3 SEO Mistakes That Can Penalize Your Site’s Rankings

Even with the explosive growth of Twitter, Facebook, and other social networking sites, search engines continue to drive an enormous volume of targeted traffic. If you can harness that traffic and direct it to the right places, you’ll increase your clicks, sales, and profit. Thousands of marketers are using search engine optimization strategies to squeeze 6-figure incomes – and sometimes, much more – from their online businesses. You can do the same.

Having said that, there are several SEO tripwires that can ensnare you and lead to ranking penalties. Once your sites become penalized, you’ll fight an uphill battle to recover your organic positions. Today, I’ll help you avoid three of the most damaging SEO mistakes I see others making.

#1 – Aggressive Interlinking Between Your Sites

Inbound links are important. They help lift your pages higher in Google’s index for your keywords. The problem is that many online marketers become overzealous in building those links. They’ll purchase dozens of domains, place them on the same server (and even the same IP!), and aggressively interlink them.

Google views this strategy as an attempt to “game” their algorithm. That’s dangerous. They’re a multi-billion dollar company with shareholders. They will do whatever is necessary to protect their organic listings from those who are trying to “game” them.

A few relevant links between thematically-related sites are valuable. Aggressive interlinking between them can lead to a ranking penalty.

#2 – Over-optimization Of Your Core Keywords

Placing your main keywords into your title tags, H1 tags, and throughout your pages’ content is a critical piece of search engine optimization. So too, is putting your keywords into the anchor text of your inbound links. However, if you over-optimize your pages, your entire site can be penalized by Google (and possibly, Yahoo! as their algorithm evolves).

Unfortunately, the organic search algorithms remain hidden from the public. That means there’s no definite optimization line in the sand across which you know you cannot step. If there were, everyone would know how to perfectly optimize their sites for the search engines.

Here’s my advice: continue placing your core keywords within your titles and H1 tags. Seed your keywords throughout your content, but worry less about matching a particular density. Off-page, build your inbound links with varying anchor text. The last thing you want is to have your entire inbound link profile featuring the same anchor. That raises a red flag at Google.

For more in depth information on Inbound link building I recommend you read my SEO BOOK By Visiting here!

#3 – Unnatural Inbound Link Profile

Place yourself in Google’s shoes. A large portion of their organic ranking algorithm is devoted to links. They know millions of webmasters want higher rankings and will try to manipulate the algorithm to achieve them. The challenge (for Google) is to give ranking authority to sites that have a natural link profile while suppressing sites with an unnatural profile. So, how do you avoid building an unnatural inbound link profile?

I mentioned anchor text above; using the same anchor for every inbound link is unnatural. It raises a flag. If all of your links are reciprocal, that too, raises a flag. If every link pointing to your site is within footers, or points to your home page, your link profile will seem lopsided. If your site receives an explosion of inbound links, Google’s algorithm will likely find that odd. The more you can do to build a natural link profile, the better rankings you’ll enjoy over time.

SEO remains one of the best internet marketing strategies for driving targeted traffic. But, optimizing your sites for the search engines is no longer a simple science. It has become complex. That’s good news because your competitors are less willing – or unable – to do what is necessary to rank well.

Keep the mistakes I’ve described today in mind when optimizing your sites. In a future post, I’ll give you a few tips for further juicing your rankings.

P.S.

I hope that you found the information informative and if so I would love to hear if you have any questions.

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