85 Reasons Why Website Designers/Developers Keep SEOs in Business

A few months ago, I was quoted by Google’s Matt Cutts as saying that “website developers keep SEOs in business.” I honestly do believe that and have for a long time. While I don’t mean to say that ALL website designers/developers believe or do all of these things, you’ll likely encounter many who have done or believe in some of these.

As long as there are developers and designers who believe in any of the following, there will always be a need for SEO consulting:

1. They think SEO is impossible.
2. They think adding words into a Meta keyword tag is SEO.
3. They develop navigational menus that are invisible to search engines.
4. They think one-word keywords are what you optimize for.
5. They ask the client to provide them with website copy.
6. They have the client provide them with what pages they want on their website.
7. They never heard of keyword research.
8. They think SEO is voodoo.
9. They never heard of SEO.
10. They think SEO is submitting to search engines.
11. They think SEO is submitting an XML sitemap to the search engines.
12. They put the same Title on every page of the website.
13. They design sites completely in Flash.
14. They think SEO is creating mini-sites.
15. They show search engines one thing and real people something else.
16. They use outdated content management systems.
17. They think SEO is a scam.
18. They find it easier to use paid search.
19. They think link building is linking all their client’s sites together.
20. They add hidden links to their own site in their client’s code.
21. They have no clue what their websites look like in Google’s text cache.
22. They create all graphical sites.
23. They still think there’s a reason to use frames.
24. They create duplicate URLs for the same content.
25. They prefer to say they can’t change something, rather than figure out how to do it.
26. They take weeks to make simple changes to a website.
27. They recycle information from one client’s website to another.
28. They try to optimize for highly competitive keywords only.
29. They bury important pages deep within the website.
30. They put the good stuff behind password protected pages.
31. They think SEO is all in the H1 tag.
32. They think SEO is keyword stuffing.
33. They think SEO is putting keywords in invisible text.
34. They think SEO is putting links in a footer.
35. They think SEO is about creating doorway pages.
36. They think SEO is having a certain keyword density on your pages.
37. They think SEO is a magic formula.
38. They are scared by the word “algorithm.”
39. They think making websites usable for people is somehow different than making them usable for search engines.
40. They put “welcome” in Title tags.
41. They think SEO will take care of itself by having a blog.
42. They think changing a few words on some pages now and then help SEO.
43. They think frequent respidering magically increases rankings.
44. They think SEO is all about the long-tail.
45. They think SEO is only optimizing the home page.
46. They believe it’s easier to tell client’s SEO doesn’t work than to learn it or outsource it.
47. They think a beautiful website will be naturally found in Google.
48. They optimize for just one main keyword phrase.
49. They mistakenly put robots=noindex, nofollow on the site.
50. They forget to fix the robots.txt file to allow indexing once the site goes off the development server.
51. They think ranking #1 for the brand name is SEO.
52. They change all the URLs during a redesign and don’t 301-redirect them.
53. They think moving content above navigation will increase rankings.
54. They use graphical headlines rather than HTML (or a workaround).
55. They don’t put up custom 404-error pages.
56. The remove old URLs from the server instead of redirecting them to their closest counterpart.
57. They link “home” buttons and logos to /index.php rather than to www.example.com.
58. They hide links to their client’s sites on other client’s sites.
59. They use drop-down menus as the sole navigation of a site.
60. They optimize for keywords nobody is search for.
61. They don’t set up analytics.
62. They create forms where the thank-you page is the same URL as the form itself, thus making it impossible to measure conversions.
63. They create custom blogs without pinging mechanisms.
64. They don’t understand the importance of site architecture as it effects SEO.
65. They believe if you build it, they will come.
66. They think SEO is something different for every search engine, and therefore do nothing.
67. They believe that removing HTML tables will increase rankings.
68. They think SEO is about bolding keywords.
69. They create websites with URLs having 10 parameters.
70. They love Splash pages.
71. They think SEO is all in a keyword-rich domain.
72. They change domain names for existing sites without understanding the consequences.
73. They use auto-submission tools.
74. They add all kinds of Meta tags to pages, that have no use, i.e., “revisit-after,” “robots=follow,index” etc.
75. They think listing keywords in comment tags will boost rankings.
76. They create sites where cookie acceptance is mandatory.
77. They “hide” links in <noscript> tags.
78. They use session ids in URLs and don’t stop search engines from indexing those URLs.
79. They use 302-redirects instead of 301.
80. They unnecessarily use AJAX because it does cool stuff, without understanding the search engine implications.
81. They put “click here” in anchor text.
82. They use image navigation without descriptive alt attribute text.
83. They believe that “clean code” equal SEO.
84. They think adding keywords in a list at the top of the page is SEO.
85. They believe that keyword-rich file names are the key to SEO.

Did I miss any?

Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.

About The Author

Jill Whalen