There are many things that should never happen when doing any kind of SEO on your website. This 20-part series will explain many of the most common SEO mistakes out there, and how to avoid them!

Part 1:

Never, ever, ever abuse the “meta keywords” section of your website’s header. That means, don’t put a bunch of unnecessary garbage into play so that you can try to manipulate rankings. This is called Meta Keyword Stuffing. Plain and simple, don’t do it.

Even the big boys get burned for this one, boys and girls. A few years ago, BMW (that’s right the big car company) made this mistake. They were filling their meta keywords tag full of unrelated phrases. Now you’re probably thinking, “Well, yeah. Duh. Of course Google hates that.” HOWEVER, think about how easy it is to try to manipulate a robot! Who woulda thunk you couldn’t sneak one passed Google? That’s right, BMW thought that. Google retaliated by completed taking the BMW website out of the Google index (the snapshot of websites that makes up search results). Good job, BMW. Good job.

At Red Rocket, we don’t even use the meta keywords tag. It isn’t recognized as a ranking signal by Google, so we simply leave it alone. Ten years ago, search engines trusted users to put keywords in this tag that actually described the website. Along the way, spammers got smart and noticed that if they can manipulate this tag, they can get their websites listed higher in search rankings. Not anymore, folks!

So the next time you’re thinking of a way to trick Google, remember this: Google has employed some of the most intelligent people on the planet to stay one step ahead of you, and believe us when we say, they’re great at it!

Not sure if you’re website is suffering from meta keyword spamming? Give us a call, and we’ll let you know how your website is doing! Until next time…