Great Ways to Kill Your SEO Progress
There are many ways that you can really hurt your search rankings in today’s search space and it is important that if you are planning on doing anything online you consult with a professional especially if you base your livelihood on your organic rankings.
Website Overhaul
If you are doing a large sweeping website overhaul and you are planning on changing everything including URL structures and content you will see a dip in rankings. The proper way to change URL structures is by implementing a 301 redirect on the old webpages you are converting. This is common as websites do often times change technology platforms. Removing all old content can also pose a problem. Rather than changing content completely try just updating the old content so it is not such a drastic change in the eyes of the search engines.
Black Hat SEO
Black hat results might look appealing from the quick rankings you could receive but remember those rankings will not last long and if Google pings you as a black hat spammer you could find yourself with a search penalty so large you have to start an entirely new website. Imagine how fun that would be? Don’t fall into this trap because you will regret it when you lose all your rankings.
Duplicate Content
Duplicate content is a huge no-no and if the search engines catch up to you and find you have any on your website you could find yourself with a penalty. Always write unique content across your website in order to stay away from any potential problems.
Not Enough Marketing (Link Building)
The bottom line is that simply optimizing your website in many niches and categories is not going to be enough to acquire those search rankings you are looking for. You have to proactively link build your website and your internal web pages in order to achieve those desired rankings.
Try reading through all the helpful Google and Bing webmaster guidelines online on how to stay within range of the search engine firing squads so you don’t find yourself on the losing end of the search results, or page 193.
23 Responses to “Great Ways to Kill Your SEO Progress”
The Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Journal is Written by SEO Expert:
Nick Stamoulis
Tel - 781-999-1222
nick@brickmarketing.com
Brick Marketing - SEO Company
Website overhaul is a big one. It can be tough implementing redirection especially with many pages. I usually only redirect the pages that are indexed by Google.
Very nice quick summary. Thanks!
Hi Nick. I am going to change my host and will lose the builder I have been using so I will have to redo my entire site. I am doing this because I have been paying $40 a month for a builder I don’t like. Is there a way I can do this without hurting my search engine ranking too much?
Remembering to redirect old links is a huge one. Seen too many sites start 404ing when redone. Hopefully this list helps some people avoid that, thanks!
Thanks Greg for your comment and for reading!
Take Care,
Nick
Great Blog – we had others copying our site causing duplicate content – nightmare – setting up google alerts helped us. Would like more information on black hat! C
Hi Catherine,
That is a nightmare that many of use have to deal with!
Here is a recent post I wrote about black hat SEO:
http://www.searchengineoptimizationjournal.com/2010/09/10/black-hat-techniques/
Take Care!
Nick
Hi Nick
That is one we all get caught on from time to time. Having the great idea to rename a page and then forgetting to update the internal links plus making our external links useless as the page no longer exists. Best to create new pages and leave the rest alone i find!! Cheers
Nick,
Isn’t the whole duplicate content issue just a myth. Maybe if you are a spammer or something. If one of my clients finds an article they really love and it would be of some value to their website I will usually post it and cite it and even put a link to it. There is also a lot of original content as well, but there are also cited content. I don’t think you have to worry too much about it as long as you are not a mirror site and just copying everything. I think I may have even cited one of your articles on my site a while ago? Anyways love your emails, agree with about 90% of what you have to say (which is pretty good, I think) Check out my site sometime http://www.seoforidaho.com. I only deal with local companies for SEO and am very good at getting the longer tail stuff. Thanks again.
Good article with an excellent point about link building…without it your site won’t reach it’s full SEO potential.
Im thinking about doing an overhaul on my website http://www.mtlogfurniture.net and would be interested to learn more about the implementation of the “301 redirect” you mentioned. Thanks so much, Steve.
I have been planning an overhaul but have now decided against an entire site overhaul . I already changed my home page to be more appealing however there`s still a lot to do .
Your explanation comes at the perfect time for me . Lately your subjects have been keeping pace with what i`m dfoing or planning on doing in the future.
Right on Nick ,Keep it up .
You`re saving me lots of work.
Thanks
Mark D.
…Wait what if someone else copies “my content” and use it on their site?.. would I get penalized?…. I guess the question would be how would Google know who that content belongs to?…kind of scary…
Great post, seo is killing me but great for constant traffic
Great blog and true facts reflected in this writeup. Thanks for sharing the information.
Thanks for reading Mark, I am happy to help you save some time!
There is a widespread misunderstanding and misuse of the term “penalty” when it comes to duplicate content.
Duplicate content has never shown to impact PageRank or SERP for a website as a whole. What it does impact is which pages are included in search results for specific phrases.
If two of your pages have nearly identical content, Google will likely only show 1 of those pages in relevant search results. This is where people think they are “penalized” because their 2nd page with identical content wasn’t displayed.
Google simply wants to show the most relevant results and the end-user doesn’t benefit from a 2nd result of identical content. So with duplicate content, Google finds the most authoritative and hopefully original source of the content. Whomever Google decides has a page most relevant to the terms will have their listing displayed.
I see extreme examples of this when working with Accounting clients who have used pre-packaged content for their website which is 0% unique. There are hundreds of websites in OTHER CITIES using this content for their business. But these websites still pull in high PR, #1 listings, and fully-indexed websites because there are maybe only 1 or 2 of these websites in each city.
Now, the 2nd person to come along with the content in that city rarely out-ranks the 1st business due to the duplicate content issue. They are not “penalized” but Google looks at the first website as the original source and most authoritative in that scenario.
Hopefully that makes sense.
Thanks for reading and sharing your thoughts, this makes perfect sense to me!
Take Care,
Nick
I appreciate all of your SEO insights. I have been able to get higher rankings in all search engines for my site http://www.gladiatormassage.com. I have done this by implementing many of your tips. Thank you!
Thanks Jeff for checking in! I am very happy to hear that my articles and SEO advice has helped you!
Thanks again & Take care!
Nick
Another list of great tips. I think link building is my weakness, I have to try and work on it more.
Thanks for reading Chris and your comment.
Link building is a weakness of many people, hopefully my blog helps with your overall SEO…
Thanks for reading!
Nick
But i want to know what exactly comes under black hat SEO and what are the other hat factors in SEO?