Google covers the five most common errors she finds in SEO, and then concludes with six quick tips to make sure you're on the right track.

1. 5 common mistakes in SEO
(and 6 good ideas!)
Maile Ohye
Developer Programs Tech Lead

2. Mistake #1: No value prop
Why would a user select my site in
search results?
Make your product or service compelling --
be your creative self!

4. e-commerce Differentiators
● Low prices
● Free shipping
● Great customer service
● Detailed product descriptions
● Availability in certain languages or locales
● <your value prop here!>

5. Mistake #2: Segmented
approach
Instead approach online strategy holistically -- aligned
with larger business goals and every department
communicating

6. Consider SEO in entire user
experience: from marketing
campaign to conversion

7. Car Company’s Business Strategy
Marketing Team SEO Team
goals Goals
Bring TV viewers to Target keywords to bring
example- users to main site
edityourown-video.
com Goals are not aligned

8. Mistake #3: Time-consuming
workarounds

9. Mistake #3: Time-consuming
workarounds
Avoid rel=“canonical” for each component
page in a series…
Instead, use new rel=“next” and rel=“prev”
markup for paginated content!

10. Mistake #3: Time-consuming
workarounds
■ New rel=“next” and rel=“prev” markup for
paginated content
■ Submit new/updated content to be crawled
through “Fetch as Googlebot” in
Webmaster Tools

11. Mistake #4: Caught in SEO
trends
users
search engines
websites The old
days…
search engines
search engines

12. Now running two separate
races?
websites search engines Brings me
sadness
search engines users

13. Unfortunate SEO trend of
yesteryear
What’s the optimal keyword density for my
content? Not a great focus, just write
compelling stuff!

14. Mistake #5: Slow iteration
Aim to be agile.
1. Define metrics for success
2. Implement improvements
3. Measure impact
4. Create new improvements
5. Prioritize improvements based on market and
personnel
Repeat.

15. 2009: Rich snippets
Cool
!

16. Rich snippets: Events
Very
nice!

17. Video Sitemaps

18. SEO instructions
■ Do something cool
■ Include relevant keywords in your copy
■ Be smart about your tags and site architecture
■ Sign up for email forwarding in Webmaster Tools
■ Attract buzz and natural links, votes, +1s, follows
■ Stay fresh and relevant (social media sites,
accessible on new devices)