The Do's and Don'ts of SEO

Many people or should I say most people have no idea how to properly do SEO (search engine optimization) and go on making a ton of mistakes that lower the quality of their sites in the eyes of search engines and that isn't good. SEO is supposed to help our website's pages get high rankings and drive organic traffic, however, most people never see any rankings at all, even when SEO is easier than ever!


The purpose of this post is to help you understand a little bit better SEO and inform you of what is Ok for you to do and what you should never do.


I will make a list of 6 things you SHOULD and SHOULDN'T do in the SEO world.


Here are some things you should do in order to get better rankings:

1. Get links from high-quality and relevant websites.
2. Check the page you are trying to rank for good on-page SEO.
3. Make sure to do proper keyword research before writing your content (you could end up writing about something people aren't searching about).
4. When guest posting, share great content, non-spun and answer any question people may have, this will help you establish yourself as an authority and drive much more traffic to your site.
5. Write well-researched and engaging content. Quality content makes a huge difference from a regular website and an authority.
6. Improve your website's speed (while this is not a major factor, your site's loading speed will give you a slight advantage on SEO).

Ok, let's get down to the don'ts of SEO:

1. Avoid irrelevant links (these will not be as powerful as an industry link and can potentially end up hurting you depending on the website's development).
2. Don't obsess over the number of backlinks (in 2015 and 2016 the number of links is somewhat irrelevant, what really matters is the quality of the link and the diversity of IPs from referring domains).
3. Don't use PageRank as the metric to decide how valuable a backlink is (PageRank is no longer being updated and is not a reliable way to determine the value of the link).
4. Don't write guest posts for bad sites (these sites will end up hurting your rankings instead of enhancing them).
5. Don't get links from pages that have many external links (having too many external links can be a signal of the quality of the page being bad).
6. Don't link to penalized websites (always pay close attention to the sites you are linking to, linking to bad sites can decrease the value of your site).

SEO isn't hard, however, you must take your time to learn what you must in order to get great rankings.


Use the tips I mentioned above in order to expand your knowledge on the topic and let me know if you have more tips on the comments below.

Great guide there Nesito. Another tip I would like to throw in is to create content which provides value to your audience. Don't focus on writing articles because Google says a certain keyword gets X number of searches. Create the content for your audience and then optimize it for the search engines by conducting related keyword research and enhancing your on-page factors.

Nice post Nesito! I've read your post but I feel it lacks of some detailed information.

Here are some points

nesito29 said:

Get links from high-quality and relevant websites.

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Are you saying about guest posting? what are your methods to get links from high-quality and relevant websites?

nesito29 said:

Check the page you are trying to rank for good on-page SEO.

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I don't understand why need to check this

nesito29 said:

Make sure to do proper keyword research before writing your content (you could end up writing about something people aren't searching about).

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Google analytics? choosing long or short tail keywords?

nesito29 said:

When guest posting, share great content, non-spun and answer any question people may have, this will help you establish yourself as an authority and drive much more traffic to your site.

Click to expand...

I like doing guest posting but how to have them for my website? how to do link building right way with guest posting?

nesito29 said:

Improve your website's speed (while this is not a major factor, your site's loading speed will give you a slight advantage on SEO).

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I don't think the website's speed is a matter in SEO. how does it affect to SEO?

Wow, nice post with some good information.

Going from my past experience, usually these type of SEO posts on forums are loaded with junk information. This is definitely one of the better SEO posts that I have seen on a forum site.

I especially like #2 on your "Don't" list. It seems that everyone obsesses WAY too much over how many links they get to their websites over the quality of those links. In the past the number of links to a site was important, but these days quality of links wins over quantity.

Well written and easy to understand for people new to SEO as well. I do the same thing when I write articles for my sites. Write so your content is easy to understand and that will help increase readership.

I am new here to this community, but I am already impressed by the quality of the posts!

Hello Dopani,

Thank you for your inquiry. Let me explain in more detail what I meant with those statements.

Get links from high-quality and relevant websites.

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As you mentioned this is guest posting, when you guest post make sure the site where you are guest posting is a high-quality site. The best metric to rely on right now is trust flow, however, having a high trust flow doesn't mean it is a great website.

Here is what I consider in order to guest post on a website.
Trust flow of 10+. (this is a majestic metric)
URL rating of 15+. (this is an ahrefs metric)
Domain rating of 30+. (this is also an ahrefs metric)
Backlinks pointing to that domain (if the domain has links from authority sites like CNN, mashable, etc. Something that is closely related to the page you want to get ranked).

If the root domain is all green on the above, then I consider guest posting. And as to the relevant part, the website must be related to the page I want to get ranked on Google.

Example: If I want to get a review ranked about a game that just came out, I'd look for a video game related site that accepts guest posts.

Check the page you are trying to rank for good on-page SEO.

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This is as important as off page SEO. A short while ago, Brian Dean from backlinko.com shared on a podcast with Pat Flynn a case where a page would have too many links among them affiliate links and as soon as Google sent its bot to scan his site he got penalized. Once he knew what the problem was he removed the links pointting to different pages online and his rankings went back up.

So, on-page SEO is just as important as off page.

Make sure to do proper keyword research before writing your content (you could end up writing about something people aren't searching about).

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With this, I don't mean Google's analytics. You may use Google's keyword tool in order to find the keyword you want to get ranked for, choose long tail keywords (usually those have more monthly searches and are easier to get ranked for).

I usually select keywords that have at least 1,000 searches a month.

When guest posting, share great content, non-spun and answer any question people may have, this will help you establish yourself as an authority and drive much more traffic to your site.

Click to expand...

Ok, this business is about relationships and the better the relationship you have with your audience, the better you will do. When you guest post, is all about building your reputation online and getting a great backlink. The way you do this is by proving great content that will help the audience of the person you are guest posting for, this will help you build your relationship and drive more traffic to your site.

The best way to get a backlink from a guest post is by getting what is called an edithorial link (or contextual link). This is a link like the ones people get from news and magazines, you want to create a link that looks just like those (this makes it look natural).

Improve your website's speed (while this is not a major factor, your site's loading speed will give you a slight advantage on SEO).

Click to expand...

Website's speed, like I said is not a major factor, however, it is important. The majority of the searches online come from mobile devices and the speed from the internet connection carriers provide isn't really great, if people find you on Google and click through the search result and your page takes ages to load, people will hit that back button (bouncing) and will affect your rankings.

So, does speed matter?
YES, maybe not at first because you are not ranking, but if you are already ranking, page load speed is highly important.

I hope this information helps you and if you have any other question please let me know. I will answer as soon as possible =D

I guess I would add to the Do Not's

Don't attempt to hide content by blurring the contrast between the background and the text.
Don't use the same keyword or keyword phrase 30 to 40 times on page content (it's surprising how often I see this).
Don't write long uninterrupted blocks of text. Instead break up your content into readable paragraphs, use some bullets, make it eye appealing.
Don't copy and paste content from other sites and try to pass that off as yours.
Don't use the same title and description on every page of your site. (Again, I see that more often than I should) Instead, make titles and descriptions relevant to that specific page.
Don't put all of your advertising above the fold and then force visitors to scroll down to view your content.
Don't fill up your home page with load intensive videos.
Don't have a ton of flashing banners blinding visitors when they reach your site.
Don't infringe on other people's copyrights by posting graphics without giving credits.

It is essential that you honor search engine rules and be a productive member of a community.

Great post! Lots of wonderful information people could really use! Number 1 in the Dos is very important! I think the things not to do are the best things to learn! Sometimes what not to do is even more important then what you do! You can waste a lot of time if your doing all the wrong things.

I would like to add more on Do Not's list:

Don't focus on getting good rankings. It's counter-intuitive, but you can have more success by focusing on quality and letting the rankings take care of themselves.
Don't focus on the specifics (the trees instead of the forest).
Don't believe in magic bullets that can get you fantastic rankings.
Don't assume that any change you made was what accounted for a change in your rankings.
Don't believe that any ranking you see, good or bad, is permanent.

We must follow webmaster guidelines before doing SEO and write most informative content for them. We must avoid using too many plugins, and Java Scripts that slow down webpage speed. Secondly our websites must have responsive web design. We must avoid useless coding in programming files too.

Important and useful seo guide you have shared in this thread. Guest posting is an important off page seo technique to get website traffic and website ranking.

I would like to add the following in dont list

1) avoid bad neighborhood
2) avoid mini nets
3) avoid virtual ip adress
4) avoid duplicate content
5) avoid traffic scamming

Does posting in web directories will have good backlinks like powerful backlinks. I am doing Seo for my website i am getting great results in web directories.