3 Ways You’re Hurting Your SEO Without Knowing It

Search Engine Optimization – or SEO as it’s commonly known since the full term is such a mouthful – can be a complex concept to grasp. Once you get the terms down, like keywords, organic search, link building and so on, then you get to the actual stuff of SEO.

We know it takes a lot of expertise to get it right, but there are a couple of things that you might be doing to make it even harder to get good SEO … and you might have no idea! Here are the top three ways people hurt their SEO when they think they’re helping it, so you can stop the damage before it takes you down:

1. Stuffing the Keywords. Yes, you’ve heard that the right keywords are everything when it comes to getting your website or content found online. And that’s true, but everything should be done in moderation! Search engines can tell when you’ve got keyword-overuse going on, and they’ll label you as spam. Not only that, but real, flesh-and-blood humans (read: possible customers) who read content that’s virtually exploding with keywords do one thing: stop reading and move on. That’s not really the reaction you want, is it?
2. Overwhelming with Gadgets. Code, plugins, slideshows, etc. are overwhelming for search engines to read through, which hurts your SEO. Of course, your super-cool moving pictures and objects flying across the screen may impress people visiting your site, but all that extra code weight can make your page loading time suuuuuuper slooooooow. If the page takes too long to load, your potential customer will give up and look elsewhere. Keep the extra stuff to a minimum, and the search engine bots can crawl your site to their heart’s content!
3. Links All Over. There are a few ways that links themselves can cause problems for your SEO. First of all, companies that provide ‘link building’ can be lazy, and get your link rated on a site classified as spam by Google (which in turn, lowers your Google rating). Another link-risk factor is just like the code problem above: if your website has a bunch of links that search bots can’t crawl (like drop-down menus and other stuff that requires a mouse-over for links to show up), they’ll get lost or shortchange your SEO rating.

Hopefully, once you’ve nixed these damaging SEO variables, your rating will be well on its way to growing your company’s optimization in the online space. We hope these tips help!