After being in the Search Engine Optimisation business for so long, we have come across many sites that are wonderfully designed and crafted. On the other hand, we have also come across sites that are unappealing to both humans and robots.

Below are 7 common SEO mistakes that iClick Media would like to share with you.

1. A 100% Full Flash Website

flash icon

Many customers have seen pretty websites that uses Flash Animation primarily as the base of the website. Such websites are tastefully designed and very appealing to human beings.

Unfortunately, to search engine crawlers, they are unable to grab any data because robots can’t reach Flash! Simple as that.

We would recommend that if you insist on using Flash to build your animation, limit it to a small section of your site. Let your site’s content still be build by HTML and/or CSS.

2. Excessive Javascript

javascript overkill

Javascript is pretty. However, it is not suitable for Search Engine Optimisation(SEO). We will suggest that your navigation bar or navigation system be build using HTML or CSS.

3. ALT Text for Image

Robots are bots, not humans. They can’t “see” the nice image you post. Consider using alt text to “tell” and “inform” the search engine crawlers what your picture is all about. The more they know about your picture and your website, the better you can be ranked.

4. Keyword Density overkill

The key thing is this. Write for humans, not robots. Many client’s existing website consist of the same key phrase appearing in the Title, Meta Description, Meta Keywords, H1 text, paragraph copy (3 times and bolded or underlined) and alt text.

Search engine, upon seeing the abundance of the keywords appearing, will generally see you as a spammy website owner and your ranking will not improve.

Consider writing for humans, with proper sentence structure, and you may see your ranking improve.

5. Auto Submit site service

There are so many different search engines in the world. In fact, there are even unscrupulous merchants who ask you to pay for advertising on their search engine.

In reality, there are only that few search engines in the world that can drive traffic to you. We’re talking about Google, Yahoo, Bing, Baidu and probably Ask.com.

6. Search Engine friendly URLs

If you’re using a Content Management System (CMS), this should be fairly easy.

Structure your URL so that it is easily read by both humans and robots. Take a look at the 2 examples below:

www.abc.com/nike/shoes/red_shoes.html and

www.abc.com/te1292/red1288401.html

Which sounds more logical? You got it, do it.

7. Expecting miracles

SEO is not magic. I repeat, it is not magic. It is not instantaneous. Doing proper white hat SEO requires patience, lots of hardwork, and of course our expertise.

With the above, I’ll wrap up the 7 SEO mistakes that are commonly made and how you should respond or rectify. If you have any questions, feel free to email to enquiry@iclickmedia.com.sg

Cheers!

iClick Media

SEO Manager