Bloggers: 10 SEO Mistakes You Should Avoid

Search engine optimization (SEO) is vital to any successful blogging campaign. Therefore it should be implemented in the right manner. SEO itself is quite intricate for numerous reasons, but mainly because Google uses an algorithm, which takes several factors into account when ranking a webpage, and they keep changing it.

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There are virtually so many SEO myths that it has become very difficult to know what’s 100% true, but I can advise you on which SEO mistakes you should not make:

You might get a short term boost by buying links if your website is already popular, but you’re still taking a risk here. Paid links are sometimes flagged by Google’s search engine experts. You may wonder, how will they ever catch me? Well, Google’s bots and a special team at the company search for questionable linking patterns every single day!

For example, if you pay for a few hundred links to be pointed to your website in the very same day, some links will probably be flagged as a sort of ‘irregular linking activity’. Links from totally unrelated categories will seem suspicious as well.

I would recommend the old fashioned method of comment linking, manually — your blog will still be able to grow, albeit at a steady pace. Over time, the end results will be worthwhile. If you are however settled on purchasing links, do not use the same anchor text for all of them; mix it up a bit.

Many bloggers I know try to target the same topic with a variation of essentially very similar keywords. For instance, ‘make money on facebook’ and ‘making money with your facebook’ are quite similar, and creating a completely different page for each keyword won’t add much value to your site.

How much can you really play with topics or keywords that are essentially identical? If you can’t, then you’ll probably end up writing the same content for both keywords, which poses a risk of a search engine penalty. Instead, you should try to penetrate one original topic or keyword in detail and make an effort to strengthen each post.

Don’t get me wrong, PageRank is important for any website’s success. The higher the PageRank you have, the better you rank in search engines, and the more visitors you’ll get. However, it’s definitely not the only metric that’ll help you improve your blog’s success. Furthermore, Google has mentioned previously that PageRank is just one of two hundred (wow!) indicators used to crawl and rank a website. Instead, you should focus on your analytics, ROI, and relevancy as recommended by Google itself.

The title tag is undeniably one of the most important aspects when it comes to search engine rankings. Beginner bloggers usually write a post with a long title that describes the topic in too many words. First, you want to keep the title rather short, (not more than 60 characters) but more importantly, you should aim your focus at optimizing the title tags.

For example, if you write a post titled ‘What Is A Niche Blog And How Do I Create It?’ your title tag should be more targeted towards a keyword, perhaps something like ‘What Is A Niche Blog?’ with ‘a niche blog’ being a possible keyword. You would surely want to check the popularity of the respective keyword with a keyword tool such as Google Adwords before optimizing for it. Consider changing it and you may enjoy a better placement in the search engines and as a result, more visitors.

While many bloggers depend on content to grow their blog, there are some who had become obsessed with the design of their blog. Don’t get me wrong, if you don’t have an appealing design, some visitors won’t be attracted to your website. However, using too many graphics or images will overcrowd your page and slow it down.

I see many sites using Flash and sacrificing page speed for motion and sounds. Definitely an attractive setting, but not a worthy enough tradeoff. This will also prevent search engine bots from being able to crawl your pages at a desirable faster rate.

Blog services that offer free hosting such as Blogger, TypePad, and many others, can offer a decent platform and an excellent value. However, they are not flexible enough to be able to install the Plugins, themes, and other extensions you truly desire for superior SEO results.

All it will take is to register your own domain, and to purchase an inexpensive hosting plan. If you do enough shopping around, you shouldn’t spend more than $50 for both for the year. It’s worth a few bucks per month to have total control over your website. The power of independence can reap great rewards when your blogging operation grows.

Probably one of the most common SEO mistakes is common stuffing. It’s not only unethical, but also will hurt your search rankings. If you really want to rank for a bunch of keywords, create a separate page for each keyword and optimize for it accordingly. Instead of using hidden or duplicate text, focus on creating useful pages that have your keywords implemented in them as part of the content. Trying to manipulate a search engine like Google is a big no-no.

Many websites, especially blogs, suffer from posts that are too short. I personally get at least a few guest post submissions per day, and more than often, I have to reject them on the basis that they are too short to publish. How great can a piece be if it’s written at just 400 words? Writing extremely short posts hurts reader loyalty plus your page could be considered as low quality when it comes to SEO rankings.

There’s not only one right way to optimize your posts for the search engine, but there are general proven methods you can use. For example, in regards to link building, several bloggers I know make the mistake of only linking to the front page of their website. Instead, you should build links that also point to your top, most popular posts. There’s always something new to learn about SEO, so make sure your optimization knowledge is up to date by reading articles or guides from qualified authors such as Google’s Matt Cutts.

While Google reportedly (WebCEO software) doesn’t place a big emphasis on ALT tags, other search engines such as AOL, Bing, and Yahoo do. The truth is that a picture is just an image file if it’s not optimized for a keyword. To optimize it, use the ALT tag when inserting your image in a post; you’ll definitely see better results. Also, consider naming the file of the image as your keyword or at least to a defining term. If you’re blogging about copyright laws, name your image as ‘copyright-laws.jpg’, not something like ‘picture10.jpg’ — that simply won’t do you any good.

I see additional SEO mistakes regularly, such as the use of generic descriptions for posts, not updating the sitemap, broken 404 pages, and grammatical errors in various site contents. Most of all, I see posts that lack organization and simply contain too much text without separation of any sort, such as spacing or headings. That’s simply unattractive to your valued readers. It takes away from the overall experience, and the quality of your website will take a beating. These SEO mistakes may seem basic to some but shouldn’t be overlooked or ignored. Better yet, consider evaluating your blog right away to ensure that your overall SEO is in check.

Isaac is a full time blogger, also the founder of HIT - a site that provides bloggers with blogging tips and how to profit from blogs. Visit Isaac's blog.

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Networking Guide for Bloggers: Messages That Get Noticed (Part 6)

The previous part of the series was all about email and various aspects of it. How long an email should be. What a good subject line is. Finally, what the value of having a professionally looking email address is.

These are all valid elements, but we haven’t touched upon the body of an email message yet. And this is exactly what we’re going to do today.

Communicating via text is a rather difficult thing. Words, sentences, and punctuation are the only tools you can use. You can’t raise a smile in the middle of a sentence, you can’t use your hand movements to emphasize a point, you can’t use any other kind of body language to aid you in conveying your message.

Words only.

And since there are words only, this creates a lot of different challenges. For instance, when you’re contacting someone for the first time the last thing you want is to sound desperate, aggressive, demanding, or unpleasant in any way.

In the real world’s communication, no matter what you say, you can simply smile at the end of a sentence and everything’s going to be fine. But on the internet – tough luck.

Quick note:
This post is a part of a series titled – Networking Guide for Bloggers. Be sure to check back next week for more! If you’ve missed the previous post(s), here are the links:

First of all, there are always some universal elements every email should have, just to look serious, and … well, real. Some of these tips may sound obvious, but they are still very important and that’s why I’m including them here.

For starters, don’t forget to simply say hi. This really goes a long way. A simple hi, or hello, with the person’s name next to it.

Notice one thing, there isn’t a “Dear Sir,” or a “To whoever it may concern” on this list. Only “Hi [Name],” or “Hello [Name].” If you’re really about to use “to whoever it may concern” in the beginning of your email you’re truly better off not even sending the email at all.

If you’re contacting someone for the first time introducing yourself is often a good idea. Don’t share your life’s story here, “I’m Karol, from newInternetOrder.com” is enough.

Now the most important part – why you’re contacting. Make this as short as possible, and as to the point as possible.

If you’re contacting simply to say hi, then simply say “I’m just writing to say hi, I really like your blog, cheers.” If you want to pitch a guest post to the person then say it upfront – “I’d really like to publish a guest post on your blog. The idea I have for it is _________.“

At first, this might sound like it’s too direct, but actually, busy individuals like people who value their time and don’t beat around the bush. Besides, remember that you only have 5 sentences to use in your email. Do you really thing that there’s any place for beating around the bush?

Finally, don’t ever end your email with “don’t forget to check out my blog at ______.” There’s a simpler and more clever way of getting someone to visit your blog. First of all, if they want to pay you a visit, they will, with no additional convincing. If they don’t, on the other hand, no convincing can change that.

The only thing you need to do is provide an address. And there’s no better place for your blog’s URL than your signature line. Make sure that your blog’s URL is the first thing in your signature right after your name.

Here’s the beginning of my signature, just to give you an example. Note: The URLs are converted into live links by default in every email software.

Just to summarize this part of the post in some bullet points, here are the universal elements of every email:

Saying hi.Introducing yourself.The reason why you’re contacting (aka the actual message).Your signature.

Now, there’s one more truly important thing when it comes to email communication. One I’ve mentioned briefly in the beginning of this post. That is: selecting your voice carefully.

No matter what you want to write, unfortunately, you can always go wrong, and sound aggressive, demanding, or negative in general … all by accident. All it takes is using one wrong word here and two other wrong words there, plus an exclamation mark at the end of one sentence, and you’re screwed.

Self-confident, polite, humble, and friendly. These are the sort of personality traits you should present. No matter what your reason for sending an email is.

No one will respond to an email that’s demanding, or sounding like the person thinks they’re standing higher in the human race hierarchy. That’s because it’s more than easy to ignore someone online, or even delete them from your inbox.

The simplest rule of thumb is to remember that, again, people don’t care about you. So try to write your email in a way that they don’t care about you just a little less, not more.

Each of us has a different voice while communicating with others, so there’s no one magic-bullet solution. And the devil is in the details as always. But there still are some general rules worth following:

WRITING IN ALL CAPS – don’t. Even if it’s just a SINGLE word.Exclamation marks! – don’t. I have yet to stumble upon a case where an exclamation mark needs to be used in an email-based communication.Assuming that someone will get something wrong – don’t. For example, a statement assuming such a thing: “don’t be late.”Don’t use the phrase “no disrespect, but” because in 100% of the cases what follows is, indeed, a disrespectful statement.Don’t sound like a know-it-all. Even if you are.Don’t say you’re important. If you are important your recipient will already be aware of it. If you’re not important saying that you are won’t change anything.Don’t hedge. You’re hedging when you’re afraid to state your true opinion, so you’re trying to soften it up. Example: “I think there is a possibility that your product just might be what the customers need,” instead of “Your product is great.” Which brings me to…Don’t praise the person you’re contacting too much … “Oh my god, your blog is so great, and your content is truly life-changing for me.”And most importantly, don’t ever lie get caught lying. If you’re writing to someone that you’ve been reading their blog for two years, for example, and still you fail to recognize their name, or worse than that, misspell their name then chances are you are lying, my friend.

These are just some general rules for the online world, and apart from having them in mind there are a lot more things you need to be careful of. Each sentence has its own feel and emotional message. This is sometimes difficult to notice because you, as the author, know what emotions guide you while writing the message, but there’s no telling if the person reading it will get the same feeling.

There are two ways of making sure that your message sounds, indeed, what you wanted it to sound like.

Have it read by a friend/coworker. A fresh set of eyes can tell you what’s wrong (and right) with your message.Use a clever piece of software such as ToneCheck.

ToneCheck is a cool app that connects to your Gmail account (among other possibilities), and takes a look at every message you write. ToneCheck analyzes your emails and notifies you about all the fragments that convey any kind of a negative messages.

I admit, this post emphasizes a lot on the tone of your message itself, but it really is that important. If you get the tone of your message wrong there’s not a thing you can write that will save you. How you say something is always more important than what you actually say.

Remember to always analyze each message you write, either yourself or with additional help from someone else, or an app like ToneCheck.

Whenever you send something, and don’t get a response, chances are that either your subject line failed to arouse any interest, your message was too long, or its voice was not pleasant.

These are the three most common reasons of failure. As you can see, they are all on you.

Next part of the series is the final one. It features a roadmap, so to speak, on the exact steps you can take while reaching out to someone. Starting from the simplest initial contact, and ending on the “can you help me” email. Being able to sent a “can you help me” email to someone is the final step of an online relationship with any blogger. There’s just nothing bigger than this (that is, unless you want to marry someone).

Since we’re talking about asking someone to do something … can I ask you to do something? :) Be honest, have you ever failed to contact someone effectively because the tone of your message was simply wrong?

Karol (@carlosinho) is a 20-something year old writer and web 2.0 entrepreneur from Poland, and a grad student at the Silesian University of Technology. He shares his thoughts at newInternetOrder.com. Tune in to get his online business and blogging advice.

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