choosing a title that has no relation to the content on the page
using default or vague titles like "Untitled" or "New Page 1"
using a single title tag across all of your site's pages or a large group of pages
using extremely lengthy titles that are unhelpful to users
stuffing unneeded keywords in your title tags.....
writing a description meta tag that has no relation to the content on the page
using generic descriptions like "This is a web page" or "Page about baseball cards"
filling the description with only keywords
copying and pasting the entire content of the document into the description meta tag
using a single description meta tag across all of your site's pages or a large group of pages
using lengthy URLs with unnecessary parameters and session IDs
choosing generic page names like "page1.html"
using excessive keywords like"baseball-cards-baseball-cards-baseballcards.htm"
having deep nesting of subdirectories like ".../dir1/dir2/dir3/dir4/dir5/dir6/page.html"
using directory names that have no relation to the content in them
having pages from subdomains and the root directory access the same content
- e.g. "domain.com/page.htm" and "sub.domain.com/page.htm"
using odd capitalization of URLs
- many users expect lower-case URLs and remember them better
creating complex webs of navigation links, e.g. linking every page on your site to every other page
going overboard with slicing and dicing your content (so that it takes twenty clicks)
having a navigation based entirely on drop-down menus, images, or animations
- many, but not all, search engines can discover such links on a site, but if a user can reach all pages on a site via normal text links, this will improve the accessibility of your site;
letting your HTML site map page become out of date with broken links
creating an HTML site map that simply lists pages without organizing them, for example by subject
allowing your 404 pages to be indexed in search engines (make sure that your webserver is configured to give a 404 HTTP status code when non-existent pages are requested)
providing only a vague message like "Not found", "404", or no 404 page at all
using a design for your 404 pages that isn't consistent with the rest of your site
writing sloppy text with many spelling and grammatical mistakes
embedding text in images for textual content
- users may want to copy and paste the text and search engines can't read it
dumping large amounts of text on varying topics onto a page without paragraph, subheading, or layout separation
rehashing (or even copying) existing content that will bring little extra value to users
having duplicate or near-duplicate versions of your content across your site
inserting numerous unnecessary keywords aimed at search engines but are annoying or nonsensical to users
having blocks of text like "frequent misspellings used to reach this page" that add little value for users
deceptively hiding text from users, but displaying it to search engines
writing generic anchor text like "page", "article", or "click here"
using text that is off-topic or has no relation to the content of the page linked to
using the page's URL as the anchor text in most cases
- although there are certainly legitimate uses of this, such as promoting or referencing a new website's address
writing long anchor text, such as a lengthy sentence or short paragraph of text
using CSS or text styling that make links look just like regular text
using excessively keyword-filled or lengthy anchor text just for search engines
creating unnecessary links that don't help with the user's navigation of the site
using generic filenames like "image1.jpg", "pic.gif", "1.jpg" when possible—some sites with thousands of images might consider automating the naming of images
writing extremely lengthy filenames
stuffing keywords into alt text or copying and pasting entire sentences
writing excessively long alt text that would be considered spammy
using only image links for your site's navigation
placing text in heading tags that wouldn't be helpful in defining the structure of the page
using heading tags where other tags like <em> and <strong> may be more appropriate
erratically moving from one heading tag size to another
excessively using heading tags throughout the page
putting all of the page's text into a heading tag
using heading tags only for styling text and not presenting structure
allowing search result-like pages to be crawled
- users dislike leaving one search result page and landing on another search result page that doesn't add significant value for them
allowing URLs created as a result of proxy services to be crawled
attempting to promote each new, small piece of content you create; go for big, interesting items
involving your site in schemes where your content is artificially promoted to the top of these services
spamming link requests out to all sites related to your topic area
purchasing links from another site with the aim of getting PageRank instead of traffic