Search engine optimization (SEO) is important for any successful blogging campaign. Implementing SEO in the right manner will bring numerous benefits to the website. In addition to attracting huge traffic to the Blog website you also rank higher in pagerank and your blogs will be regularly visited for complying with SEO requirements. SEO mistakes can make or break a website.

Being aware of the common SEO mistakes is a critical start to making sure your website earns high visibility in the search results.

Following are the common 7 SEO mistakes to avoid.

1. Lack of targeted and valuable content

Readers search for valuable and unique information. The content you update should impress, engage and connect with the readers. Give the readers what they want.   Deliver content that is worthy of time and attention for the reader. To rank well in search engines, your web page must have specific keywords and terms. The content in your blog and website is analyzed by search engines. If the data is not relevant, both search engines and web users will ignore it. You need to focus on the grammar, avoid spelling mistakes. Careless mistakes will have a negative effort on the readers. Be sure to give quality content for the visitors who have visited your blog .

2. No keyword research

Keywords are the words typed into a search box. Keyword research is on f the most important, valuable and high return activities in the search marketing field. You need to understand the market you are targeting, and their needs. Ranking for the “correct” keywords can make or break your website. Thorough research is critical to establish which keywords would work best for your target customers. You need to conduct research on your markets keyword demand, target for SEO with appropriate terms and phrases and arrive at the correct ones. There is a long discussion about long tail keywords being more advantageous than regular keywords.

3. Too Little Content

There are bloggers who restrict content to a minimum of 350 to less than 500 words. Most websites, especially blogs, suffer from posts that are too short. Writing an article after thorough research requires at the least 750 to 1000 words. Writing extremely short posts hurts reader loyalty plus your page could be considered as low quality when it comes to SEO rankings. There is a tendency and a said pattern that a majority of readers follow. They read the opening paragraph thoroughly, then quickly run thru’ to the middle of the article, watch images and videos and finally read the conclusion.

This is like reading the paperback of a novel. After reading a few pages of a detective novel, with immense curiosity will read the last page and then relax to read the entire book. Longer length articles provide better ROI when the content is relevant. Writers and web designers shouldn’t be afraid of content below the fold, they won’t lose their audience by making them scroll. If you have valuable information that is helpful to your readers – and customers – they’ll stick around, and your ROI (Return of Investment) will reflect it.

4. Not Doing SEO Correctly

You need to optimize your posts for the Search engines and follow correct SEO practices. There are time tested strategies that are being implemented for higher visibility and success. For example at many instances bloggers give references of Home page while doing link building. A better approach would be to link the most popular posts or most viewed page and keep changing the references for an overall impact. You can keep bringing variations by regularly upgrading your knowledge of SEO and implementing the changes in your Blog website.

5. Forgetting the Alt Tag in images

Alt text is a short description of your images included in your blog posts. It was designed so that people who use screen readers (a screen reader converts text from your computer into audio, for people who might be blind or unable to read, or Braille). If a person reading your blog is blind, they wouldn’t be able to see your images – but alt text lets them know that there is an image, and explains what it is.

These days, alt text is also important for SEO purposes. Google can’t read your images based on the picture alone, so they use the alt text to recognize pictures (so if you want an image to show up in Google Images under a relevant search, it needs to be labeled properly).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.

Always name your image with the keyword of your posts. This will improve the presence of keyword in your article. For example if you’re blogging about “common SEO mistakes”, do not upload the image as ‘image002.jpg’, name it as “SEO mistakes.jpg”

6. 302 redirects instead of 301

Redirects are a small thing in SEO that can wield a lot of power. Incorrect usage will not only irritate the readers , they will not come back due to the previous experience. The biggest drawback will be when search engine robots will not bring your article up in SERP. Be extremely thoughtful while making changes to your blog website. Close all the loopholes and make your data live.

A 302 redirect reflects a temporary redirect. If you are removing a page for a short period of time to make changes you want to use the 302, which will inform the search engines that the URL being redirected will be put back at this address. When the URL is permanently removed or changed, you must always use the 301 redirect. Search engines will know that the redirect is permanent and will continue to assign the content with the new URL.

• Quality issues – 404 errors

Getting a lot of 404 errors will convey to the search engines that there is a quality issue with your Blog website, therefore any old or not in use pages that have links pointing to them should be redirected to new versions of the page, or to relevant pages when a replacement is not available.

Google Webmaster Tools is an extremely valuable resource when checking for 404 errors. You can find the crawl errors section in your Webmaster Tools in the left sidebar under the “Crawl” dropdown. Once you click on “Crawl Errors,” you will see the “Not found” section. It will show how many pages are not found, with a graph and a list that have the URL, a response code and the date it was found. This data will enable you fix and proceed.

7. Internal Linking

Poor internal linking structure is another big issue, which can cause many problems both from a visitor who lands on your article during search and with the search engines. Make sure that every page of your site has links going to it.

When a search engine crawler is going through your site, it counts on your internal link structure to bring it to every page of your site so it can be indexed easily and clearly. With a poor internal linking structure, there may be pages the crawlers cannot reach because there are no internal links providing direction.

Internal linking is important for other reasons as well. Visitors will have a rich experience if they get all the relevant information from your article with appropriate links for more info. Visitors need to easily find what they are looking for, and good usability can make or break your site and have an impact on your rankings by lowering your bounce rate. People keep following the flow laid down by your links, they will go from one page or post to the next by following internal links. Bounce rate plays a role in how search engines will rank your site.

What is your opinion of the SEO mistakes that can break or make a website?

Tags: common SEO mistakes, higher pagerank, keyword research, Poor internal linking, SEO mistakes to avoid, use the ALT tag