j3rkules

You make a lot of mistakes. That’s part of life.

And SEO is a complex field; there’s a lot to remember, even more to do, and everyone’s stock answer to your questions seems to be, “It depends.”

Furthermore, it’s not just the fresh-faced, new-on-the-scene SEOs who are making mistakes. Seasoned veterans and outright experts are doing it, too.

Here are five well-known mistakes that SEOs make in regards to links and content — and that are costing vital traffic:

Mistake #1: Building All Links On The Home Page
It’s tempting to point all your links to your home page. Because, well… that’s usually where your sales funnel starts, right?

Or your client is nagging you to drive all your traffic there — which can be even worse.

But building all your links to your home page isn’t just a mistake.

It’s a bad strategy.

Firstly, most sites have too many home page links. And if most sites are doing it, you shouldn’t be. Because following the crowd in SEO is guaranteed to find you somewhere on the 10th page…if you’re lucky.

A good strategy is to link deep into your site and use all those lovely internal pages you took the time to craft.

Neil Patel said it best in this post about link building:

Look at Wikipedia. The site that ranks for almost every term out there and is the 6th most popular site in the world. Majestic SEO is showing that Wikipedia in total has over 600 million backward links, whereas the home page has roughly 6 million links. That means 1% of their total links point to their home page, while 99% goes to internal pages.
Spreading your link equity across your site, rather than concentrating it on your home page, just makes sense. Instead of users landing on your home page and having to fight to find the content they’re looking for, they’re already there. It feels more natural — and if your content is good, it builds more trust.

Linking deep helps you build the overall SEO value for your site, too — the more high-value pages you have, the more opportunities you have to achieve search engine visibility.

It’s a win-win.

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