I’ve had lots of questions about this post, so decided to do a series on SEO just for you!

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. Briefly, it’s an acronym that is used to group a number of techniques to improve a site’s position within search engine (think Google, Yahoo, Bing) results. As a developer of an open source content management system and author of several blogs, I’ve made the effort to learn a lot about SEO while never claiming to be a specialist, let alone an expert. So I do know a thing or two – such as when SEO is being overused, or when poor techniques are implemented. This post lists some common SEO mistakes that may harm your blog… so don’t do them.

Allowing User Experience To Suffer

I’ve seen far too many sites that think they can do some SEO and it’ll automatically give them great results on search engines. Well the number one thing that gets you ranked well is to have great content that’s unique and designed for your user group. If the user experience sucks, SEO won’t bring it up to scratch. Site design is key and it must be an awesome experience for the user. Big call I know, but I’m sure you’re up to it!

Make sure your site has a strong call to action with clear goals and a well-defined user journey. Make it easy for users to get around your site.

SEO can be done at the same time, but it shouldn’t take precedence over user experience.

Bloated Content Due To SEO Techniques

Right, so you’ve got some content on your site, but it’s a bit too brief, and doesn’t mention any of your keywords. Instead of writing the content to include keywords in a subtle way, an alarming number of sites throw masses of keywords into the content – or they put a long list of keywords at the end of the page. This looks incredibly ugly and spammy and is a major turn-off. Not to mention, you may incur a search engine penalty.

Using Every Possible Technique

Have you seen articles and ebooks called “The 101 SEO Techniques You MUST Use!” or similar? As if you are going to do all they suggest. You’ll be at it for 101 years and not to mention that you won’t EVER want to get on the internet again. The answer is not to work through the list, ticking off the ones you’ve done, and noting the ones you haven’t. It’s not a contest to see who can implement every technique first.

Try doing the top 5 recommended techniques first and see where that takes you. If you cope OK with that, then do another 5 and so on. I outsource my SEO for WAY less than a small fortune to the Philippines. I might even write a series about how to do this.

Most importantly don’t subscribe to “link farming”. Poor quality links can actually take your site SEO backwards.

Using The “alt” Attribute

The alt attribute on an image allows you to include alternative text in case the image doesn’t show up. People… it’s not an SEO playground where you stuff a zillion keywords. Google in particular will penalise you for doing this.

Link Overkill

Navigational links, tag clouds, related posts and the like can enhance the user experience for visitors, when used appropriately. However, if these links just take you on a merry-go-round with a wide range of different link text taking you to the same six pages, it’s going to seriously piss people off. Seriously.

Social Media Madness

Want people to share a post or link to the site? Yeah, we’ll have a Twitter link, and a StumbleUpon link, Digg, Reddit, Facebook… hmm what else is there? Oh stuff it, let’s add them all – and why not add a “recent tweets” widget too…   You must be joking. With so much third party crap on a site, you are guaranteed that they can easily bounce away from your site, or it becomes ugly. We don’t want the ugly factor. Just use the most popular. In other words lose the junk and keep it clean.

Putting Everything On The Homepage

Why not put everything on the homepage? Your website only has a few pages right? Hey, what if someone only visits the homepage? We should tell them everything in case they don’t think to click anywhere else – right? Wrong. This strategy just looks downright ugly and get this… some people may not even start at the homepage. Yes, your other pages can show up in search engines too! Keep the navigation simple and the content organised nicely, instead of dumping the whole lot on the homepage and hoping it’ll make your homepage rank for lots of keywords.

Failing To Set Boundaries

If you don’t know the niche you want to target, you may as well give up now. You have to start by targeting certain keywords – more on this later. You’re not going to rank for every possible keyword. So don’t try to. Target a few – and consider adding a blog to your site if you want to target a few more. That said, you shouldn’t post about anything and everything – much like using every possible SEO technique, having too broad a focus for a blog means you’ll be a jack of all trades – and a master of none.

Spending More Time On SEO Than Anything Else

Yes this is my “issue” that I almost need psychological help for. There comes a time when the time spent on optimisation far outweights the benefits. An SEO expert can make great inroads for your site if there are major issues to sort out, or missed opportunities that could yield great results without sacrificing the quality of the site. But endlessly tinkering with a site for negligible gain isn’t a worthwhile use of anyone’s time. One word… outsource!

This is really important stuff for any health practitioner with a website. If you know of at least one who could benefit, please feel free to forward this post to them.