Matt Cutts, Matt Cutts, Matt Cutts, sound familiar? Maybe “Marsha, Marsha, Marsha” comes to mind from the hit show “The Brady Bunch.” Marsha always got all the attention and so does Matt Cutts! Here at Big Red SEO, the best local SEO company in Omaha, NE, we know we write about him a lot but, hey, he is head of Google’s Webspam team and what he says goes. Therefore, it’s important to know what he’s saying and why he’s saying it, and it’s just as important for our Omaha, Nebraska search engine optimization specialists to relay that information to you.
Now back to what Matt Cutts’ is saying–recently he laid out the top 5 mistakes made when it comes to a business’ SEO efforts. It may seem like Google is being picky, but this isn’t true! There are good reasons for all the things Google does.Ultimately, their goal is to help searchers find reliable information that is easy and quick to sift through. Follow along below as our Omaha SEO team go over the top five SEO mistakes according to Matt Cutts and how to avoid them. We’re here to bring your website out of hiding!
Your website needs to be crawlable/Indexable
Don’t know what this means? That’s okay, we’re here to help! Being crawlable means your website is search engine friendly and can be indexed by them. In other words, Google needs to be able to find you. How does this happen? The links going to and from your website, as well as your internal links need to be able to be found and followed by the “spider bots” crawling your site. Your internal links and navigation within your website need to make sense not only for the search engine, but for your users! A few reasons the “spider bots” may not be able to follow your links may be because your content is embedded in Flash/ JavaScript, or the links lack authority. However, when this process is performed correctly, your website will have the ability to “crawl” up the rankings. Do you get it?!
For search engine optimization to work having a website crawlable by a spider robot is imperative. I know, who came up with the creepy crawly references, right? Yuck! These “spiders” are actually robot programs the search engine sends out to gather information that’s on your website and if they deem it of value and relevant, they’ll index the website on their search engine. If your website follows the SEO rules you’ll most likely be found on page one. If you don’t, though, we can’t verify what search engine results page (SERP) you’ll be on!
Note: If you perform blackhat SEO (bad stuff) you may be on page one for a while, but you will be found and penalized eventually. Don’t take the risk just for quicker short-term results– it can have long term consequences.
Include phrases people search for
A common mistake with those new to SEO is not including the kinds of language in their content that people are actually using to search for what they want. Here is an example from our search engine optimization experts: if your website is for a non-profit charity helping children in Africa, you want to include phrases in your on-page content that would lead a searcher to your page.
What kinds of phrases would those be, you ask? To answer this, you have to think like a searcher–if you were someone who didn’t know about your charity but wanted to find you, what would they type into a search engine hoping that you come up in the SERPs? We’re just spitballing here, but phrases like “charity for Africa,” “African children’s charity,” and “feeding hungry children in Africa” would probably be good phrases to include in your content to make sure that searchers who are interested in your content can find it quickly. Search terms must be relevant. Don’t put frequently searched terms like “Beyonce” that aren’t relevant as that’s “link-baiting” and that’s not okay.
Don’t just try to build links, create quality content and the rest will follow
Our content creation team at Big Red SEO in Omaha wants you to be aware of the perils of link-building for link-building’s sake. If you’re writing on others’ blogs just to get links back to your website, then you’re doing it wrong. Write quality content about subjects that you know well, and people will want to link to you! These things take time, though, so don’t get in a rush. Start out writing to potential customers in your city and go from there. We can’t stress enough that SEO is not an overnight process. Be patient and quick-witted like the hortoise in our last blog post and it will pay off.
Title and Descriptions Matter
This is an additional aspect that is important for any SEO strategy! All of your pages and blog posts need a title and description to go along with them. The description is the blurb content that shows up under the linked title when you search in a search engine like Google. If you happen to leave these sections blank, you’re giving Google permission to put whatever they want. Many times, they’ll pull the first sentence, or just a part of it, or they may scrape the information in the footer only. When this happens it gives the illusion that your company doesn’t care about the details, and that’s a bad image for your business! Google won’t ALWAYS use your title and description, but 9 times out of 10, if it’s relevant, they’ll use it.
Your title and meta description is your first opportunity to “wow” your readers and tell them what you’re all about before they decide to click through to your site, so make sure you take the time to make it good.
Learn SEO basics and contact Big Red SEO today at (402) 522-6468
According to Matt Cutts, the biggest mistake of them all is not taking the time to learn what SEO can really do to benefit you. If you need help with this process, contact Big Red SEO, a leading internet marketing company in Omaha, today at (402) 522-6468 and we’d be happy to share our knowledge and explain it to you! We understand that search engine optimization is a scary term and can be overwhelming if you’re not familiar with it; that’s why we’re here–to get your website on the top rankings of Google, Bing, and Yahoo!.