Top 10 SEO Mistakes

Every search engine optimisation (SEO) campaign is a double-edged sword. It’s like traveling in space: one wrong calculation here and one there and you can end up billions of light-years away from your destination. In this post I’m going to suggest 10 SEO mistakes that you should definitely avoid. There are 100s of things that can go wrong, but these top 10 SEO mistakes can cause you the most harm. Here they are:

1) Wrong title of the page
Your title is the first thing the search engine crawlers encounter when they visit your web page. Your title tells the search what your page is about. Even when your link appears in the search results page, it’s your title that attracts the users and makes them click the link. Avoid deceptive titles. Use keywords in your title and be as clear as possible. Another mistake regarding the titles is that sometimes all the pages belonging to a website have the same title: this is a big mistake. Every page of your website should have its own unique title.

2) Wrong selection of keywords
Almost every SEO effort revolves around the chosen keywords and lots of money and time is spent on obtaining a high ranking for the keywords. All the effort will go down the drain if you focus on the wrong keywords. Carefully study what keywords and key phrases your target market is using to find what you have to offer, and then optimise accordingly. Use the free and commercial keyword-analysis tools to zero-in on the precise keywords. Never assume on your own what keywords your target market is using.

3) Having no textual content
No matter how snazzy a website you have, if it doesn’t have enough text, the search engines will never find out what you represent and what product or service you intend to sell.

4) Having wrong content
It is as good as having no content because your bad content will give all the bad information to the search engines. This is partly related to selecting the wrong keywords because even by selecting the wrong keywords you can easily generate wrong content.

5) Choosing the wrong target market
You should know to whom you want to sell, and only then you can properly steer your SEO campaign. If the target market is wrong, how can optimise your website correctly. With wrong target market you’ll be choosing the wrong keywords and misplaced search engine campaigns. Always be sure of whom you want to target.

6) Indiscriminate use of graphics and animations
Graphics and animations look cool, but they only look cool once. They are like a movie: the more times you see them, the less attractive you find them. Unnecessary frills bloat your pages and push your real textual content downwards. Always remember that when the search engine crawlers visit your website they can make no sense of your graphics; they are only looking for the text content.

7) No use of header tags
Header tags —

,

, …, — are very important tags because they are supposed to highlight the gist of your web page. To create heading people often use bigger fonts for the

tag which is totally wrong. Search engines look for important keywords within your header tags so always use them to highlight the main points of your text, and if possible, use the keywords within the header tags.

Excessive use of keywords
People think the more keywords their pages have, the better is the chance of getting ranked hire; this is a complete misconception. Excessive use of keywords can get your website blacklisted on various search engines. Although you must have your keywords and their synonyms in your text they don’t have to appear in every sentence. Just have them in the beginning, within your title and other header tags possibly as anchor text.

9) Wrong linking policy
Linking is a very potent SEO methodology, but only if done properly. Indiscriminate incoming and outgoing links can severely harm your search engine rankings. Try getting inbound links from reputed websites and never link to websites that are considered “bad” (porn, spamming, scams, etc.) by the search engines.

10) Not blogging
Not blogging is a mistake because even if it directly may not affect your rankings (or it may), you can rest assured that your competitors are using it to boost their search engine rankings to get highly relevant traffic.

So avoid these top 10 SEO mistakes and gradually keep climbing up the ladder of higher rankings.

The SEO Christmas Alphabet: C for Content

This topic has been discussed way too many times by way too many people yet it is a bit discouraging how many website owners still do not really care to give emphasis on the development of their website’s actual content. For the most part I believe that it is because many wish to get as much money out of their sites while spending as little money and effort as they can. I guess this is true for many things, not just websites. If you look at the truly successful websites though you’ll see that the success really hinged on the content. SEO as I’ved said time and time again can only get you so far. It will help bring in traffic but it won’t guarantee success. So next time you take a look at your site or a client’s site be honest in your assessment of the content. Remember the website doesn’t need to have an astoundingly novel content but it does need to offer something of real value that will make it worth to visitors to not just visit once but to keep on returning.

As for the SEO aspect when it comes to content be sure to:

•use keywords as often as possible - Things to remember in placing keywords in your content would be: the importance of keyword selection, keyword density (don’t make it spammy!), and the placement of keywords.
•make it readable/viewable not only by humans but also by the search engine spiders.
•also take into account content other than text (images & multimedia content).
•hire an SEO copywriter to check if your content needs any editing or rewriting.

Increase Your Traffic By Focusing On Long Tail Keywords

Long Tail keywords aren’t actually your conventional keywords like “web designer” or “copywriter” or “pole dancer”, they are sometimes complete sentences. For instance, a lawyer looking for a web designer for his law firm may search for “web designer for law firm” instead of merely “web designer”, or someone looking for a pole dancer in New England will most likely search for “pole dancer in new england” rather than just “pole dancer”.

The fundamental focus behind Long Tail keywords is that instead of focusing on a few highly competitive keywords for your niche, you should also optimise for longer, less competitive phrases that can easily catapult your website to the first page of the SERPs. This I have noticed even while trying to optimise blog posts. I have often observed that it’s easier to rank higher for blog posts containing the entire search term expression. For instance, if you search for “tips to boost seo” on Google our post appears (at least as of now) on the first page. You can observe many similar expressions.

Why Long Tail Keywords Mean More Traffic
I’ll try to explain it with an example. Suppose you have optimised your website for “web designer” and you are getting, say 1000 hits per day because your link appears on the first page of the SERPs. Please keep in mind that “web designer” is a highly competitive word and you have to make a lot of effort first, to get there, and then, to remain there.

What if along with your primary keyword, you select 15 Long Tail keywords that will fetch very little traffic individually, but lots of traffic collectively? Since Long Tail keywords face little or no competition, it’s very easy to get a good ranking for them, and in fact, a lot easier than obtaining a good ranking for a highly competitive phrase like “web designer”. If you appear on the first page for almost all your Long Tail keywords and each Long Tail keyword fetches you say, 100 odd hits everyday, you’ll be getting 1500 hits all in all, and they will be more relevant because people are more likely to do business if they find a website for the exact phrase they are searching for. What if you can optimise for 30 Long Tail keywords? You can easily do the math.