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18 SEO Killers You Must Clean Up and Avoid for 2013
By Jill Whalen
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There’s a lot of talk lately of Google
having finally killed SEO through their
Panda and Penguin algorithms, which
continue to ensnare more and more
websites with every new update.
So is SEO Really (Finally) Dead?
When you look at
some of the
Google organic
traffic losses
that companies have faced since the very
first Panda algo
(aka Google Farmer) hit in February
2011, you might certainly think so.
Analytics data showing losses of over
50% of Google organic traffic is not
uncommon for afflicted websites:
See Search
Overview chart
And traffic that used to increase over
time, suddenly took a huge dip:
See Visitors
Overview chart
These patterns certainly make it look as
if SEO could be dead.
But Is It Really?
In order to answer
that question I went back through the
multitude of
lost traffic site
audit
reports I’ve been doing since early
2011. I looked for website problems that
were consistent through many of the
sites I reviewed.
It didn’t take long for me to conclude
that, while SEO was certainly not dead,
SEO tricks and shortcuts were definitely
on life support – if not already
completely dead.
So if you relied on tricks and shortcuts,
then yes, for you SEO is dead.
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In fact, it’s likely that the very things that helped you
before are the ones that are hurting you now. But even for
those of us who have always used best SEO practices, some
things have changed.
Today, and for the foreseeable future, SEO is much less
about optimizing for specific keywords, and much more about
technical issues, social signals, and the overall
trustworthiness of a company and its website.
When I went through my lost traffic website audits, I
found no less than 18 specific problems that had likely
contributed to the huge losses of organic Google traffic and
the subsequent loss in conversions and sales that so many
companies have been facing.
Here they are, in no particular order:
1. Duplicate content
2. Keyword stuffing
3. Doorways
4. Footer links
5. Auto anchor text
6. Spammy comments
7. Low-quality pages
8. Poor presentation
9. Content below fold
10. Technical problems
11. Poor writing
12. No content
13. Splitting link pop
14. Merry-go-rounds
15. Unnatural links
16. Semi-hidden text
17. Rich snippet abuse
18. Trustworthiness
While some of the above were deliberately done to or for
the websites in order to increase organic website traffic (back
in the day), others were more inadvertent – with some issues
overlapping others.
For instance, duplicate content can be caused by
technical issues, but it can also be done deliberately as an
easy way to add more content to a website. And keyword
stuffing is often done in conjunction with having content
below the fold, but not always.
For the most part, the issues can be broken down into a
few overall categories:
* Technical issues
* Content issues
* Usability issues
* Linking issues
* Outright deception
Over the next few months, I’ll go into more detail about
all of the above SEO problems and issues, and show you some
specific examples in future articles. For now, however, here
are the main takeaways you need to know to do good SEO in
2013 and beyond:
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Fix Technical Issues First and Foremost
Technical issues affecting SEO have always existed and
smart SEO consultants have always made fixing them a high
priority. But after Panda and Penguin, fixing them is more
important than ever. Technical issues that are a problem for
SEO run the gamut from bad content management system (CMS)
setups
that create duplicate content to having a sitewide
navigation that’s basically invisible to search engines.
Whatever your specific technical issues may be, now is the
time to fix them. If they’re not already hurting your site’s
SEO performance, they likely will be after a new Panda or
Penguin update.
Think Less About Optimizing for Specific Keywords
I know this seems counterintuitive to everything I’ve
been preaching to you for years, but it’s a very important
point. When you do SEO with the goal of
optimizing for specific keywords that you want to rank
for (as we’ve always done), it can end up hurting you now.
What happens is that you focus too much on those specific
words and end up putting them in too many places on your
pages and within the website as a whole. But now this is not
as helpful to search engines as it used to be. In most cases
this will actually lower your rankings and traffic for those
specific keyword phrases. Instead, reread
what Karon Thackston recently recommended (and which
Matt Cutts from Google confirmed) and use much more of a
variety of words within your content. Be sure to keep my new
SEO mantra in your head: “Less is more.”
Have a Real Content / Social Media Marketing
Strategy
Forget about
old-fashioned link building. Google now really does
consider it to be web spam. (Yay!) If you can add a link to
your own site just by submitting it somewhere, you can
assume that it won’t count for much (or anything) by Google.
In other words, forget about useless directory submissions,
article directories, link wheels, forum signatures and
comment spam. That’s all done, kaput, a useless waste of
time.
Instead, hire real writers and put them to work writing
blog posts and other informational content on a regular
basis. Be sure that what they’re writing is
truly of interest to the people who might buy your
products or services (aka your target market).
Learn where your target market is hanging out online, be
it Twitter, Facebook, Google+, industry forums and blogs,
and hang out with them. Make friends with them and be sure
you make them aware of all the helpful, informational
content on your website, as appropriate. Be especially sure
to let them know when any new content comes out that they
might be interested in. Remember to share their content as
well, and don’t be afraid to ask them to share yours.
Most of All, Earn Google’s Trust
If your site is poorly written or keyword stuffed, it’s
not going to look very trustworthy to Google. If all the
links pointing to your site are using one specific keyword
phrase rather than just being the name of your company, it’s
not going to look very trustworthy to Google. If people
can’t easily find what they came to your site to find, or if
they keep going around in circles on your site, it’s not
going to look very trustworthy to Google. If you have a
number of sites all selling the same products when one would
suffice, it’s not going to look very trustworthy to Google.
If you truly want to earn Google’s trust, you (and your
site) must be trustworthy. Stop trying to trick them into
thinking your site is something it’s not, and start
making it be that something. Having a business and a
website was never supposed to be easy. While Google had let
most of the above slide for a long time, they really are
putting their money where their mouth is now. So forget
about trying to find the latest shortcuts and get to work!
Jill Whalen is the CEO of High Rankings, an
SEO Consulting
company in the Boston, MA area
since 1995. Follow her on Twitter
@JillWhalen. If
you learned from this article, be sure to invite your
colleagues to sign up for the
High Rankings Advisor SEO Newsletter so they can receive
similar articles in the future!
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