For the Brisbane Web Design meetup at The Edge on 18th November 2010 Ben gave a short presentation on some key mistakes we see over and over again as we deliver SEO services for clients and website designers (through our White Label SEO service)

1. BRISBANE WEB DESIGN
The Edge 18th Nov
What I learned in 2010
Common SEO Mistakes
by Web Designers
Ben Maden of Matter Solutions
www.mattersolutions.com.au
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2. Basic SEO definition
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the
process of improving the visibility of a web
site in the search engines
Wikipedia
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3. Google Results
Red = Pay per click
Green =
No cost
per click
Easy…
All you need
is money
Hard…
Takes time
and effort
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4. SEO Pyramid
Words
Links
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5. Mistake #1 – Title Tag
<title> ????? </title>
EQUALS
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6. Mistake #1 – Title Tag
• Learned most people use same text on all
pages, OR
• Leave them blank
• Default from a CMS (usually not good)
• Over do it with too much information
ALL WRONG
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7. Mistake #1 – Title Tag
Do it right…
• Focus on a select few words (relevant to the
page content)
• Make them Unique to that page
• LESS is MORE
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8. Mistake #2 - URL
• http://mydomainname.com
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9. Mistake #2 - URL
• http://mydomainname.com
• http://www.mydomainname.com
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10. Mistake #2 - URL
• http://mydomainname.com
• http://www.mydomainname.com
• http://www.mydomainname.com/index.html
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11. Mistake #2 - URL
• http://mydomainname.com
• http://www.mydomainname.com
• http://www.mydomainname.com/index.html
• http://mydomainname.com/index.html
Why is this bad?
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12. Mistake #2 - URL
• Google is clever
• Links are signals (usually beneficial)
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13. Mistake #2 - URL
BROKEN
• 20 Links into a mixture
of the 4 different URLs
• Signals are diluted
• No URL ranks well
FIXED
• 20 Links into one URL
• Concentrated signal
• URL ranks well
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14. Mistake #3 – Text Text Text
• Check your website reads okay without a stylesheet
• Use Lynx if you can – Text only web browser
• Firefox with Web Developer toolbar
– turn off styles, images and javascript
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15. www.mattersolutions.com.au
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16. Mistake #4 – No Links Built
Web Designer classic mistake…
• She adds a footer credit for Kudos (for SEO too?)
• Then doesn’t add any links into the client website
Well, why should she?
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17. Mistake #4 – No Links Built
Benefits for the client…
• Show in Google quickly so at the client ranks for their
name. More Kudos!
• That link would help our web designer
[Directory]  [Client website]  [Web Designer]
Links are signals, they indirectly benefit the web
designer
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