It's understood that nobody actually sets out to drive their SEO crazy, but you wouldn't know it to listen to SEOs tell their side of the story. Many problems can be boiled down to a lack of understanding and a lack of communication. In this article, I'm going to list some of the common mistakes that site owners make which drive their SEOs crazy – and derail their own SEO campaigns.
I got this list from Stoney deGeyter, writing for Search Engine Guide. I plan to expand a little on many (but not all) of the mistakes he mentions to show you why each one is a bad idea, and what you should do instead. This way, you'll avoid the horror of, as deGeyter puts it, “waking up in the morning to find that Google has forgotten who you are and kicked you to the curb like a drunken date the morning after.”
The first mistake deGeyter mentions is overwriting your SEO's changes by editing an outdated copy of your website and publishing it live – and worse, forgetting to tell your SEO about it. Your SEO created, or helped you create, the new version of your website for a reason: it's supposed to perform better than your old one. If your new site needs work, editing an old copy of it and then publishing that one will undo all of the positive changes (and hard work) your SEO already put in. This is why you should always discuss changes to your site with your SEO first.
The second way you can mess up your SEO campaign is by uploading a robots.txt file that “disallows” the search engines from crawling and indexing your entire site. Sadly, that's a pretty simple mistake for someone who is not technically inclined to make, if they're trying to do things they don't fully understand. You're trying to keep scraper bots from getting at your content? That's great; just don't disallow the bots that really DO need to see your content! This is one mistake that can keep Google from seeing your site at all. There's nothing wrong with wanting to learn how to handle the technical aspects of your website, but if you're not entirely sure of what you're doing (and maybe even if you are), let your SEO check over these kinds of things. His or her job involves making sure you're visible to the search engines.
Along those lines, the third mistake deGeyter mentions involves changing and re-developing your CMS. Yes, sometimes the CMS needs to be updated – but if it isn't done cautiously, it can lead to well-ranked URLs losing their ranking. That's another technical aspect of your site and its ranking in which you need to have your SEO as well as your website developer involved. Sometimes, you can't avoid changing URLs. In that case, you can at least set up proper 301 redirects as soon as possible – and your SEO can help you with that as well.
Have you ever heard the saying “if it isn't broken, don't fix it”? That brings us to the fourth mistake site owners make that drive SEOs crazy: changing all of the website's URLs to be “keyword friendly” when you're already ranking very well for your keywords. I have to give site owners credit for trying to understand SEO here. Yes, keywords are important; yes, URLs and title pages are important; and yes, it's possible that keyword-friendly URLs can help your standing in the SERPs. But before you make those kinds of changes, please check with your SEO. Anything that involves a change to a URL is pretty serious; you're likely to lose whatever ranking that page held previously. That's why you try to avoid changing URLs when your pages are ranking well.
I got this list from Stoney deGeyter, writing for Search Engine Guide. I plan to expand a little on many (but not all) of the mistakes he mentions to show you why each one is a bad idea, and what you should do instead. This way, you'll avoid the horror of, as deGeyter puts it, “waking up in the morning to find that Google has forgotten who you are and kicked you to the curb like a drunken date the morning after.”
The first mistake deGeyter mentions is overwriting your SEO's changes by editing an outdated copy of your website and publishing it live – and worse, forgetting to tell your SEO about it. Your SEO created, or helped you create, the new version of your website for a reason: it's supposed to perform better than your old one. If your new site needs work, editing an old copy of it and then publishing that one will undo all of the positive changes (and hard work) your SEO already put in. This is why you should always discuss changes to your site with your SEO first.
The second way you can mess up your SEO campaign is by uploading a robots.txt file that “disallows” the search engines from crawling and indexing your entire site. Sadly, that's a pretty simple mistake for someone who is not technically inclined to make, if they're trying to do things they don't fully understand. You're trying to keep scraper bots from getting at your content? That's great; just don't disallow the bots that really DO need to see your content! This is one mistake that can keep Google from seeing your site at all. There's nothing wrong with wanting to learn how to handle the technical aspects of your website, but if you're not entirely sure of what you're doing (and maybe even if you are), let your SEO check over these kinds of things. His or her job involves making sure you're visible to the search engines.
Along those lines, the third mistake deGeyter mentions involves changing and re-developing your CMS. Yes, sometimes the CMS needs to be updated – but if it isn't done cautiously, it can lead to well-ranked URLs losing their ranking. That's another technical aspect of your site and its ranking in which you need to have your SEO as well as your website developer involved. Sometimes, you can't avoid changing URLs. In that case, you can at least set up proper 301 redirects as soon as possible – and your SEO can help you with that as well.
Have you ever heard the saying “if it isn't broken, don't fix it”? That brings us to the fourth mistake site owners make that drive SEOs crazy: changing all of the website's URLs to be “keyword friendly” when you're already ranking very well for your keywords. I have to give site owners credit for trying to understand SEO here. Yes, keywords are important; yes, URLs and title pages are important; and yes, it's possible that keyword-friendly URLs can help your standing in the SERPs. But before you make those kinds of changes, please check with your SEO. Anything that involves a change to a URL is pretty serious; you're likely to lose whatever ranking that page held previously. That's why you try to avoid changing URLs when your pages are ranking well.
