There are many mistakes made by people who think they are making smart decisions for their SEO efforts. The fact is, there are tricks to getting higher PR and quick results in the search engines but those tricks are not going to be good long term. In fact, the efforts which in turn provide quick results are usually the kind you want to stay away from.
Here is a list of repetitive SEO no- no’s:
1. Camouflaging anchor text – Don’t be sneaky!
Many people will attempt to place keywords they hope to rank for all over their homepage. Of course this would look extremely spammy but some believe that if the keywords are camouflaged then the average visitor won’t see them. That is correct. The people who do this also believe that if the average visitor can’t see the text then Google must not be able to either. That is not correct!
Search engines still know when anchor text is placed sporadically all over the place. Please stay away from this course of action. Sneaky does not equal smart! Additionally, if you feel you have to camouflage a specific anchor text internally or externally, then perhaps this is not a text worth targeting.
2. Don’t go crazy with keyword placements
As pointed out in no-no number one, people often think the more you place those keywords which you hope to rank for across your site, the quicker you will see desired results. Truthfully, if someone were to follow that method then quite the opposite would happen and the results would be less than desirable.
When you over optimize for keywords or links you can trigger an over optimization filter. I suggest putting the targeted keyword/ keywords about three times in one piece of content in a 300 words article. I follow the same rule of thumb per page on a site. Sometimes, too much is just too much.
3. Broken links 
Broken links are often overlooked because people do not they have any. Google Webmaster tools is a great tool for locating broken internal and external links. The tool will help you implement proper redirects and fix html. Broken links consists of errors such as 404’s. They occur frequently when changes are done to a site such as incorrect redirects. Broken links can also appear when plug ins are installed and potential bugs that came with those plug ins were not detected.
4. A huge backlink portfolio isn’t always better
It is a common misconception that many links will increase rankings. As mentioned earlier too much is sometimes just too much. It is all about quality! Fewer may be better. If quality links are not able to be obtained then hold off and obtain the links that will really get you some link juice. It is true that a ton of links may cause results to spike immediately in search but I guarantee that you will see immediate consequences as well. A bad link portfolio will get noticed.
Stay away from linking to porn and casino type sites. Search engines will likely affiliate you with them and eventually, you will be hurting where rankings are concerned. Stick to quality links in your niche! While this is my advice, too few of links is negative too. Be sure to be active in getting the links that are relative to you.
5. Don’t neglect your content!
Content is King! How many times have you heard this? That is because it’s true. Content is one of the most important components of great SEO. Its all about keeping it fresh, keeping it current, and keeping it updated. Most importantly for search, content should also contain semantically related terms. So if you were writing about Johnny cash then terms like Rock-a-Billy and Ring of Fire would be appropriate.
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Great recap of basic good practices that we tend to forget because “more urgent” staff is stressing out us.
I like especially the reminder about content and how you underline the importance of a semantic copy-write, that finally nothing means but to write naturally.
And it is good that sometimes these reminders keep published.
Kudos to you
We can all get overwhelmed and when that happens, mistakes are bound to rear their ugly heads! Basic reminders are good to have for those who practice good SEO on a regular basis. These tips are also for people who sometimes get incorrect information. You would be surprised at how many people think hiding text is a good idea! Companies who claim to have good practices will advice these kinds of things because they hope to get quick results. They want instant gratification and do not think about the long term consequences or over all results.
My favorite is hidden text. I continue to see it all over the place! I’ve even got an email from an “seo” company to a client now with us saying that hidden text is good because it won’t distract human visitors, but the search engines can still find it. Blackmail anyone?
The search engines can definitely still find it and they will eventually penalize for it. More than three keywords or so for on page seo is suspicious looking to search engines too not just human visitors
I agree these are very common mistakes and I am making the 4th mistake quite often. I’ll Try to be careful about that in future.
Be sure to keep your eyes open for poor link swaps and be aware of those who have bad backlinks
I agree with you, these are the common mistakes people want do to get more benefits..
People who make these mistakes to often, are likely attempting to deceive. Immediate gratification will not last and rankings will drop over time. Once someone has participated in spammy link building and is penalized, it is almost impossible to get out of the hole.
Xenu is another great tool to use for finding broken links on your site. You’ll find some this way that you won’t find in Google Webmaster Tools.
I will look into it more. I am not familiar. If anybody else is interested, here is a guide:
http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink_guide.html
Some good tips here. Google is so much cleverer than many people may imagine. There is no point trying to spam your site with keywords – like you say, in the short-term it may seem great, but you’ll soon get sandboxed and realise you’ve actually made things a lot harder for yourself in the long-term…
Stick to relevant content and be honest with your SEO – you can’t go far wrong then
very well put
I was also going to suggest Xenu Link Sleuth to find 404s in both internal and external links. However, also look at external links that have a 301 or 302 on them, and follow those through until they don’t get a redirect.
I was involved with a site that pointed to educational resources at thousands of different host sites. At first we only looked for external links that had a 404 — then we discovered that sites would do a major restructure, and 301 all of the links to a subject-level page instead of an individual resource. Or there would be a 301 to a trailing slash, then the trailing slash would be a 404. We had a lot more work to do once we started looking at everything that wasn’t a 200 in our external links.
Great info on this site, sometimes SEO seems like something to leave to the Pro.s, Then again it seems so simple
It can seem simple at times and that is when mistakes happen. Its important to read up on SEO tactics regularly and stay updated. This industry is always changing and its necessary to keep informed and follow the changes and tricks that actually do work!
I agree with everything you wrote, esp. back linking. A back link needs to bring a user to relevant content, if a site has a big bounce rate it loses its full potential in google.
This information is all great, thank you!
The search engines can definitely still find it and they will eventually penalize for it. More than three keywords or so for on page seo is suspicious looking to search engines too not just human visitors