Matt Cutts Discusses Top 5 SEO Mistakes - Must Read...

Many times we're focusing on ways to build our SEO rankings in Google. There are so many ways to build links to your website with new tools, white hat and black-hat techniques. Some ways are better than others but you need to make sure that you keep focused on your objective. I decided to find out what are the biggest SEO mistakes that people are making in this day and age. I found a great video by Matt Cutts where he explains the mistakes in order from most-to-least important. I wanted to put this post together for you so all of you are well aware of the KEY SEO mistakes as provided by Matt Cutts...

1. Site Cannot Be Crawled

This is the most common error because how do you expect for your site to get indexed if Google cannot connect to it. First, Google crawl's pages and sites by navigating from page to page which means that any other external sites that links to your site will also be indexed as having a link toy our website. Many people are not aware of a page cannot be accessed which is why there page or keywords have not been indexed.

Solution:

Start by setting up an account on Google Webmaster Tools
Next, if you haven't added your site, it's time to do by clicking "Add Site" then type in URL and verify. There are 4 options to verify that you are the owner of the website:

• Through domain provider like GoDaddy, HostGator, etc
• Add Meta Tag to your home page
• Add Google Analytics code to your site
• Upload an HTML file through FTP to your server

Once your site has been added you'll see it in the dashboard. Click the site you would like to check and on the left you'll see a tab for "Crawl" and then proceed to "Crawl Errors"

Here you'll see any errors Google has encountered when trying to access your website. If there is an error then just copy and paste it into Google to find ways that you can fix the error going forward.

2. Not Including The Right Keywords

We all know that keywords are very important so Google knows what your content is about. Going to broad can be a huge mistake. Matt Cutts often sees people use the phrase "Mount Everest Elevation" and then write content around this keyword. The problem is that many people don't type in that phrase when searching for "Mount Everest Elevation" because you would have noticed that people usually type in "How High is Mount Everest" when searching from the exact elevation. Use the Google Keyword Tool to find keywords that people are actually typing in then write content around those keywords. You'd be surprised what you'll notice about peoples search patterns. What might be a phrease you type in is not what others do.

Solution:

Write content using the right keywords which people actually type in. Search for words with volume and low competition. Using keyword out of the ordinary with search volume can help you drive traffic and reduce overall competition for rankings.

3. Lack of Compelling Content:

I've always said that "content is king" and many of you would agree with that statement but I'm surprised at how many people still don't write content that resonates with people. Google has made it no secret that they are shifting their focus to compelling high quality content and how people interact with your page. They have over 200 ranking factors and high quality content which engages readers going viral on social networks is a great way to build momentum. If your writing content on "link building" imagine that no one has ever written on that topic and you've been put in charge of creating the only piece of content.

When you're done ask yourself how can you make this content even better. Add visual aids, videos and inforgraphics. I wrote a great post on link building techniques focusing on input from 14 experts. Many of them said that you have to write content that people want to link to. If you write high quality content, people automatically will link to it which will boost your rankings.

The problem is that people don't write solid content and recycle the same old stuff. Then they get no rankings resorting to black-hat techniques to build links getting banned, etc.

4. Poor Title & Description of Important Pages

I just discussed how keywords are important in your content but let's discuss how important they are for your important pages. Adding keyword in your title and description on your most important pages is a definite must. Why? Simple, These are the words that will show up in the search results. When someone searches any phrase within Google, the SERP's will list the results showing the "title" and "description" tags...here the illustration...



This is what will increase the chances of getting skimmed past or someone actually clicking to your website improving your click through rate. You need to make sure that you add the words that people are searching so do the keyword research finding relevant words with search volume adding these same words within your title and description tags. You know people are searching for them so these words are an instant attraction to the human eye.

There has been much debate over how important the title and description tags are in SEO so I went searching for what Google is said...

Google's generation of page titles and descriptions (or "snippets") is completely automated and takes into account both the content of a page as well as references to it that appear on the web. The goal of the snippet and title is to best represent and describe each result and explain how it relates to the user's query."

Solution:

Go and edit the most important pages on your blog adding the exact keyword to the "title" and "description". Use words that are solution based and that would tell the reader that they will find exactly what they are searching for within your content. These are the same words that should be included within your content and title,description.

5. Lack of Experimentation with other Tools

Google Webmaster Tools is an awesome FREE tool for bloggers and web developers however Matt Cutts himself stated that there are many other awesome tools that provide you an all in one solution. The web is all about finding what works so many people may want to go searching for other resources. For example, there are bloggers who have dedicated their lives to providing FREE SEO link building techniques some have gone as far as providing video tutorials and case studies. In the end of the day, Google is a company who is secretive about a lot when it comes to SEO so why not go searching for people who built a living doing SEO from the ground up.
Over the years I have found many bloggers who do case studies showing people exactly what works saving other time and money in the process. These bloggers are making huge amounts of money and invest it back into their blogs to provide their readers always something special. The key is to not spread yourself too thin and explore the internet because you'll be surprised what you find online.

If you do a simple "top seo blogs" or "top affiliate marketers", you'll find more than enough awesome blogs that you can check out. For tools, do a search for "FREE webmaster tools" or "top webmaster tool". Some will offer you a FREE trail and some won't but at least you got a chance to check out some other tools before sticking to one over the other.

Final Thoughts:

I hope you enjoyed this post. This is probably my first actually thread so please provide some feedback. I know that many people try different things in SEO however I just want to make sure no one does the wrong things.