Not obtaining the search traffic you were hoping for? In a new Webmaster facilitate video, Google’s Distinguished Engineer Matt Cutts reveals 3 to 5 of the largest basic SEO mistakes webmasters create, and suggests some ways to boost your web site.
1. Your Website Cannot be Crawled
The biggest mistake, according to Cutts, has a web site that can’t be crawlable – or not having a site at all.
Google uses internet crawlers (a.k.a., bots or GoogleBot) to search out and index websites by following links. If you create your smart content extremely laborious to search out, then Google cannot crawl, index, and rank your content.
To fix this, Cutts advises surfboarding around your web site to make certain you’ll reach the pages on your site by clicking on regular links, ideally in a very text browser (to try this, from Google’s search results, click on Google’s cache of your page/site, then click the “Text-only version” link).
2. You Aren’t Gathering Words People Search For
Do your pages use the words folks search for? If not, users will not be able to notice your web site.
For example, Cutts same if you’ve got a page regarding Mount Everest’s elevation, you would not simply place the words “Mount everest elevation” – you’d need to use words like “how high is Mount Everest” as a result of folks square measure aiming to sort that into the search box. Or, a restaurant web site ought to include its menu in plain text, not simply a PDF, and include its business hours.
The solution: include the proper words on the page, Cutts said. Describe what you are doing or include the keywords folks explore for.
3. Using an Excessive Amount of Time on Link Building
Are you too targeted on link building, and not enough on creating compelling content and promoting your site?
I wouldn’t put too much of a tunnel vision focus on just links, I would try to think instead about what I can do to market my website to make it more well known within my community, or more broadly, without only thinking about search engines.
– Google’s Distinguished Engineer Matt Cutts
Rather than thinking of your job as building links for search engines, Cutts said you must specialize in creating one thing compelling – a reason individuals can really need to use your web site – then trust the broader promoting (e.g., talking to newspaper reporters, billboards, paying for advertising, guerilla promoting, reaching dead set individuals within the community).
4. Your Web Site has Bad Titles and Descriptions
Pay close attention to your titles and descriptions, particularly on your home page or high traffic pages, Cutts said.
Is your page title “Untitled” or something that, if a user bookmarked, would build it troublesome to seek out later?
Your description (which sometimes seems because the snipping to a lower place the link to your website in search results) ought to provoke folks to click on your results by property searchers understand that your site provides a solution to their question or could be a sensible resource.
Cutts also instructed that you simply might run tests to experiment with totally different meta descriptions on high traffic pages to examine if it leads to additional visits.
5. You Aren’t Using Webmaster Resources
There are plenty of resources to assist your web site be found. Use them, Cutts said.
In addition to providing Webmaster Tools, Google provides resources as well as articles, forums, blogs, and videos. Googlers additionally attend search conferences and see folks on-line. And you ought to use tools from alternative search engines like Bing and Blekko.
Summary
Making your web site crawlable, as well as the proper words on your pages, making compelling content (and promoting it), up your titles and descriptions, and creating use of the free internet sources are simply 5 basic ways that you’ll be able to improve your SEO and user expertise, consistent with Cutts.