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According to Mark Murray Fathom SEO (www.fathomseo.com),
SEO is not a shopping spree. You need website traffic, but you need to pace
yourself—even sound practices may fail if they’re rushed. When picking a domain
name, short domain names are easy to read—if you use multiple hyphens or forced
capitalization, it looks like spam and visitors are immediately suspicious of
your website. And when it comes to search engine optimization, you need to pick
your priorities—don’t manage too many keywords at once.
Mr. Murray goes on to say that it’s easy to have
folder and page name “excess”. Using too many keywords or repeated keywords in
your domain name, folder name, and page name (or file name) can lead to
disaster. A good rule of thumb is to make sure that they match the content—but
don’t go overboard with it. Limit you repetition of keywords in the domain name,
folder names, and page names. Although having those keywords in the URL can help
rankings, don’t overdo it.
Title tags are important, according to Mr.
Murray. It’s important to tame your title tag, especially because long title
tags are useless. “It’s important to pick one or two search terms and call it a
day” when you’re writing title tags. Meta description tags are needed as well,
but “don’t have meta description overload”, says Mr. Murray. “The description
tag still counts…but you need to avoid long descriptions.” The meta description
tag still shows up in the search engine results, so optimize your meta
description not only for the search engines but for your website visitors—you
need a good description to lure people to click on your web site’s listing so
they visit your site. The meta keywords tag is a hard tag not to include, but
some search engines downplay this tag due to past abuses. It’s good to limit
your meta keywords tag to a few keywords – again, don’t overload your meta
keywords tag with a lot of useless keywords. When it comes to other meta tags
(other than the meta description and keywords tag), you can go ahead and skip
them—according to Mr. Murray, “they do little for search engines…why spend the
time and potentially mess with density issues?”
Other issues that Mr. Murray talked about were
issues such as overdone visible text. “Massive keyword repetition in a small
space may annoy site visitors…it looks blatant.” Heading tags are commonly
misused, as well. “Don’t overstuff and avoid misuse. Complement the design and
don’t ignore the overall look and feel of your site.”
According to Heather Lloyd-Martin from
SearchEngineWriting.com, SEO overkill is where good content can go bad. Title
tags can get overstuffed quickly. Remember that the SERPs (search engine
results) page is the first opportunity for conversion. Your title should be hot
and compelling. It’s important to make your title clickable and reflect the
content on the page. Stuffed title tags are more than spammy--they provide a bad
first impression and inhibit click-throughs. Think of your conversion and your
customers first. Searchers won’t click on your search engine listing if they see
a spammy or undesirable title. “It’s one thing to create headlines that grab
attention…it’s another when it has nothing to do with the ad”, says Heather
Lloyd-Martin. “Titles and content can be creative, but please make the content
relevant – and hit the pain points of your client.”
“Don’t be a linkarama loser”, says Ms.
Lloyd-Martin. “Lots of links isn’t helpful for seo or for customers – it’s
confusing. Too many links on a page will overwhelm your reader – and they won’t
know how to take action. Focus on your most important page links, and promote
those on the page. Think about the rule of three and use those links to
pre-qualify powerful landing pages.” She goes on to say that you need to avoid
what she calls “conversion confusion”. “Many pages include a lot of text on the
page and have a lot of good content and talk about the product a lot. But
there’s no conversion step or way for people to take action. People need to be
told what to do. If you do not ask for the sale, they won’t take action.” What
action do you want your customers to take? How easy is it to take that action?
Don’t rely on a “contact us” button or “contact us” in the footer navigation.
When you create landing pages, it’s important to give the visitor an action they
can take as well as an incentive for taking that action.
Bad misspellings are something you want to
avoid. According to Heather Lloyd-Martin, “misspellings are a myth…customers
will notice misspellings pretty easily…which makes your company look
unprofessional, like you can’t spell, and like you don’t care.” She goes on to
say that “if they can’t get their site right, why can they get my order right?”
Don’t trash you brand with misspellings.
Matt Bailey from the Karcher Group says that
it’s important to realize how readers scan a web page. According to Jakob
Nielsen, 79 percent of users scan a web page. 16 percent read the page’s copy
word for word. When creating a web page and trying to avoid SEO overkill, you
need to realize that screen reader users scan by listening. Mr. Bailey explains
that they “listen to the first few words on the page”. It’s important to also be
aware that “mobile devices and cell phones ignore hidden text, stuffed alt
attributes, hidden z-layers—they’re all visible in PDAs and to screen readers.
Some people turn off images on their phones when they’re browsing the web to
save bandwidth.” If you overstuff your web pages with useless content and stuff
your web pages with useless keywords the screen reader users, as well as people
using mobile devices will not be happy with your web pages—they’ll leave right
away.
Well-designed pages and content equal
credibility. According to Mr. Bailey, there was a study done by the Stanford
University Persuasive Technology Lab. “Participants made credibility-based
decisions…based upon the site’s overall visual appeal.” They base the
credibility on the site design. Typically, consumers assess the credibility of
web sites based on the overall visual design of a site, specifically noting
layout, typography, font size, and color schemes.
Mr. Bailey says that when it comes to over
optimization, “you have two choices--write for search engines or write for
conversions…there is an over-optimization penalty. Do things in moderation. You
need to write for conversions, not the search engines.”
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