SEO Copying Pitfall #3: Hurts Site Functionality

More traffic to your site is a good thing.  More traffic to a broken site, is not a good thing.  It’s like better and better advertising that let’s people know you’re not on the ball and unprofessional.  That’s what a broken site is, lazy and unprofessional.  So how can SEO harm functionality?  It’s not uncommon for people trying to copy SEO techniques from other sites to copy things they shouldn’t.

A lot of people use web editor programs, and why not, they speed up the process of laying out a page and let you do so graphically.  While that is a great tool it often causes problems for people hastily trying to boost their search rankings.  They end up copying something but get more or less than they bargained for.  Often times web editors inaccurately grab code or modify it in such a way that it breaks a section of the page.

A common mistake for example is when someone wants to add alt tags to their images.  That’s a good idea, it helps usability and is a low tier way to help drive traffic.  However, instead of adding the terms, they cut and paste them into the wrong area.  So instead of an image with a hidden alt tag, the alt tag text appears on the web page.  Not only is it a clear mistake it often gets jumbled in with the pages text and makes for some confusing reading. 

This is just a simple example, worse scenarios include navigation getting removed or links breaking.  That not only looks terrible, it limits where visitors can go.  Great SEO is very valuable but not if it brings people to a useless site.  If you’re going to copy SEO techniques be sure to examine how those techniques fit in with your site.  Take the time to add the positives without breaking your sites functionality and never forget the cardinal rule, proof read and test the pages before they get on your site.