common seo mistakes by website designers

BRISBANE WEB DESIGN The Edge 18th Nov

What I learned in 2010

Common SEO Mistakes by Web Designers

Ben Maden of Matter Solutions

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Basic SEO definition

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the process of improving the visibility of a web site in the search engines

Wikipedia

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Google ResultsRed = Pay per click

Green = No cost per click

Easy…All you need is money

Hard…Takes timeand effort

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SEO Pyramid

Words

Links

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Mistake #1 – Title Tag

<title> ????? </title>

EQUALS

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Mistake #1 – Title Tag

• Learned most people use same text on all pages, OR

• Leave them blank

• Default from a CMS (usually not good)

• Over do it with too much information

ALL WRONG

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Mistake #1 – Title Tag

Do it right…

• Focus on a select few words (relevant to the page content)

• Make them Unique to that page

• LESS is MORE

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Mistake #2 - URL

• http://mydomainname.com

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Mistake #2 - URL

• http://mydomainname.com

• http://www.mydomainname.com

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Mistake #2 - URL

• http://mydomainname.com

• http://www.mydomainname.com

• http://www.mydomainname.com/index.html

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Mistake #2 - URL

• http://mydomainname.com

• http://www.mydomainname.com

• http://www.mydomainname.com/index.html

• http://mydomainname.com/index.html

Why is this bad?

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Mistake #2 - URL

• Google is clever

• Links are signals (usually beneficial)

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Mistake #2 - URL

BROKEN

• 20 Links into a mixture of the 4 different URLs

• Signals are diluted

• No URL ranks well

FIXED

• 20 Links into one URL

• Concentrated signal

• URL ranks well

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Mistake #3 – Text Text Text

• Check your website reads okay without a stylesheet

• Use Lynx if you can – Text only web browser

• Firefox with Web Developer toolbar

– turn off styles, images and javascript

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Mistake #4 – No Links Built

Web Designer classic mistake…

• She adds a footer credit for Kudos (for SEO too?)

• Then doesn’t add any links into the client website

Well, why should she?

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Mistake #4 – No Links BuiltBenefits for the client…

• Show in Google quickly so at the client ranks for their name. More Kudos!

• That link would help our web designer

[Directory] [Client website] [Web Designer]

Links are signals, they indirectly benefit the web designer

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