Beginning SEO and SEM Mistakes

[tritrain]

When you first started doing SEO/SEM you probably made a few mistakes in judgment that may have cost you.

I can say that when I first started marketing one of my first sites I made a big mistake. I was deemed a spammer by one of the largest forums of the specific category. It didn't take much to be called a spammer (they're very picky about what is done there). Since then I've learned to be much more subtle about including links in forums, commenting in blogs, etc.

My number one SEO mistake is spamming.

Here's my top beginner SEO/SEM mistakes that people make (not necessarily me!):

1. Spamming - Be subtle and careful; provide a thoughtful post or comment or don't post at all.
2. Linkbuilding "schemes" - Getting involved in linkbuilding techniques such as automated reciprocal linking and linking to unrelated pages/sites or bad neighborhoods (ie. link farms).
3. Impatience - Linkbuilding is a continuous and often slow process. Be patient!
4. Search Engine Friendly Titles and URLs - Begin the process of onsite and onpage SEO before you create the site content and begin linkbuilding.


Any others?

I'll add more as I think of them.

[KingPin]

Before anything I would carry out Competitive Research.

KP

[yummytork]

I got banned from Wikipedia 3 times before I learned how to contribute thoughtfully and usefully.

1. ALWAYS read the article history and discussion page before you try changing ANYTHING.
2. Read the SEO guidelines on Wikipedia. They were written mostly by an seo guru by the name of Mr. Hochman, a Yale grad and very smart seo person.
3. ALWAYS cite your sources.
4. Be very open to criticism and changes to your content. That's what makes Wikipedia great. Other people contributing to your stuff will almost always make it many times better than you could ever do by yourself.

[Web Gazelle]

I got banned from Wikipedia 3 times before I learned how to contribute thoughtfully and usefully.

1. ALWAYS read the article history and discussion page before you try changing ANYTHING.
2. Read the SEO guidelines on Wikipedia. They were written mostly by an seo guru by the name of Mr. Hochman, a Yale grad and very smart seo person.
3. ALWAYS cite your sources.
4. Be very open to criticism and changes to your content. That's what makes Wikipedia great. Other people contributing to your stuff will almost always make it many times better than you could ever do by yourself.

And be sure to add a link to your friend's site whenever possible. Thanks Yummytork!

[webfinity]

A big mistake, and one that I have made, is optimizing for junk phrases that aren't ever searched.

[KingPin]

A big mistake, and one that I have made, is optimizing for junk phrases that aren't ever searched.

Excellent quote!

This is really simple but some people just can't get their head around it....

If it's not searched on, it's not a keyword. It's as pure and as simple as that.

Almost anyone can rank number one for an obscure keyword.

KP

[esidyo]

The biggest mistake is impatience, 100% Harms your work !

[Paz]

I think my biggest seo mistakes include;

a robots.txt file that caused most of my site to be de-indexed.
optimising for a keyword phrase that didn't drive useful traffic (ditto do keyword research).
buying high PR links for a site that had a lot of duplicate content issues.
over-optimising a keyword phrase in my backlink campaign.

and there are others!

Luckily I learn from my mistakes.

[FireTown]

My biggest mistake was to listen too much to people who knew a little bit, but only enough to sell their services on forums.
Overoptimization was a result of that and my rankings fell.
I didn know what I was doing wrong, since I thought I was on the right track.
Ever since I've been keeping my eyes wide open. I read advice, take it to heart, but what I more than anything pay attention to is the results that I get and my own experience.

[KingPin]

The biggest mistake I made was listening to too many people when I started out.

I had a site up and I would have one person tell me one thing and someone else tell me another so my site was forever changing and I was being pushed from pillar to post.

In the end I got tired of it and decided to do listen to what people have to say, pull out all the bits I thought was relevant, try it then draw up some conclusions.

I think thats why I love experimental SEO. You will always get SEOs disagreeing on some points. Page Rank is a prime example.

KP