In terms of SEO, there are some mistakes that can be almost fatal to the success of a website, and these need to be avoided at all costs. Search engine optimization has changed with the times, and the dos and don’ts change with these times. SEOjury.co.uk have supplied some of the most common dos and don’ts that help you on your way to creating an SEO friendly site, and reach the top of the search engine rankings!

SEO Don’ts

Overuse of keywords - One of the biggest mistakes a web developer can make is to overuse keywords. Sure, they can be important in making your site SEO friendly, yet you don’t want to use so many that the rest of your content starts to make very little sense. Keyword overfill can be very dangerous and can make a site seem very unnatural for both the reader of the text and the search engine themselves. 

Don’t cheat the system - Black hat SEO can be fatal to websites, as soon as a search engine gets wind of the fact that a website is cheating their way to the top of the rankings. This can be done by buying backlinks, using hidden links, keyword stuffing, using hidden keywords, duplicating text and more. Quite often though, this can do more damage than good. Search engines are becoming a lot smarter, and now they have the ability to tell the difference between good content and a cheating content. If a website gets found out using any of these cheating techniques, then they can be punished by either being moved down rankings or taken out of the search ranking altogether. 

Duplicate content - Search engines like Google do not like duplicate content in any shape or form, whether this is in the main body of text on a web page, or in the page’s headers, title tags, meta descriptions, etc. Although you may believe that the content that you are using is good, it will not do you any favors in the long run. 

SEO Do's

Mobile optimization - In today’s society, mobile optimization is key. If a website is not optimized for mobile, not only are they going to lose customers when they try and get on the site on their mobile, but also when they use a search engine on their mobiles. Google likes a mobile friendly website as overall they will supply a better user experience for the potential customer. Mobile responsive web designs can result in lower bounce rates, therefore better for SEO.

Optimized images - Lots of web developers do not fully understand how important images can be to the overall SEO of a site. The names of images are important and should always include the keywords relating the page. Labeling or tagging the image will make it easy for search engines to find them, in this way the search engine can understand more about what the content offers customers, and rank it accordingly. 

Check for broken links - Broken links can have disastrous effects on a site if they are left unchecked. The best thing for a web developer or web owner to do is to check both the external and internal links regularly and use free online tools to help do this. Once any broken links have been found, then they should be removed or updated as soon as possible to avoid having a bad user experience.

There are many dos and don’ts when it comes to website SEO, and companies should try to do as much as they can to keep on the good side of a search engine and increase their rankings. This infographic from SEOjury answers some of the most often asked questions about SEO that many still struggle to understand.