Top 10 Fortune 500 SEO Mistakes
I am blown away by how few of the top 500 companies in this country optimize their sites. Here is a list and short explanation of why what they do is so wrong. I have walked out of so many meetings in horror after seeing how they manage their websites. Sorry not spilling dirt, no names mentioned here.
10. IT department runs website:
What a huge mistake, these guys could care less about user navigation. All they care about is uptime and speed. You commonly find in this scenario, heavy non search engine friendly load balancing.
In one case I saw that the IT department put up a robots.txt because the spiders where taking too much CPU time. OMG, talk about giving IT the ultimate Hara-kiri sword!
9. Allowing the traditional marketing department to run the site.
No offence to traditional marketing people! But you guys are the last ones to know how to operate a website.
A. Irrelevant content all over the site, including catchy phrases that no-one in their right mind would ever type on the website.
B. Creating new names for information that is already out there.
C. Never allowing outbound links on the site.
D. Repeating their “Tag Line Paragraph” on every page
E. Flash Sites
F. Everything in Images
G. Not linking the site in press releases
H. I can really go on…
8. Allowing an Agency to run their websites.
Unfortunately 99% of all Agencies out there could care less about SEO. Agencies get paid heavy commissions on money their clients give them to spend on TV Commercials, Radio Ads, Magazines and even SEM. Since most SEO firms do not have a clue how to handle big companies the agencies pick a small SEO firm to give them a few pointers for $10 and the Agency charges the clients 100’s of thousands of dollars. Nothing ever gets done!
7. CEO is a spaz about ranking for the company name
This causes un-needed hard ache in the ranks, people run around playing with code and typing their company name on every page. This may get you ranked, but often this falls back to the IT department who has load balancers, robots.txt files and really bad code screwing the whole thing up.
6. Company sends their non technical marketing person to SES
Sending someone without a clue to the SES to learn SEO, yes you will learn scattered information and some cowboy SEO will try to teach you some dirty tricks. You walk out more confused than you ever where and decide to let your agency have a hack at it.
5. Do not own the bad versions of your domain
I received dozens of phone calls from companies who will remain nameless. They would call in and say that either this website companynamesucks.com ranks for the company name and has a lot of dirt on them. Please get them out of the index.
Not to mention how illegal the tactics would be to accomplish this, nor how expensive. An ounce of prevention can go along way!
4. Chooses an SEO firm by their name alone.
As a lot of us know, you can buy a lot of things by name and not get your money’s worth. Most of the large firms in the SEO space will bait you in with an SEO campaign and wind up putting you on a SEM campaign. A big name comes to mind every time I think of this but I will leave that out of this post.
Ask questions; see the results of their other big clients. Now if they show you a big keyword, find out if they ranked for that keyword before they started. Many of these companies will just take credit for work that they never did.
3. Look at your META tags
Some of the largest sites I have ever seen have 50 keywords in the Meta tags that have nothing to do with the business that they are in. The department in charge of your website should know your business. The keyword tag “Money” is not the right keyword for a bank.
2. Mail order catalog is more important than website
I have come across several large names who believe that their mail order catalogs that cost 100’s of millions of dollars a year, will bring in a better return than a 250k investment on their website. These companies have 100’s of thousands of products protected by really cool session id’s, which no search engine will ever get through.
Get out of the middle ages! Most people toss their catalogs the moment they receive it!
1. Spending too much on SEM
Fortune 500 companies are extremely blind to the fact that they could save themselves Millions of dollars just by getting their sites optimized. I typed in the key phrase home loan and looked at the top results, they are mostly brokers. 2 of the sites I could get up in the top five by making about a dozen changes to their source code. These same banks are buying the keywords. What an amazing waste of money!
On your next quarterly report, tell your share holders how you spent a million dollars for a key phrase that you could be getting for free. Watch your stock price tank!
10. IT department runs website:
What a huge mistake, these guys could care less about user navigation. All they care about is uptime and speed. You commonly find in this scenario, heavy non search engine friendly load balancing.
In one case I saw that the IT department put up a robots.txt because the spiders where taking too much CPU time. OMG, talk about giving IT the ultimate Hara-kiri sword!
9. Allowing the traditional marketing department to run the site.
No offence to traditional marketing people! But you guys are the last ones to know how to operate a website.
A. Irrelevant content all over the site, including catchy phrases that no-one in their right mind would ever type on the website.
B. Creating new names for information that is already out there.
C. Never allowing outbound links on the site.
D. Repeating their “Tag Line Paragraph” on every page
E. Flash Sites
F. Everything in Images
G. Not linking the site in press releases
H. I can really go on…
8. Allowing an Agency to run their websites.
Unfortunately 99% of all Agencies out there could care less about SEO. Agencies get paid heavy commissions on money their clients give them to spend on TV Commercials, Radio Ads, Magazines and even SEM. Since most SEO firms do not have a clue how to handle big companies the agencies pick a small SEO firm to give them a few pointers for $10 and the Agency charges the clients 100’s of thousands of dollars. Nothing ever gets done!
7. CEO is a spaz about ranking for the company name
This causes un-needed hard ache in the ranks, people run around playing with code and typing their company name on every page. This may get you ranked, but often this falls back to the IT department who has load balancers, robots.txt files and really bad code screwing the whole thing up.
6. Company sends their non technical marketing person to SES
Sending someone without a clue to the SES to learn SEO, yes you will learn scattered information and some cowboy SEO will try to teach you some dirty tricks. You walk out more confused than you ever where and decide to let your agency have a hack at it.
5. Do not own the bad versions of your domain
I received dozens of phone calls from companies who will remain nameless. They would call in and say that either this website companynamesucks.com ranks for the company name and has a lot of dirt on them. Please get them out of the index.
Not to mention how illegal the tactics would be to accomplish this, nor how expensive. An ounce of prevention can go along way!
4. Chooses an SEO firm by their name alone.
As a lot of us know, you can buy a lot of things by name and not get your money’s worth. Most of the large firms in the SEO space will bait you in with an SEO campaign and wind up putting you on a SEM campaign. A big name comes to mind every time I think of this but I will leave that out of this post.
Ask questions; see the results of their other big clients. Now if they show you a big keyword, find out if they ranked for that keyword before they started. Many of these companies will just take credit for work that they never did.
3. Look at your META tags
Some of the largest sites I have ever seen have 50 keywords in the Meta tags that have nothing to do with the business that they are in. The department in charge of your website should know your business. The keyword tag “Money” is not the right keyword for a bank.
2. Mail order catalog is more important than website
I have come across several large names who believe that their mail order catalogs that cost 100’s of millions of dollars a year, will bring in a better return than a 250k investment on their website. These companies have 100’s of thousands of products protected by really cool session id’s, which no search engine will ever get through.
Get out of the middle ages! Most people toss their catalogs the moment they receive it!
1. Spending too much on SEM
Fortune 500 companies are extremely blind to the fact that they could save themselves Millions of dollars just by getting their sites optimized. I typed in the key phrase home loan and looked at the top results, they are mostly brokers. 2 of the sites I could get up in the top five by making about a dozen changes to their source code. These same banks are buying the keywords. What an amazing waste of money!
On your next quarterly report, tell your share holders how you spent a million dollars for a key phrase that you could be getting for free. Watch your stock price tank!
Labels: seo
by Aaron Shear
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