The worst
SEO problems are the ones you don’t even notice, the ones not mentioned in your regular
SEO checklist. The good news is that all of these
SEO problems are easy to fix. Although it can take a fair amount of time and effort to find and repair
SEO mistakes, it is well worth it.
I love writing about SEO as it is one of the biggest reasons for my success and yours. I believe that great content and SEO go hand in hand. You cannot have one without the other as they are quite useless on their own. Think about it?
If you are having SEO problems then just go through the following list and make any necessary changes.
SEO Problems #1—Weak Titles
I can always tell when a SEO writer focuses too much on keywords by looking at the headlines he or she produces. Missing are the titles that suck you in; gone are the titles that entice people into clicking.
It doesn’t matter how great your SEO is if people don’t click the links in the search engine results. People open the pages that sound most interesting, whether they appear first in the results or fifth.
A good headline can drive more traffic to your site than any other SEO technique by itself.
For most sites, the best headlines make a solid promise. The headline for this article promises to tell you about 5 SEO problems. Other titles promise to tell you “how to” do something, the “top 10” things, or how to get something for “free.”
A strong headline can pull in several times as much traffic as a weak headline, all other things being equal, so it pays handsomely to check the titles of all your content.
The titles are also extremely important when you are using Comentluv links on other blogs for SEO purposes. Of course a better title attracts the clicks. I am realizing this when I examine the Commentluv premium results for clicks I am receiving. The great titles are really getting the clicks!
SEO Problems #2—Duplicated Content
Back when I started blogging, it was common for blog software to create “pages of pages.” The blog software would combine all of the posts in a single category into a single page for easy reading.
Some blog software still does this. If yours does, see if there’s a setting to turn it off, or use robots.txt to block Google from visiting that part of your site.
These combination pages count against you as duplicate content. Google doesn’t want to send people to giant pages full of mostly irrelevant information—it wants to help searchers answer their questions with specific results.
Try not to duplicate any content on your site longer than a paragraph to maximize your ranking.
Also watch out for sites that steal your content. Google reduces your page rank when you host duplicate content—even if it was original content when you first published it.
Many sites will take down copyrighted content if you ask. More will take it down if you threaten legal action. The rest can usually be forced out of business if you contact their hosting company. (But be careful attacking hackers—they might attack back.)
You can also take advantage of copyright thieves: include links to your own sites in your content so stolen content at least gives you a backlink.
SEO Problems #3—Duplicate Domain Names
Did you know that domain names starting with www are completely separate from the same domain name without www? Even if you didn’t know that, Google does.
Google also knows that some people use the two variations to do things that fool users. Some people use the two versions to do split testing, others use it to create scam versions of legitimate sites.
For that reason, Google considers the non-www version of a site separate from the www version. That means your site could appear in the Google index twice—making Google think every single page on your site is a duplicate.
To convince Google the www form of your site isn’t a duplicate, you need only log in to you Google Webmaster Tools account and set your preferred domain name. Google will give you all the instructions you need to verify you own both the regular and www versions of your site.
SEO Problems #4—Javascript Over-Features
Does your site use AJAX extensively? Then watch out—the Google crawler doesn’t do the Javascript that AJAX depends on.
I always run my Web browser with Javascript turned off by default, and I frequently come across sites that simply don’t work. To Google and me, these sites are content black holes.
I suggest you take a look at your site the same way Google sees it. Go into your Web browser settings and turn off all of the following:
- Cookies
- Javascript
- Plugins (like Flash)
Furthermore, when you load your site, look in the menu options for something that says No Stylesheet. Now you’re looking at your website exactly the way Google sees it.
Do you see what you expect? Is your content at the top of your page where Google will see it first, or do you have endless rows of navigation features and advertisements?
Of all the SEO problems on this list, this could be the most hidden. It hides in plain sight on the pages you look at every day.
SEO Problems #5—Spamming
Spamming is by far the Internet’s top problem. You hate spammers. I hate spammers. And Google hates spammers—so you’re in big trouble if Google thinks you might be a spammer.
If you focus too much on writing for search engines, and pay no attention to writing for people, you’re likely to run afoul of one of Google’s spam identification algorithms.
We don’t know exactly how Google detects spammers, but we do know that they’re very good at it. One day the spammer ranks first in the search results—the next day they don’t appear in the search results at all.
There are a couple ways your site could be labeled as spam. The first happens when you host actual spam on your site. This most commonly happens when your don’t police your comments, wiki, or forum.
Another common way to be confused with a spammer is by getting hacked. The hackers may leave all of your content in place so you don’t notice the hack while they use Javascript or another tool to host malware on your site. When Google sees malware, it stops directing people to your site.
But the most significant way to get labeled by Google as a spammer is by overdoing your SEO techniques. Put too many keywords into an article, over use words like “free,” or create dummy sites that link to your main site and Google might decide that you aren’t legitimate.
Conclusion
Please do not mention that “content is king” in the comment section..Hello!! I am so sick of people being one eyed about what is needed in this business..There is more than just content needed to rank well and create a successful pumping website.
SEO is also an important factor for a websites success and therefore you need to stay ahead of the game! Checking your website for these five hidden SEO problems shouldn’t take more than five minutes and can significantly improve your ranking.
Website Rankings Dropped Fast – 10 Possible Causes
Awesome Content But Dead Boring Blog Post Titles – 10 Tips To Fix Them
Future Proof Your Website and Lay Awesome Foundations
Tips to Avoid Spam Complaints for your Emails and Newsletters
Yoast WordPress SEO Plugin – Duplicate Site Title
How to Find Dofollow Commentluv Blogs with High Page Rank Internal Pages?
20 Often Forgotten Website Traffic Tips
How I Make Money Online with WordPress Websites
9 SEO Tips to Dominate Google Search Results
Two Years Blogging and No Real Income! 8 Reasons Why
18 Link Building Techniques
mitz: 67 comments
Prakash: 34 comments
Sudipto: 29 comments
raj: 22 comments
Mahendra: 22 comments
Prakash
May 7, 2013 at 12:35 pm
We should avoid these mistakes. These mistakes cost in reduction of traffic. Thanks for this great tips.
(dofollow)
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raj
May 7, 2013 at 10:31 am
hello mitz nice post,
(dofollow)
yes these are some seo mistakes which everyone makes, we should try to avoid these things. duplicate content is a serious issue with many blogs. we should deindex our categories and tags
raj recently posted..Download Hike Messenger Free for iPhone, Android, Symbian and Windows
prabhat
March 4, 2013 at 11:25 am
hello mitz
this is really a serious problem with most of the bloggers. once i was searching for de-indexing tags and categories as i heard that indexing them is also a source of duplicate content and it can affect your SEO. so i de-indexed them and believe me it helped me in getting good ranks on google
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Daniel
December 15, 2012 at 6:10 am
Excellent tips .. got a lots of tips here! keep posting great tips often.. Good job!
Jorge
October 20, 2012 at 4:00 pm
Nice tips, im learning so much about seo in this website, congratulations, this tips tht u explained here are so useful and concrete, not being an spammer if you dont want to fall in search results, not over optimizate your site, and make the link building a natural thing, obviosly make linkbuilding and create valuable articles for the readers, nice tips, thanks for share
Shane Ryans
July 5, 2012 at 4:34 pm
Great tips I am glad someone has written about this, many people who are new to the game don’t understand these.
Shane Ryans recently posted..Why keyword negatives are important
Songs Lyrics
June 20, 2012 at 5:17 am
Good concept of the website and great details about hidden seo problems costing traffic. Thanks for helpful information.
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bloomtools
June 18, 2012 at 7:24 am
thanks for this really useful and important information. These points really are important for increasing the traffic on the website.yes the users would never want to read same things again and again along with finding their relevant and useful information in a title that is irrelevant. and with all this also the search engine updates of google are there. so only unique,fresh and updated content with relevant titles could help to get high traffic to the website.
Mark
May 31, 2012 at 10:06 pm
I would agree Content is not king maybe in 1960 when people where printing newspapers. In today’s time with the internet it would be keyword research, providing engagement and value for your prospects. SEO is King!
Edd
April 11, 2012 at 2:06 am
A great post Mitz, I am generally very diligent regarding my SEO techniques, but I totally missed out on the whole Javascript Ajax thing. I think the next time I will have to be careful that I use such technologies wisely. Thanks for sharing.
(dofollow)
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Bishwajeet
March 31, 2012 at 7:28 pm
Hey , one of the major problem that many people face is copying of posts. If some autobloggers copies your posts then you into some huge problem as Google might assume that you ar ehaving duplicate content
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Prakash
March 23, 2012 at 4:39 pm
these are the things we have to consider while doing seo. very nice tips for seo.
thanks for sharing it………….
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Ben Farinas
March 12, 2012 at 3:35 am
Hi Mitz,
This seems to be my problem. I was getting traffic, but I have a sense something is wrong. I trust my gut!!! It’s never let me down. Other then what you mentioned what could be the problem? I need to get it unclogged. I work with a a theme called Weaver, what could it be?
Thanks,
Ben
zamahsari
February 29, 2012 at 5:23 am
Google really hates duplicate contents. My friend has bad experience related with the auto-generated contents. Basically it is a bit different from duplicate contents but i think it is worse method for the blog can automatically create a page that searchers are looking for. So, there are a bunch of pages automatically indexed on Google’s ranking and grow from time to time. If the method works, the visitors will steadily increase daily and can reach up to 100k visitors in a day. Finally Google found his blog and the likes and remove them from the list.
(dofollow)
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mitz
February 29, 2012 at 7:56 am
I do use auto blogging but only for testing. For example this blog started as an autoblog, believe it or not!! It went for about two weeks and I noticed people were commenting so I took over. I was just testing the niche for me and it came up well.
Mark
February 29, 2012 at 12:40 pm
Auto-blogging?? This sounds very interesting – especially if it can be used for niche testing. Never heard of this before. I’m going to google right now! Is there a post on your site here about this by chance, Mitz? Or someplace good you might know where I can read up on this?
Mark recently posted..Rehabbing a Redwood Swing Set
mitz
February 29, 2012 at 10:07 pm
Well I haven’t seen this anywhere as I actually did this by accident and then kept doing it.. Really works! This methods shows up popular keywords without you doing anything. I use WP robot for this. Not doing this at the moment though as I seriously couldn’t handle another blog now.
Mark
February 8, 2012 at 1:36 am
Hi Mitz -
I started describing this in another thread – but I think it’s more appropriate here…
I put up a new article on my website 3 days ago; there’s a link to it below and above. I’m very proud of this one as I’ve taken so much of the wisdom from your articles and incorporated it all as best I could! (Hey – I know *great* advice when I read it!
) I went to google earlier this morning and when I type in “visualize deck design” I come up right on Page 1 — which is AWESOME!!!
But… Someone else comes up on Page 1 as well. And he looks EXACTLY like me. In essence, this person took my title tag (verbatim) and select keyword rich snippets from my article and created a 2-minute post on his blog… and is essentially diverting traffic away from me, by “replicating” my appearance in search engine results.
I cannot be sure you’ll see the same thing in google as I do, of course, and if I could include a screenshot I would. But…
Q1: Have you ever seen or experienced anything like this before?
Q2: What can I do about this??
Since I started following your guidelines (1/7/12), my traffic is up about 100% (now on 2/7/12). Traffic is clearly the single most important aspect of all of our efforts here, and this will surely set me back. Any thoughts/suggestions would be most appreciated!
Mark recently posted..How To Visualize Deck and Landscape Design Ideas
mitz
February 8, 2012 at 10:41 am
This happens all the time! People see something and copy it…BUT people that do that never succeed like the original. I see you are on page one, position two.. Now you can start building some links to your page using the anchor text variations around that keyword… Also you could include “visualize deck design” in your description meta. When I search in Google the description I see is not making that world stand out. You are missing the word visualize. Maybe you could also make the title with the keyword at the start..(if it is important keyword) like “Visualize deck design using Landscape design software” You might concrete the keyword in better.
Any changes you make now…make a note a what you are doing and if it works then great..If it doesn’t then you can change it back.
Don’t worry about the competition, just do better and be honest about it. Then you will win the traffic. If they other guys page is slapped up the traffic and ranking will not last long.
jan
February 8, 2012 at 12:59 pm
Hi Mark and Mitz
I put up a post on Sunday and one day later a site that had copied it fully, re-spun it so that it made almost no sense because of the poor English sent me a trackback! All of the links in their version now go to their site except for one affiliate link which they missed. The site ranks about 5 1/2 million in the Alexa rankings so I doubt that anybody would ever find it but it really grieves me. The title also has “Jan’s Blog” in it! So not quite as serious as Mark’s problem for sure but still very annoying.
I have been following the SEO advice of Mitz and Ben and all of a sudden my page rank has gone from 0 to 2 so very happy about that – one page is a 3 and I feel pretty sure that is because of SEOPressor as I need to spend a lot more time on SEO – just been doing some article writing for Ezine and CommentLuv and blog commenting but need to do more.
Mark many thanks for your kind offer hopefully we will be able to take you up on it one day!!
jan recently posted..Five Reasons why French women don’t get fat
Mark
February 8, 2012 at 2:00 pm
Okay -
Thanks, Mitz – I feel calmer now. Maybe this is a “tempest in a teapot” if the competing duplicate will only last for a short while. Really disturbing, though, that someone’s key objective is to simply swipe and mimic/replicate search engine results. I guess it’s my “newbie” showing, but what an unethical use of energy! The word “parasite” comes to mind. Thanks for your quick feedback, and for letting me vent too!!
Mark recently posted..How To Visualize Deck and Landscape Design Ideas
mitz
February 8, 2012 at 9:51 pm
I used to worry about this but now I turn a blind eye. They end up disappearing and you are still there.
john
January 24, 2012 at 9:35 pm
i’ve never heard of this issue before i read this blog (SEO Problems #4—Javascript Over-Features
) and when i made a bigger research, i found out that i trully did had some issues with Javascript Over Features. I’m now working on it and hope that by resolving this, google will give me more relevancy and put me higher in SERP.
Thanks for sharing, if it wasn’t for you, i would probably not know about this till now.
John
FletcherG
December 19, 2011 at 6:02 pm
Correcting on page SEO for one website really helps that website to rank well in SERP. But that is a complete mess specially bigger websites with large business it is really hard for them to manage On page SEO factors.
Local business or google places more precisely completely depends upon ON PAGE SEO factors.
Christina
December 16, 2011 at 4:09 pm
I like your point about spamming. I still know lots of people are pushing their sites to high rankings by using some unpleasant techniques for Google. However, they are still taking the risk of short term benefits because they want to get results immediately.
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jules
December 14, 2011 at 7:55 pm
Thank you for sharing this excellent infomation, it has helped quite a bit. Duplicate content is definitely a big no for google now and duplicate domains can cause the same issue aswell.
Thanks
Garden to Go
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Tim
December 13, 2011 at 3:59 am
“Also watch out for sites that steal your content. Google reduces your page rank when you host duplicate content—even if it was original content when you first published it.”
This is simply not true, but gets regurgitated all the time.
Google does not look at the same content on separate sites as duplicate content, they see it as syndicated content and try to determine which is the original. Matt Cuts even stated that it’s always best to have the date and have a link back to yourself withing content so google can find the original source.
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document assembly
December 7, 2011 at 8:24 pm
My friend was having such problems.He was not getting the traffic as he was thinking.I told him about these problems.And i also check the contents,the contents are very poor and the title was totally different form the contents.Then he correct these problems.Now he is having much traffic to his stuff.So it is only because of this informational post.Thanks for this post..
Melvin Trout
December 4, 2011 at 12:11 pm
These tips are great. I didn’t know that www and not using the www had an impact on the SE’s.
Thanks for sharing, going to implement these tips on my websites.
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Aaron
December 2, 2011 at 8:56 am
Hi Mitz,
Great stuff! I have run into the duplicate indexing thing with google and the www thing. It is very confusing and can be difficult to sort out! Thanks again!
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Petre
December 2, 2011 at 6:52 am
I never knew that Google can detect spammers or duplicate content, they really should do something about duplicate content because the search results come back with more and more piles of garbage by each passing day, almost nothing original.
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aakash gupta
November 29, 2011 at 3:28 pm
Very nice post. you are absolutely correct. all these points must be taken care of while doing SEO.
Scott
November 28, 2011 at 11:16 am
Great advice Mitz. The duplicate domain part was very interesting. I never knew that the www extension counted as a separate domain. I’m going to have to check my webmasters account and make sure I have my domain set up right, Thanks for the pointers.
Adeline
November 26, 2011 at 6:31 pm
I never heard about duplicate domain names until now. Thanks for the heads up. I’m going to try to fix this in my Google webmaster tools like you suggested.
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Brandon
November 23, 2011 at 1:46 pm
About the 2 point, I would add a thing. In presence of duplicate content the ranking of sites may be adversely affected or worse the site can be EVEN removed entirely from Google, so it no longer appears among search results. Today more than ever.
Ron
November 16, 2011 at 8:40 pm
Hey Mitz,
I am currently transferring my HTML website to a blog website. I am new to the website building industry. Never knew about the Javascript, I honestly have to say this is my first time hearing about it. Definitely have to check it out. i have a question for you, I’ve been hosting my HTML site for a while now and currently setting up a new blog website. The first one is http://www..net and the other one is http://www..com. Same company name and everything. Would google pick it up and set me back? Should I follow instruction # 3? thanks!
mitz
November 21, 2011 at 10:11 am
Are you saying you have two different sites? Hopefully they do not have the same content on them.
In your case if you have a .com and a .net then these are classed as two different domains..but you will still need to choose if you prefer www or not.
I transferred a HTML site into WordPress and it was extremely hard work but was well worth it!
mitz recently posted..Build a WordPress Website from Scratch (dofollow)
alex
November 16, 2011 at 12:53 am
i don’t make those mistakes, but thanks for pointing them out to us, this way other people won’t fall into them..
i like the way u’re explaining everything, very good article
~alex
mitz
November 16, 2011 at 1:42 pm
Thanks Alex
Kharim
November 10, 2011 at 7:52 am
Lovely tips you have here! I guess I have to do some adjustments while writing posts. Thanks for this post.
I have noticed my search engine traffic has gone up a lot. I checke my Google Analytics and my search engine traffic is my number one source. I’m happy because most search engine traffic is targeted
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mitz
November 21, 2011 at 10:07 am
Hi Kharim
I love free search engine traffic too! Very nice when it is the right traffic too!
mitz recently posted..9 SEO Tips to Dominate Google Search Results (dofollow)
rahul
November 7, 2011 at 2:12 pm
I look forward to reading more of your articles and posts in the future, so I’ve bookmarked your blog. When I see good quality content, I like to share it with others. So I’ve created a backlink to your site. Thank you!…
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mitz
November 7, 2011 at 4:59 pm
WOW thanks Rahul! I really appreciate that!
John Lee
November 6, 2011 at 6:58 am
Good post! Just started my own blog and am learning a lot from your website, thanks!
mitz
November 6, 2011 at 1:15 pm
Nice to have you here John!
malunggay56
November 5, 2011 at 2:04 am
The title is the most important thing to draw traffic to the blog. But many forget to write the keyword the title words in the plural. |
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mitz
November 6, 2011 at 1:37 pm
I always make sure I have a mixture of the keyword, the keyword in plural, and the keyword with other related terms. This makes a great article with the right information in it.
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Andrew
November 4, 2011 at 10:47 pm
Mitz, I know many sites using duplicate content have been hugely impacted by the Google Panda updates. In my book, duplicate content is a ‘no-no’. Andrew
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mitz
November 6, 2011 at 1:38 pm
hi Andrew,
I agree totally, duplicate content is a definite no-no. You might get away with it for a while, but you will get found out and you would have wasted all of that time. Why not just do it right in the first place and build a genuine original website..
mitz recently posted..Elegant Themes Versus Thesis for WordPress (dofollow)
WayneEvans
November 4, 2011 at 9:50 pm
I am totally agree with you, eye catching title get more clicks and its the most important key to jump up traffic to your blog. Content also must be unique because it got the attention of visitors to your blog like i read you blog at ComLUV and it force me to read you. All the points you mentioned are main things on which SEO should be focus to improve there ranking.
I am learning a lot of tips from you.You are doing are fabulous job and i will always look forward for your new post.
mitz
November 6, 2011 at 1:41 pm
Thanks for commenting Wayne.
I am loving the new commentLuv Prem feature where you can tell what title gets clicked on the most. I am learning what people want to see and what attracts them to my website. What a great feature Andy has included!
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Cheolsu
November 3, 2011 at 6:44 pm
The selection for the right title is the keywords and understanding its competition. Sometimes it is also better to create a long title with the main keywords within it.
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mitz
November 6, 2011 at 1:36 pm
I do not mind Long titles as long as they fit into the theme that I’m using. For example if you have teases on the FrontPage, you need to watch how long your titles are.
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rohit kothari
November 3, 2011 at 7:13 am
ya duplicate content is the specially problem and finding the website who is stealing and taking action against is another tuff job if other person steal it from you and create a webmaster application then it will be a problem for our blog
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mitz
November 6, 2011 at 1:42 pm
I hate it when people steal my content. I actually feel sorry for them, because it will get them no where.
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Lennart Heleander
November 3, 2011 at 1:30 am
The title is the most important thing to draw traffic to the blog. But many forget to write the keyword the title words in the plural, they write in sigular. I have read somewhere that 70-80% of all searches on Google are in the plural. Write the title in plural and you get all 100% of the searches on the keyword, both plural and sigular.
mitz
November 3, 2011 at 9:02 am
I usually check in Google keyword tool as I have seen how much difference a little “s” can make on a domain name.
Jacob
November 2, 2011 at 11:57 pm
guess spamming is the the worst case that may happen to a website.
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mitz
November 6, 2011 at 1:35 pm
Hi Jacob
Spamming just simply sucks!
mitz recently posted..10 Point SEO Checklist for New WordPress Webmasters (dofollow)
Arfan
November 1, 2011 at 11:28 pm
To add to your duplicate domain point; you also have to remember if you have the facility http:// and https:// are also seen as two different sites so if you add www as well there could be FOUR versions floating around!
viva la 301′s and canolisation, found out the hard way recently that it cant have a very negative effect on rankings with http and https floating around
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mitz
November 2, 2011 at 8:26 am
Thanks for the extra tips. That one is really helpful and is often overlooked.:)
Jasmin
November 2, 2011 at 7:02 am
I would like to add technical problems to the list. For example I had an issue with the canonical meta-tag, that was implemented in my theme. It wasnt coded correctly and messd up a lot of my rankings on a site of mine. So you really need to make sure you have no big problems on the technical side.
Cheers
Jasmin
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mitz
November 2, 2011 at 8:25 am
hi Jazmine,
I have an issue with the www long time ago and lost some of my page rank. Now when I start a website I always leave off the www so I know that all of my websites do not have it.
Isha Singh
November 1, 2011 at 8:48 pm
Duplicate contents are really a problem for webmasters. there are many factors affecting SEO. but these are really hidden ones which can be checked regularly!
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mitz
November 6, 2011 at 1:34 pm
I agree Isha. Duplicate content is a problem for Webmasters and if you plan to build a great website you need to avoid it like the plague.
mitz recently posted..9 SEO Tips to Dominate Google Search Results (dofollow)
Danny
November 1, 2011 at 8:31 pm
Keep posts like this coming, it’s good to read about things you can do wrong. So I make sure I don’t do them wrong, although my titles definitely suck. But my aim is a little different.
What I have been wondering for a while. The automatically generated tag pages, are they not bad for the sites seo?
I sometimes see my tag page of a certain post try to compete with the post itself.
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mitz
November 1, 2011 at 10:10 pm
Hi Danny
I do not index my tag pages or my categories.. The only things I index are posts and pages…this doesnt mean they do not rank though as I have category pages on some websites at PR 4 and Pr5 depending on what links to them..I guess I could make tag pages rank too but I do not have the time..
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Luis Mendivil
November 1, 2011 at 7:06 pm
I struggle with this side of things and I’m no novice! I’m beginning to understand that there is no free way of attracting visitors, everything these days depends on money and when you haven’t got any and want to earn it, it’s really tough. Yola has been a real asset to me and I have no issues with this invaluable tool. I will surely try to make use i work on all the above factors and make sure everything is poper.
Ravi
November 1, 2011 at 3:24 am
Hi Mitz,
Really helpful tips. While I never put SEO titles before a eye-catching title I didn’t know about the Webmaster features where we can specify the primary URL of our site. Thanks for letting me know this.
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mitz
November 6, 2011 at 1:33 pm
Glad to help Ravi!
mitz recently posted..5 Hidden SEO Problems Costing You Traffic Right Now (dofollow)
Nick
October 31, 2011 at 11:21 pm
Thank you Mitz for all these tips. I’ll try to follow your advise.
The whole SEO thing seams to me very very difficult.
I have a question if I may: I have published a post in my blog 5 days ago, and still there is nowhere on the google (and I don’t mean that is at page 15 or so, I mean there is nowhere; google didn’t put this post in its catalogues). Have I done something wrong, is there anything that I should do instead? Thanks in advance.
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mitz
November 6, 2011 at 1:33 pm
Get backlinks for the new article…Share it on social bookmarking sites… Make sure it is listed in your site map that is submitted to Google… Makes some internal links from other pages on your website.
Otherwise there might be some big competition in that niche. Try writing some how to articles and concentrating on longtail keywords instead of the obvious ones.
When you get your blog noticed for having fresh content and good content, Google will pick up everything that you write.
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Jean
October 31, 2011 at 11:20 pm
Duplicate content is a bigger issue now than ever. It’s something you have to be especially careful about if you outsource your content. Google’s newer algorithms are really good at sniffing out duplicate content and that can really hurt your SEO rankings. Original content is of prime importance now.
-Jean
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mitz
November 1, 2011 at 10:13 pm
I agree Jean…!!!
You can use some duplicated stuff, but better to be rare than a regular occurrence.
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Jeanie
October 31, 2011 at 10:55 pm
All problems on which you paid your attention are really very serious. And the most important of them as I see are weak title and duplicated content. They can influence greatly on everything, I can say this for sure as a reader who doesn’t even pay attention on such articles.
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Bill
October 31, 2011 at 7:36 pm
Come on! Content is the king!!! .. just kidding.
About #4, Some people also use TONS of plugins that use a a lot of javascript and make the page to take ages to load. I started editing wp themes that I use on my sites and removing useless javascript (for example, if I don’t need a featured posts carousel, i take out the javascript part that makes the carousel work.).
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mike
October 31, 2011 at 5:29 am
an interesting read, I always thought the key to SEO was how many links you had on other sites. But recently i learned about on page SEO, and this article really gave me some in depth information so i want to thank you for that.
mitz
November 6, 2011 at 1:27 pm
Yes I wish search engine optimization was that easy!
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Tim
October 31, 2011 at 6:20 am
Thanks for the tips on the two different domain name problems. I need to get that fixed. Losing all types of SEO credit. I definitely agree about duplicate content and writing good quality titles that people want to click on.
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mitz
November 6, 2011 at 1:29 pm
Can you believe that this problem is not mentioned more often?
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klaus
October 31, 2011 at 1:49 am
hey
im from denmark and are new in this bussines and learn a lot from this blog.
thanks for this great seo article. very usefuld for me. i will come back and learn more from you.
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mitz
November 6, 2011 at 1:26 pm
Thanks for visiting Klaus!
Make sure you do come back!
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Duy
October 30, 2011 at 2:05 pm
Another interesting and useful post Mitz
You know what, I didn’t know that “with www” and “without www” sites are two different sites! I thought they were the same as I remembered reading somewhere before lol! Now I know the secret.
Have a nice day!
Duy.
Robert
November 6, 2011 at 6:50 am
I didn’t know that www and without www were thought of as different sites either. Thanks for the info Mitz.
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mitz
November 6, 2011 at 1:28 pm
Not many people do..LOL
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Peter Lawlor
October 30, 2011 at 4:19 am
I respectfully disagree about your SEO Problems #2 Duplicated Content. In my experience, I’ve noticed no adverse SEO consequences republishing posts on article directories and other blogs AFTER it’s been indexed on my site. This is article syndication and it’s perfectly legitimate with respect to SEO. It’s a technique used by many bloggers and webmasters that works well. There’s no need to rewrite or spin articles before submitting indexed articles/posts on article directories.
I also don’t worry about people ripping off my content. If I did, I’d spend the bulk of my time going after people which is a fruitless exercise. I did it for 2 days once and the more I dug, the more copyright infringement I discovered.
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mitz
October 30, 2011 at 8:55 am
I am not too worried about people ripping my content off but when they put my entire authors box there that is very misleading. Also duplicate content can be also covering two subjects the same on your blog…It could be a post with identical meta tags and so on… I have posted stuff from ezine articles and had it ranked well…But my whole blog is not duplicate content.
Do you have websites with entirely no original content? Not even an intro?
Peter Lawlor
October 31, 2011 at 3:53 am
Hi Mitz,
Thanks for your response. No, I don’t have any site with no original content. In fact, every site and every post of mine is unique. With respect to your point about duplicate content on the same site, I entirely agree with you.
In fact, I believe the entire duplicate content discussion, and more importantly, duplicate content as intended by Google, pertains to content on the same site. In other words, duplicate content on the same site is bad; duplicate content among many sites doesn’t matter as long as the original is published on your site and indexed with the search engines before syndicated elsewhere.
Overall I like your SEO post above because you deal with some of the more technical matters of SEO which are not discussed or shared as often as the usual SEO tips.
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Richard Brown
October 30, 2011 at 4:07 am
I realize there is a difference between the http:// and the http://www. versions, however doesn’t most seo plugins fix this problem through the use of canonical tags?
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mitz
October 30, 2011 at 8:50 am
Yes but normal bloggers have no idea.. Not everyone can hire a SEO…They have to learn this themselves.
Lee
October 30, 2011 at 2:25 am
Title tags are very important because this is how Google ranks your site and is what gets the attention of visitors. You will surprised how many more visitors you will get once you switch up your title to be more enticing to visitors. Fresh content is also important and you don’t want to be posting duplicate content on your site. These are some pretty nice tips for seo for the most part.
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mitz
November 6, 2011 at 1:25 pm
Hi Lee
It is really amazing how important the title is! I guess it is the doorway to your content and if people do not open the door they will not see what’s inside.
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jan
October 29, 2011 at 9:53 pm
Also – would a tool such as SEOPresssor tell you if you were over using keywords? It’s still on my “to buy list”!! Sometimes if I am writing about a product, I feel that I use the product word too many times even if I am not using it as one of my targeted key words but as just part of the natural language of the article.
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mitz
October 29, 2011 at 11:16 pm
Yes Seopressor stops you from over doing your keywords..And after a while you will just know as it will be a habit.
jan
October 30, 2011 at 9:42 am
Thanks for the answers Mitz
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jan
October 29, 2011 at 9:48 pm
Food for thought again Mitz. If your site was hacked and malware placed on your site, but your content was left, how would you know? What sort of malware to hackers run?
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mitz
October 29, 2011 at 11:15 pm
Hackers can do all sorts of things…They even like to tag a page saying they have hacked it…If it is really bad your hosting should notify you..Also most internet security programs will not let you visit a site with malware. I saw this when one of my sites got hacked…After this I contacted my hosting and they fixed it…It was my fault though…I neglected the site which left it an easy target.
Robert
October 29, 2011 at 9:33 pm
Thanks for the answer above – may get rid of the Alexa toolbar if this is the case. Can you suggest another more suitable – web traffic toolbar indicator for sites you are visiting.
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mitz
October 29, 2011 at 9:53 pm
Not really… I really do not deal with them when judging a website. Alot of people are using the Mozbar though…I do not like this either…:)
John
October 29, 2011 at 4:49 pm
Hey Mitz,
I was aware of all these SEO problems except your number 4. I’m not sure if my site uses AJAX but I will definitely check my Javascript now after reading this. I agree there is more to ranking well than just content, because you could have great content but if that’s all you focus on nobody will find your content to read it. Thanks for sharing.
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mitz
October 29, 2011 at 10:07 pm
Ha ha John…You picked that one up…I had to say not to comment about “content being king” because people say it like thats all there is….They basically use it for an answer to every question..
Yeah the AJAX one is a tricky one..Most people do not even relize whats really being used on their site.
Raj
October 29, 2011 at 3:43 pm
I have faced the issue of duplicate content when I started one of my first blogs. Many posts wouldn’t get indexed due to it! I found that linking these posts from the posts that are already indexed and submitting an xml sitemap to Google Webmastertools pretty much solves this problem.
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mitz
November 6, 2011 at 1:24 pm
I believe that submitting and XML site map really helps also. It even helps when you have an AdSense site, to get targeted ads.
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Aaron
October 29, 2011 at 3:32 pm
“Duplicate Domain Name” many people don’t aware about it that Google consider www and non-www domain seperate, I too was not aware about it earlier untill I read one of the post from Ana’s TrafficeGenerationCafe blog. After that I took the corrective action so that Google don’t treat my domain as two different domains.
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mitz
November 6, 2011 at 1:23 pm
Yes I am very experienced in this department. Years ago, with my first website I built links to both www and no www. So one or the other was always getting redirected which gave less link juice. I always make sure I set this option when I first start a website and I stick to it.
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Edwin
October 29, 2011 at 2:22 am
Duplicate content is a big no-no in the eyes of Google. Thanks for all the tips
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Robert
October 29, 2011 at 11:02 am
Your first tip is definitely one worth remembering. Mitz – I have a question relating to Alexa – your site is currently ranked 21,555 in the world. My site was ranked 650,000 in the world but in recent weeks has dropped down to 945,000. The issue is that traffic is growing to the site from with recent months haveing over 10,000 pages views yet the Alexa ranks are falling . How can this be the case?
Thanks Robert
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mitz
October 29, 2011 at 4:41 pm
I hate to say this but the Alexa is a load of junk! This site is 21,000 because the people that visit here have the Alexa tool bar and are bloggers… the traffic is around 1500 a day whereas I have blogs with over 10,000 visits a day and only on 39,000. Therefore I do not know why they even bother… I still like to mention the Alexa is 21,000 though as it seems to make an impact on other peoples opinion of your blog…..
If they believe it then why not roll with it..
So your dropping might be a decrease in visitors with the alexa bar…Who knows how they judge it really??? But whatever it is…it is wrong!
Albert
November 4, 2011 at 8:46 pm
Alexa Traffic rank system is well know, but it’s not so good as it appear as it’s overinflated by their toolbar
If you’ve a good number of US visitors,you can also check Quantcast and Compete, that are “alexa clone”
The “good & bad” thing about Alexa is that Advertiser maybe could look to your Alexa ranking and not only your visitor statistic
Corey
October 29, 2011 at 2:26 am
On the topic of duplicate content, we have run into websites who steal blog posts, keep them up for a week, then drop it. Like the article says, we e-mailed them asking them to stop and they actually did. We recommend forming the bait of searching once or twice a week to check if our content is being stolen and haven’t had any trouble in the past few months. Anyway, thanks for the article!
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mitz
October 29, 2011 at 8:21 am
Hi Corey
I have a massive problem with stolen content..People even take the authors box off the site…I just can’t believe they would bother! It makes me so angry.. I have contacted a few people and asked them to take it down and they usually do..anyway one time this guy replied back and said his family is starving and that is why he did it… Anyway I sent him a PLR article pack.. Even when they are desperate grabbing content like this will not get you anywhere. It’s a sad thing and I am only hoping that Google will start to catch on about this..The problem is that when they grab the authors bio too it looks like you are writing for that blog… That’s a bummer!