Cheap services get you cheap results ~ It's not a 100% rule because sites like this one and Fiverr sell some pretty good services for cheap!!



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rhombus
Thanks for an interesting post.
With regards to "cheap" services, unfortunately it may be necessary to market yourself at a discounted rate in order to build up referrals and secure future clients. In addition, the exchange rate makes third world countries rates competitive (whilst not cheap in their own countries).



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