Sphinn - 6 Common Website Mistakes That Are Costing You Money

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6 Common Website Mistakes That Are Costing You Money

Went Hot: August 15, 2008 - 2:44 pm
Posted By: kevgibbo 323 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://searchengineland.com)
Category: SEO

Great post from Jill Whalen, looking at six common SEO issues which effect a website's performance.

7 Comments

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from Jill 323 days ago #

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Thanks for sphinning kevgibbo! Surprised there is no discussion on this.

Everyone agrees? Disagrees? Don't care?

from Halfdeck 322 days ago #

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Sorry, kinda iffy on this one, was hoping for a surprise somewhere.

I'd say mistake 7 is depending too much on website fixes to lift a site's traffic, especially if a site is new and doesn't have a ton of backlinks, so that the effect of fixes won't be as dramatic as those on larger, more established sites. Not saying ignore it - a website should be reviewed at least once and early (preferably pre-launch, then once monthly after that) - just feel some people are reluctant to move beyond traditional site tweaks to increase visibility because compared to marketing (e.g. creating a compelling link magnet), stuff like tweaking TITLE tags and resolving canonical issues are cheap, quick, and easy.

I had a client that insisnted in pouring 90% of his money and effort on site fixes because his home page TBPR was about equal to his competitor who was outranking him. I guess its tempting to believe just one SEO voodoo move like reducing keyword frequency or moving content below nav in HTML may make miracles happen because that's cheaper than several months of link building, "content" development, blogging, or social networking.

90% of marketing budget should go to creating exceptional hooks and using them to pull eyeballs.

from sipeki 322 days ago #

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I was informed that doing re-direct from other domains counted against you. Is this true is some cases? We have other domains that we no longer use should we have them re-directed to our main site? Taking it further should be submit a sitemap to google?

Simon.

from Halfdeck 322 days ago #

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"I was informed that doing re-direct from other domains counted against you. Is this true is some cases"

It depends on your intent.

See Matt's comment here: http://www.wolf-howl.com/google/hey-matt-cutts-how-about-a-domain-redirection-and-consolidation-post/

"If you buy typos, I’d 301 them to your main site. Even things that you win in UDRP arbitration can be 301′ed. For example, if someone bought porngoogle.com and Google won it in UDRP, it would make sense to 301 it to your main domain.
What I *wouldn’t* recommend is try to register unrelated expired domains in an attempt to get those pre-existing links to count toward your domain. I would also avoid registering-and-301′ing typos of competitors’ domains or other completely unrelated domains."

The main question is are you redirecting to preserve traffic and/or consolidating PageRank across multiple versions of the same site... or are you redirecting as a form of link building?

I would not submit a sitemap of a site that is no longer updating. One reason you want to submit a sitemap to Google is to help them spot brand new pages. If a domain is stale, Google most likely already knows every single URL.

from yojpotter2 322 days ago # - show/hide this comment

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I ahven't really realized that I'm actually some of the mistakes as well..anyways thanks a bunch for sharing!

from sipeki 322 days ago #

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"I was informed that doing re-direct from other domains counted against you. Is this true is some cases"

When domain name changed after we started developing the site, after some keyword research. So we changed the name. So the other domain is dead, and robots.txt is disallow all. Reading :

http://www.wolf-howl.com/google/hey-matt-cutts-how-about-a-domain-redirection-and-consolidation-post/

The domain no longer is use should 301 to live domain.