Top 6 SEO Mistakes To Avoid

Did you know Google can make your website disappear? 

You can be on the top of the search results one day and the next day; your site is nowhere to be found. 

Google uses algorithms to filter out scammers and people who are conning the system. 

The algorithms are continually changing and evolving, and they have got catching internet bad guys down to a science. 

Here are the top 6 SEO mistakes to avoid if you don’t want to be penalized by Google:

Buying Links

Buying links is a direct violation of Google's rules, but there was a time when it was pretty common. 

People offered you money, products, or services in exchange for you posting a link pointing from your website to theirs. 

The number of links pointing to a website was an indication to Google that you have a great site that many people like to visit. 

Eventually, the algorithm began picking up a lot of junk links pointing to sites or links that had no connection with the company it was pointed to, and thus, Google began to penalize the sites and continues to do so. 

Do Not Join The Wrong Link Directory

Let’s say you are a contractor, and someone who tells you that for a fee, you can be included in a link directory of all the contractors in the city. 

Of course, you want to be considered if someone is looking for a contractor, so you join. 

If they did not review your URL and had no questions about your site or practices, this is a red flag. 

If they list every and any URL, as long as the company pays a fee, they do not care about the quality of the sites listed. 

Google does care about the quality of these sites, and this could get you and all the others penalized by Google. 

Article Spinning

This is a method of spamming. 

When someone writes a blog or article on the internet, and it gets posted, it must be original. 

Article spinning is when someone takes that same article, and changes a few words or does some rearranging, and then posts it as a new article. 

There are people who will spin an article 4 or 5 times. Google watches for this. 

The advanced algorithm looks for blocks of words that are repeated or closely repeated, and this will result in apenalty from Google. 

Overuse Of Keywords

This is when someone uses the same keywords over and over on their blog, so that the search engine will rank their site. 

To Google, this is obvious keyword stuffing, and Google uses a percentage to measure keyword saturation. 

Using a keyword three times in a page is a pretty safe bet. 

However, there is no actual number that will tell you that you are rocking the keyword density boat. 

Anchor Text - Bad Links

When you are writing a blog post, you may put in an anchor text link. 

This is a few words in a sentence that you attach a link to, so the reader can get more information. 

This is a good practice, and most bloggers and writers use anchor links. 

However, some spammers use anchor text that one would assume would go to an informative site on the subject, but instead, it takes you somewhere completely different.

This is a no-no for Google.

Broken Links

People remove their sites, neglect their sites, and get kicked off the internet all the time.

This results in links that were once validbecoming“broken.” Note, that broken links can also be from a typo in the address. 

Review your site often to ensure you do not have broken links, because if you do, Google will penalize you for them.