Simple and Common SEO Mistakes Part Three

Well I hope that you have all enjoyed this series of little posts on some of the simple and common SEO mistakes that we come across on a daily basis throughout the course of our work, this is going to be the third and final part in this particular series so I just want to recap quickly what we discussed in the other two posts.

In post one we discussed the relevance and importance of aspects dealing with keywords and content and you can read the full details of part one here Common and Simple SEO Mistakes Part One. Following on from this we discussed Analytics and Conversion with what is almost certainly one of the most important aspects Page Titles with a bit of discussion on meta descriptions and once again if you haven’t already then please read the full post here Common and Simple SEO Mistakes Part Two.

So to continue with our theme we are going to discuss some of the issues we come across with anchor text. How many times have you been reading something in either a blog like this or on a webpage in general and seen the following as links in the text:

• Click here
• Here
• click on the link

Go on put your hand up if you have seen that at least once, bet you have all raised your hands, and I am fairly certain that 99% of you will have seen it more than once. Obviously they will serve their purpose as a link through to the relevant page you were discussing or reading about, however from an SEO standpoint generic anchor text like this is a total waste, its nearly as much a schoolboy error as leaving the page title of your Homepage as just that ‘Homepage’.

And I know right now that there are people going ‘well its a call to action and everyone says how important they are’ and to a degree they would be right, and using this as a call to action may well increase your clicks. But, what it won’t do is allow you to take advantage of optimising your anchor text and tailoring it to be a laser targeted component of your SEO campaign.

Lets give an example, one of the core elements of our business is e-commerce seo and so it would make sense that this is a keyterm that we would wish to rank for, we have got all of the other elements on our blog post correct, Page Title, Meta Description, H1 heading all with the relevant keyword in them. We have written some fabulous content all about the subject matter of ecommerce seo and right at the end we want to let you know more about our ecommerce services and we end the post with ‘to find out more about our ecommerce seo services click here.

What we should have written is something more like this ‘If you would like to learn more about our ecommerce seo services, visit our webpage for ecommerce seo. You get the idea.

Another common mistake we see made is using the same anchor text for all of your links, yes as we have just discussed optimising your anchor text is important its not a good idea to use the same anchor text for every link to a page. Mix it up a little, use some variations on the key phrase or even a url to make it look more natural to your readers as well as the search engines.

The final mistake we see is businesses hosting websites on the wrong provider. It is important for businesses to conduct in-depth research to find out which platform will serve their products and services the best.

For example, if your business is service-based, WordPress may be the best fit. However, if you sell products, Shopify may provide the best experience for your customers.

All providers have different costs depending on their customisation, flexibility and adaptability possibilities. However, what if you are creating a website for fun or for a short time? Whoishostingthis.com has compiled a list of providers where you can host your website for free, based on speed, stability and lack of advertising.