Bad SEO Practices That Will Destroy Your Google Rankings

Bad SEO is not something new or something uncommon and yes it can really destroy your Google rankings. In this article I will explain what bad SEO is and what I consider to be the top 10 practices that can negatively impact your rankings.

What is bad SEO?

Practices that are unethical, outdated or are outside the boundaries of Google webmaster guidelines are considered as BAD, thus the term ‘bad SEO’. While SEO is about optimizing your website for search engines, bad SEO can generate the opposite results.

So, which are these techniques that can hurt your rankings and most importantly what you should do to avoid them.

#1 Duplicate Content

Last week I wrote a post about writing SEO friendly content and the first tip was to make sure that your content is unique and original. In the case of bad SEO, you need to avoid publishing duplicate content on your website.

Non-unique content is not good for SEO. The main reason is that if search engines already have the same content in their index, there is absolutely no reason to index your web page since it has nothing new to offer.

If you need to have some duplicate content on your website because it is useful for your readers or because of the nature of your business, you should “no index and no follow” those pages so that they do not have a negative impact on your SEO.

#2 Keyword Stuffing

Repeating the same keywords over and over again not because they are useful in the text but because you are supposed to optimize your copy, is a very bad SEO practice.

Not only it will discourage your visitors from interacting or reading the content but it is also a signal for search engines that you are trying to manipulate (trick) their algorithms.

Mentioning your keywords in the title, description, opening paragraph and a couple of more times naturally in the text is enough.

#3 Guest posting for links

Last year a lot of people insisted that a secure way to get back links to your website was through guest posting. While guest posting can be a great way to do that, if done cheaply and wrongly, can damage your rankings.

You can get post on high quality websites related to your niche not for the purpose of a getting a link but for more exposure and recognition.

Read this article I wrote last year on guest post for links for a more in-depth analysis on what is a good link from guest posting.

#4 Accepting low quality guest posts

You can feature new writers on your website and publish content written by others provided that it is original, relevant and useful for your audience. If the above rules are not met, then it’s better not to publish anything at all.

Publishing new content on a regular basis is a good SEO practice but it is also important to keep a balance between content produced from the website and content offered to the website in exchange for a link in the author bio.

#5 Cloaking / Invisible Text

Cloaking (hiding the real destination of a link) and showing different versions of a page to crawlers and users was a common practice in the past but not anymore. Using such techniques now is actually a very bad practice.

You should only keep one version of a page for both search engine crawlers and users and ensure that users can differentiate between website content and ads.

#6 Too many ads above the fold

Yes, that’s bad SEO since Google punishes websites that have many ads above the part of a page that is visible without scrolling (above the fold).

If you suddenly saw a decrease in traffic then you should check if you were affected by the page layout algorithm.

#7 Paid links (of all kinds)

Building a successful website or blog takes time and needs a lot of patience and hard work to create the content and get those valuable natural backlinks. If instead of doing that you prefer to take shortcuts, you may see temporary success at the beginning and soon enough huge failure.

Buying links for any kind it a bad practice and something that Google will find out (sooner or later) and most probably you will end up losing your rankings and will need to try even harder to achieve something good online.

#8 Not using Google Webmaster Tools

Google developed the webmaster tools in order to establish better communication with webmasters. There is a ton of information you can get about your website and a lot of tools to help you understand how to improve your SEO and rankings in Google.

You can check for things like bad links, crawl errors, duplicate titles and descriptions and much more.

#9 Having a lot of outgoing links

It’s not only the incoming links that can damage your website but also the outgoing links. Websites that have a lot of outgoing links without using the ‘nofollow’ tag can be considered as link farms or paid directories.

In general you should ‘nofollow’ any links in ads, comments and websites that you don’t trust fully.

#10 Slow or unavailable websites

Your website should load in less than 4-5 seconds and should be available 24/7 all the time. Anything that does not comply with the above rules, it’s considered by me as bad SEO practice.

A good hosting provider is very important for having 24/7 availability and a modern software (like WordPress) can help you build fast websites that load within the accepted range.

Conclusion

What is more important for website success these days is to follow good SEO practices that are ethical, based on Google standards and up to date with the latest developments of ranking algorithms.

Practices of the past such as keyword stuffing, cloaking, massive link building and banner stuffing are a thing of the past and should definitely be avoided.

AdWords vs SEO – Which is Best For Your Marketing

Adwords and SEO are the main components of Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and are among your most valuable tools when running digital marketing campaigns.

They have differences and similarities and there are situations that you should use them together or separately depending on your business and marketing goals.

What is Google AdWords?

If you are new to digital marketing, you may have heard people talking about PPC, Adwords, and terms like CPC, bids, and campaigns without knowing what these buzzwords mean.

Don’t worry, the purpose of this post is to clear things out. Let’s get started.

Google Adwords (now known as Google Ads) is an advertising platform owned by Google.

Advertisers can use this platform to position their ads in the Google Search Result Pages, Google Products (YouTube, Gmail, etc) and to thousands of other websites that participate in the AdWords program as publishers (that’s Google Adsense).

As an advertiser, you can choose to pay when someone clicks on your ad (Cost Per Click or CPC) or when people see your ad (CPM or Cost per Thousands of Impressions).

The whole Adwords system works like a big auction where advertisers compete for available advertising places.

What is SEO?

Search Engine Optimization or SEO has to do with getting better rankings in the search engine results pages of Google, Yahoo, Bing, and other major search engines.

In order to achieve that, you need to make sure that your website is search engine friendly.

A search engine friendly website can be ‘read’ easily by search engines and used with ease by users.

You can read my SEO tips for the most important configurations you need to apply to your website to make it search engine friendly but the general idea is to have a fast and functional website with unique content that offers a good experience to the end-user.

AdWords VS SEO

Now that you have a general idea of what is AdWords and SEO let’s see how they compare:

• Adwords is for Google sites and websites that use Google Adsense while SEO best practices,  are applicable for all search engines.
• Adwords traffic is paid while organic traffic is free
• Adwords ads appear on the top and bottom of Google Search Results and under certain conditions you can get one of those ad positions, but with SEO you have to work much harder to get one of the top positions in the organic search results.
• Adwords is more immediate than SEO since you can create advertising campaigns almost instantly and start getting targeted traffic while with SEO you need a lot more time (especially for new websites) to get good rankings and traffic.
• With Adwords is easier to calculate the ROI while with SEO is more difficult because there are a lot more factors that play a role and not just ad spending and revenue.
• When you stop your AdWords campaigns traffic also stops but once you start getting organic traffic with SEO, this will continue long term.
• With Adwords, you can target many keywords at the same time while with SEO you need to focus on a few keywords for best results.
• With Adwords, you can advertise on other Google websites and websites that use Google Adsense but the results from SEO are only for the search results pages.

You can also read my previous article: What is the difference between SEO and PPC for more examples of how these two tools differ.

Which is the best for your Marketing?

New companies can start with AdWords

When we started out as a pure SEO agency, the main goal in our internet marketing campaigns was to help our customers get traffic from Search Engines through SEO.

This is still our major goal today but through the years and from our experience working with clients in different niches we realized that business owners sometimes need results faster and more immediate and this is where Adwords comes into play.

The biggest advantage of Adwords over SEO is that it can generate results faster.

You will have to pay for each of the visits you get from Adwords but if your campaigns are profitable you can justify the investment in PPC and meet your business objectives.

Adwords is ideal for startups and new companies that want to get targeted traffic quickly for the purpose of making sales, finding new customers or even for testing their products, procedures, website effectiveness and any other component in their sales or marketing processes.

The above is true if you use AdWords wisely and carefully. It is very easy to start spending money on AdWords and if you don’t have proper monitoring and control tools you will end up making losses instead of profits.

What I always tell my clients about Adwords is that if you don’t use it correctly it will be like playing in a Casino where you spend money with the wishful thinking that sometimes you will get it back, but you never do!

So, while the system is easy to use (so that you spend more), if you don’t have the knowledge and experience to run Adword Campaigns, save your money and hire professional companies (preferably Adwords Partners) to do it for you.

This is the best approach so that you don’t lose money but benefit from the use of Adwords.

Don’t forget about SEO

While is a good idea to start with Adwords because it’s faster, you should also begin working with SEO, Content marketing and social media for best results. These 3 tools are all you need for long term online success.

Content marketing will help you create the right content, SEO will help you optimize your content for search engines and get more organic traffic and social media will promote your SEO optimized content to a wider audience.

Should I use Adwords and SEO at the same time?

Some people argue that when you get SEO traffic you don’t need to use AdWords but this is a wrong approach.

Even if you have good rankings, you can still use Adwords and get more exposure for the same keywords that you get SEO traffic.

You can measure the performance of your Adwords campaigns and if they are profitable you can even increase your budgets for a higher ROI.

So, which is the best to use for marketing, SEO or Adwords?

The answer is straightforward, both. Use Adwords to start getting traffic and in parallel work on your SEO, content marketing plan and social media campaigns so that you get organic traffic and visits from social networks.

Conclusion

Adwords and SEO are not competitors but they are two powerful tools available in your digital marketing arsenal.

You can use Adwords when you want traffic fast but you need SEO for a long term and sustainable online success.

PPC Tips for Beginners to Adwords

For beginners to Adwords, the 7 PPC tips presented below can help you avoid making mistakes but also achieve a better return from your investment.

PPC: is it just a waste of money?

Many beginners to PPC and Adwords get to the conclusion that PPC is a waste of money and they stop using it because they are spending money without a return. Before getting into the PPC tips part and since this article is mainly for newbies to PPC, I thought it’s better to state that PPC is not a waste of money; on the contrary is a fast way to get customers and make sales online which tends to converts better than any other tool (with the exception of SEO).

So, if you are using PPC but not making any money, don’t give up but try to get educated on how to optimize your campaigns for a better ROI. The following ppc tips will certainly guide you in the right direction.

#1 – Take a moment to think about your account structure

Many beginners to AdWords tend to create one campaign and one ad group and throw everything in there. That’s not a good practice and while it’s not easy to explain everything in this post, your AdWords account should mimic your website’s structure.

This means that if you have 4 product categories then in your account you can have 1 campaign with 4 ad groups (one for each product). Furthermore if you target more than one countries and languages i.e. English and Spanish, you need to have 2 campaigns one for each language.

If you are like most people that have everything in one ad group then either hire a professional to setup  the campaigns in a more efficient way or take a look again at the guidelines provided by the AdWords team.

#2 – The home page of your website doesn’t have to be your landing page for all ads

When creating an AdWords ad you are asked to provide the URL people will visit once they click on the ad. Most people enter the home page of their websites but this is not necessarily correct. In fact it is more appropriate to redirect users to a page that has more information about the products/services advertised in the ads.

For example if you are selling engagement rings then you should redirect users to the engagement rings page of your website that has the different types of rings you sell and not the home page that has a list of all the products you are selling.

#3 – Don’t forget about mobile ads

I mentioned in my ecommerce tips article that as a seller you should not forget about mobile even if you are not expecting to make any sales directly from mobile devices. The same is true for advertisers.

You should have ads targeted to mobile devices, with a reduction in the bid compared to desktop even if you are not expecting to make sales from mobile. The reason is simple, it is statistically proven that a lot of people start their search for products and services on their mobile and then continue to desktops.

#4 – Use Ad Extensions to increase your CTR

Ad extensions make your ads more clickable by adding more items in the ad copy like direct links to your site’s product pages or contact us page or adding an extra line highlighting your best advantages and many more.

Ad Extensions are easy to setup and can make a big difference in your CTR. Visit the ad extensions page for more details on how to implement them.

#5 – Grow your campaign if it’s profitable

That’s a very basic tip but you should only grow your campaigns if they are profitable. PPC in general is an easy way to spend a lot of money without realizing it so it is important to track the performance of your campaign and add more funds and budget only if you are making profit.

If you are not making any profits then your first action is to optimize your campaign and make it profitable and then spend more money.

#6 – Enable Conversion tracking with values

This is related to the above and what is important is to have conversion tracking in your campaign not only for the purposes of tracking the number of conversions but also the conversion value. This is sometimes a bit tricky to setup but it will certainly help you identify if a campaign is profitable or not.

If you have difficulties setting up conversion tracking with conversion value, you can always hire someone from odesk to for a very low cost to do it for you.

#7 Have numbers in your ads

By numbers I don’t mean any random numbers but offers, prices and discounts. Ads that highlight special offers by giving exact number ie. ‘45% off retail prices’ or ‘hosting packages from $9.99’ perform better than ads without any references to numbers.

What else is missing from the list of PPC tips for beginners to AdWords?

Digital Marketing Tips for Online Marketing Success

 The 20 digital marketing tips outlined below will dramatically increase your chances of succeeding online.

The list is by no means complete but it’s a good starting point for beginners to digital marketing.

What is Digital Marketing?

Before digging right into the online marketing tips, let me first explain what is digital marketing for those that are new to this term.

Digital marketing is a broad term that includes all marketing channels and methods you can use to promote products or services on the Internet but also on electronic devices such as TVs, mobile phones, and electronic billboards.

Online marketing has a number of pillars but the most important are:

• Website marketing
• Search engine marketing (SEM)
• Social media marketing
• Content marketing
• Email marketing
• Mobile marketing
• Banner advertising

Digital Marketing Tips

20 highly practical digital marketing tips for small businesses.

• Use your own domain
• Use VPS hosting
• Create a professional website
• Make your website load as fast as possible
• Spend time on SEO
• Spend money on PPC
• Don’t forget about Bing Ads
• Start with a low advertising budget and grow profitable
• Build your presence social networks related to your business
• Don’t over-promote your business and services
• Use paid advertising
• Publish good and original content
• Create a content calendar
• Promote your content
• Use email marketing
• Build an email list from the beginning
• Make sure your website is mobile-friendly
• Don’t forget mobile apps
• Buy advertising space
• Keep improving your digital marketing campaigns

As you can see from the image above, each component of digital marketing is a huge chapter on its own.

Nevertheless, I will try below to summarize the most important digital marketing tips for each component so that you increase your chances of successful online marketing.

Website Marketing Tips

1. Use your own domain

Buy a domain name that is relevant for your business and use it to build your brand. The recommended extension is a .com or .net. Keep the domain name short (max 3 words) and avoid having spaces.

Before you register a domain name, search for the name on Google and make sure that no other business exists with a similar domain. If there is, try to find something unique because otherwise, it will be very difficult to promote your brand and rank high for related searches.

2. Use VPS hosting

Website hosting plays an important role in the success of your website. Your website should be hosted on a fast and secure server. Avoid using shared hosting solutions. They may be cheaper but having your website hosted with a bunch of other websites is dangerous.

On a shared hosting environment, you share the same IP address with other sites and if they are involved in spammy actions, it will have a negative impact on your website as well.

Spending $20-$40 a month for your own virtual private server is not that much compared to the benefits you get. Choose an SEO friendly web hosting company and make sure that your website is secure with a valid SSL certificate and the software is up-to-date.

3. Create a professional website

When you start a website, spend some time thinking about your site structure and functionality. A professional website is not characterized by its ‘looks’ but with how easy it is to use on all devices.

Identify the purpose of having a website and make sure that this is reflected in the design. Don’t forget that a website represents your brand and it should be something you’re proud of.

4. Make your website load as fast as possible

Page Speed is an important usability and ranking factor. Try to make your website as fast as possible by avoiding unnecessary graphics or other cosmetic elements. Test your website speed using the Google PageSpeed Insights tool and follow their recommendations.

Resources to Learn More about Website Marketing

• Website Marketing – The Complete Strategy Guide.

Search Engine Marketing Tips

5. Spend time on SEO

SEO is not a once-off process but something that you have to do as an ongoing process. If you are not sure how to do it, go through an SEO certification. It’s the best way to learn SEO and optimize your website.

SEO will help your website get found on Google for related searches. Online businesses that can do SEO successfully, are more likely to grow and withstand the pressure from other online competitors.

Resources to Learn More About SEO

• How to become an SEO Expert – The steps to follow to learn SEO and become an expert.
• SEO Checklist – A comprehensive SEO checklist that covers all areas of SEO.

6. Spend money on PPC

Pay per click platforms (think Google Ads) are great because they can generate targeted traffic to your website fast.

If you are serious about your digital marketing, PPC should be part of your monthly budget.

7. Don’t forget Bing Ads

Google Ads is the most popular platform for PPC advertising but there are also other platforms like Bing ads that can get you good results with less budget.

Bing is the second most popular search engine and something worth testing as part of your overall online marketing strategy.

8. Start with a low advertising budget and grow profitable

Once you start with PPC, don’t put all your money from the beginning but start slow, optimize your campaigns, and make them profitable and then increase your budgets.

A common mistake made by many digital marketing specialists is to spend all their budget on campaigns without first testing the waters with one or more pilot campaigns.

Social Media Marketing Tips

9. Build your presence in social networks related to your business

There are a lot of social networks available and you don’t have to use them all. Select the ones that are related to your business and potential customers and concentrate on those.

The table below shows the demographics of each network and you can use this as your guide.

Social Media Platforms Demographics.

10. Don’t over-promote your business and services

Social media networks are not about business but it’s about people, so make sure that you don’t over-promote your business or services but instead try to make your pages useful with content that may interest your readers.

11. Use paid advertising

Getting social media followers for your business it’s harder than you think. People like to follow other people and interesting pages and not ‘business’ pages that try to sell them something.

So, the easiest way for you to get your business page in front of a lot of people and increase your chances of getting new followers is to use advertising.

Facebook has an advertising platform for businesses that allows you to run different types of campaigns and target a specific audience based on their Facebook activity, location, device, and demographic information.

Content Marketing Tips

12. Publish good and original content

Digital marketing is about content, whether this is text, images, videos, or audio you need good and original content for your website and social media pages. Without a content marketing plan is like walking with your eyes and ears closed.

What is good content for a digital marketing campaign?

• It’s content that users want to read either because it satisfies their intent or because they find it interesting.
• It’s content that is unique, thorough, and well-researched.

13. Create a content calendar

There is a huge competition on anything you plan to do online so you have to be ready to perform better than the competition by publishing better and more content than they do.

It’s not exactly a quantities came (quality is still more important) but it does play an important role.

14. Promote your content

Publishing good content is very important but it’s also important to promote your content and bring it in front of the eyes of the right people (these are the people that are likely to become your potential customers and also more likely to re-share your content).

Resources to Learn More About Content Marketing

• Content Ideas – How to find topic ideas for your content marketing campaigns
• Content Marketing Courses – a list of courses dedicated to content marketing techniques and strategies.

Email Marketing Tips

15. Use email marketing

Email still converts better than other sources – Despite the dominance of social networks, email still performs better than most of the digital marketing channels. A targeted email list is likely to generate more profit than a targeted social media campaign.

16. Build an email list from the beginning

If you are starting now make sure that an email list is part of your plans. Give incentives to people to give you their emails and make sure that you don’t spam them but send them information that is useful to them.

Resources to Learn More About Email Marketing

• What is email marketing? An introduction to email marketing for beginners. Explains in a simple language how email marketing works.

Mobile Marketing Tips

17. Make sure your website is mobile-friendly

Although you don’t have to make your website responsive, a responsive website has more advantages than having a mobile and a desktop version. It is actually recommended by Google as the best approach to mobile websites and it is also a hot trend in the digital marketing industry.

The first step is to test your website using the mobile-friendly tool and fix any issues.

18. Don’t forget mobile apps

Besides having a mobile-friendly website, do not forget that your users and potential customers are searching and downloading apps (like crazy) from Google Play, Apple Store, and Amazon. If you want to be found in those stores, you need to develop and submit your own native apps.

Banner Advertising Tips

19. Buy advertising space

While PPC is the easiest and most effective way to reach customers, sometimes it is just better to find a website that has the traffic you want and contact them to buy advertising space. This way you keep the middle man out and this makes both you and the publisher happy.

20. Keep improving your digital marketing campaigns

Digital Marketing does not have a start and end date. Your efforts should be continuous and the opportunities are endless.

A PPC or social media campaign may have a start and end date but your digital marketing efforts don’t. The opportunities for promoting your business online are endless and the above 20 digital marketing tips are just a very quick summary of what you can do in each area.

The best way to get a complete picture of how to use digital marketing to the fullest is to enroll in a digital marketing course. Good courses will guide you step-by-step on how to take advantage of all online marketing techniques and practices to grow your business.

What else can you add to the list? What do you think are the most important digital marketing tips that a beginner should know about?

Tips for a Successful Social Media Campaign

 What is a successful social media campaign and how do you ensure that the money spend on social media generate a high return on investment (ROI).

What is a successful social media campaign?

When you run campaigns on social media the first thing you should do, even before setting up the campaigns, is to set your targets and conditions.

By targets and conditions I mean to identify what you want to achieve from your campaigns (goals), how to measure the ROI and what you consider to be a successful campaign or not.

To give you some examples, a successful social media campaign can be one that will:

• Create more followers
• Create more shares
• Create more likes, pins, +1s
• Create more traffic to a website
• Create more conversions

Your goals depend on your business and marketing objectives (increase brand awareness, make more sales, increase customer royalty etc.) but in general they should fall into one of the above categories.

7 Social Media Campaign Tips

Despite of what you want to achieve from social media, there are some guidelines or tips you can follow to increase your chances of running a successful social media campaign.

1. Run a Pilot Campaign first
2. Make your campaigns targeted and not general
3. Don’t forget about the ‘Call to Action’
4. Track the results
5. People don’t want to see your ads
6. Know when to stop
7. Follow up on what people say about your campaign

1. Run a Pilot Campaign first

Before you start with your main campaign, it is better to fist run a pilot campaign for a couple of days or a week to test different ads, targeting options and messages so that when you run the main campaign it is more optimized.

For example, if you plan on running a campaign on Facebook for a month, you can first run a pilot campaign for a week testing 2-3 images for the ads and different targeting options and at the end of the week you start your main campaign with the winners (ads with the best CTR).

2. Make your campaigns targeted and not general

Social media networks have a lot of information about users and that includes demographics, interests, likes and dislikes and many more.

When running campaigns on social media take advantage of all these data and make your campaigns targeted to specific groups of people (based on either demographics or interests) and you will get better results, lower cost and a higher ROI.

3. Don’t forget about the ‘Call to Action’

When running a campaign on Facebook or Twitter it’s easy to get carried out and forget about the ‘call to action’.

In simple terms, this is the part where you will ask users to do something i.e. visit your website, register to your newsletter, view your products or services.

In each and every ad or promoted post (or tweet) make sure that there is a clear indication of what users should do when they see your ads.

Here is a very nice example from Fiverr on Facebook.

Call to Action on Social Media Ads

4. Track the results

It may sound obvious but this is probably the number one mistake that people make when they setup social media campaigns.

It is true that that all networks will give you statistics about your campaign (numbers of views, clicks on your ad, costs etc.) but you also need to setup your Google analytic goals and conversion tracking to know which of the users performed an action that is important to you.

The statistics are fine but you need more data to determine if the campaign was a success or a failure.

For example, when you run a Facebook campaign with the intention of getting conversions you need to setup Facebook conversion tracking so as to know which visits from Facebook generated a conversion and also calculate the conversion cost.

5. People don’t want to see your ads

As I mentioned in my digital marketing tips article, social networks are for people and not for businesses.

This means that if you try and push it too hard by over promoting your business without giving incentives or benefits to the social media user, you will fail.

It’s better to always keep in mind that users don’t want to see your ads and try to find ways and incentives to make them engage with your message.

One of the best ways to do this is though discounts or special offers.

See for example how Amazon is asking users to comment with their hashtag in order to enter their contest.

Incentives in Social Media Ads

6. Know when to stop

Social media is an effective way to get more customers and make more sales but this is not always the case for all businesses in all niches.

There are cases where social media is not the right medium to reach new customers and it may be better to stop your campaigns instead of throwing your money without a return.

Let’s say that you are running a campaign for 3 weeks and already reached thousands of people with a good CTR but you have not made any sales.

What do you do? Keep running the campaign and spend more money or stop it?

There is no simple answer but the best approach is to examine if there is a way to optimize the campaign further either by changing your targeting options or optimizing your landing page.

If you think that both of these are already optimized then maybe the best approach is to stop the campaign and allocate your budget on other tools (PPC campaigns, SEO etc).

To minimize the chances of having to declare your campaign as a failure, you can do more careful pilot campaigns (as explained in Tip 1 above) at the beginning and before spending too much money.

7. Follow up on what people say about your campaign

It happens that some people may not be happy from seeing your ads and they don’t like the idea that you are trying to sell them something so they sometimes enter bad comments or share something not good about your company or products.

It’s important that during the time you run your campaigns you also monitor your brand mentions (the simplest way is to search for your brand name on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest etc.) and see what people are saying about it.

You can then try to reverse any bad comments or critiques by providing honest answers or solutions to their comments or questions.

What else is missing from my list of social media campaigns tips?

What is a SEO Friendly Website and Why do you Need One

 Many times you hear the term “SEO friendly” or “SEO friendly website” but what does this really mean and why do you need one? How can an SEO friendly website help your business grow?

These are the questions I will try to answer in this post by avoiding technical terms or advanced SEO practices and theories.

What do we mean by a Search Engine Friendly Website?

What is an SEO Friendly website? An SEO friendly website it’s easy for search engines to crawl and understand the structure and its content.

The most important characteristics of a SEO friendly website are:

#1 – It has Unique titles and Descriptions for all pages

Each page of the website (including the home page) has a unique title and description.

The titles are between 60-65 characters and the descriptions are aprx 150 characters. Titles and descriptions accurately describe what the page is about without being keyword stuffed.

#2 – Well formatted URLs – URLS

Permanent links or slugs (that’s the url of a webpage) are descriptive, all lower case and separated by dashes.

#3- Fast loading web pages

Neither people nor search engines want websites that are slow to load. On the contrary fast loading websites are SEO friendly (meaning they have an advantage in ranking algorithms over websites that are slower) and generate more user interactions (sales, newsletter signups, contact forms submissions etc).

 #4 – It has unique content

Content on the website is not found anywhere else on the web, all pages have unique and useful content. This means a website cannot be SEO friendly if it has content copied from other web sites.

#5 – Includes images that are optimized for search engines

Search engines prefer text that’s the truth, but you also need to have images to your pages because people like it, it makes your content more interesting, easier to read, sharable etc.

When you do so, make sure that the images are optimized for size and also that you set a meaningful image filename and ALT text.

#6 – Pages have a meaningful structure

A web page usually has the following elements:

• Header
• Breadcrumb menu
• Page Title (that’s the H1 tag – there is only one per page)
• Well formatted text – text is separated into a number of short paragraphs with subheadings
• Author information
• Footer

There are of course many other characteristics that make a website SEO Friendly, you can read them here: The Ultimate SEO Checklist.

Why do you need a SEO friendly website?

Something that most CEOs, small business owners or new webmasters don’t easily understand is why you need a SEO friendly website and why make the effort to make your website friendlier to search engines.

Well, the reasons are a lot but those you need to know are:

#1 – Increase in organic traffic (that is traffic from search engines)

As expected, a SEO friendly website will get you more traffic from search engines as it is likely to run higher in the SERPS (search engine results pages).

If you take into account that the majority of people who use the search box tend to select one of the first 5 results, you can understand the importance of SEO.

#2 – It will make your website user friendly

SEO is not only for search engines but good SEO is for users as well. Applying the principles of SEO to your website, will make it easier to use and this will enhance the user experience.

#3 – It gives you brand credibility

Users are more likely to trust websites (businesses) that are found in the first pages of Google, Bing or Yahoo. This is good for both brand awareness and brand credibility.

#4 – It is cost effective

A SEO website will drive targeted traffic 24×7 without needed to spend money on PPC or other forms of online advertising. While there is a cost to reach that point, the long term benefits are bigger.

#5 – It helps you understand what your most important customers want

SEO drives quality traffic and by analyzing the behavior of those users (how they enter your website, what they click, how they leave, what they like etc) is a great way to understand what your customers want and adjust your website or products to match their needs.

#6 – SEO is even more important on mobile

A website that is mobile friendly and has good rankings on mobile search can get more customers and traffic that websites that are not mobile SEO friendly.

More and more users are using their mobiles to search for information or products while on the go it is important to be on top of the search results otherwise you are losing customers to competition, especially those searching for local products or services.

 Conclusion

A SEO friendly website has certain features and characteristics that helps search engines understand what the website is all about and this increases the chances of achieving better rankings in the SERPS.

The most important advantage of having a SEO friendly website is that you will get more targeted organic traffic from search engines.