When it comes to search engine optimization, there are certain common mistakes
that I see people making over and over again. Here's a list of the 10 most
common mistakes that I see people making. By avoiding these mistakes, you can
avoid a lot of anguish and frustration in the long run.
1) Optimizing Your Site For the Wrong Keywords
The first step in any search engine optimization campaign is to choose the
keywords for which you should optimize your site. If you initially choose the
wrong keywords, all the time and effort that you devote in trying to get your
site a high ranking will go down the drain. If you choose keywords which no one
search for, or if you choose keywords which won't bring in targeted traffic to
your site, what good will the top rankings do?
In order to learn how you can choose the correct keywords for which you should
optimize your site, see my article on this topic.
2) Putting Too Many Keywords in the Meta Keywords Tag
I often see sites which have hundreds of keywords listed in the Meta Keywords
tag, in the hope that by listing the keywords in the Meta Keywords tag, they
will be able to get a high ranking for those keywords. Nothing could be further
from the truth. Contrary to popular opinion, the Meta Keywords tag has almost
completely lost its importance as far as search engine positioning is concerned.
Hence, just by listing keywords in the Meta Keywords tag, you will never be able
to get a high ranking. To get a high ranking for those keywords, you need to put
the keywords in the actual body content of your site.
3) Repeating the Same Keyword Too Many Times
Another common mistake that people make is to endlessly repeat their target
keywords in the body of their pages and in their Meta Keywords tags. Because so
many people have used this tactic in the past (and continue to use it), the
search engines keep a sharp lookout for this, and may penalize a site which
repeats keywords in this fashion. Sure, you do need to repeat the keywords a
number of times. But, the way you place the keywords in your pages needs to make
grammatical sense. Simply repeating the keywords endlessly no longer works.
Furthermore, a particular keyword should ideally not be present more than thrice
in your Meta Keywords tag.
4) Creating Lots of Similar Doorway Pages
Another myth prevalent among people is that since the algorithm of each search
engine is different, they need to create different pages for different search
engines. While this is great in theory, it is counter-productive in practice. If
you use this tactic, you will soon end up with hundreds of pages, which can
quickly become an administrative nightmare. Also, just imagine the amount of
time you will need to spend constantly updating the pages in response to the
changes that the search engines make to their algorithms. Furthermore, although
the pages are meant for different engines, they will actually end up being
pretty similar to each other. The search engines are often able to detect when a
site has created such similar pages, and may penalize or even ban this site from
their index. Hence, instead of creating different pages for different search
engines, create one page which is optimized for one keyword for all the search
engines. In order to learn how to create such pages, see my article on this
topic.
5) Using Hidden Text
Hidden text is text with the same color as the background color of your page.
For example, if the background color of your page is white and you have added
some white text to that page, that is considered as hidden text. Many
webmasters, in order to get high rankings in the search engines, try to make
their pages as keyword rich as possible. However, there is a limit to the number
of keywords you can repeat in a page without making it sound odd to your human
visitors. Thus, in order to ensure that the human visitors to a page don't
perceive the text to be odd, but that the page is still keyword rich, many
webmasters add text (containing the keywords) with the same color as the
background color. This ensures that while the search engines can see the
keywords, the human visitors cannot. The search engines have long since caught
up with this technique, and ignore or penalize the pages which contain such
text. They may also penalize the entire site if even one of the pages in that
site contain such hidden text.
However, the problem with this is that the search engines may often end up
penalizing sites which did not intend to use hidden text. For instance, suppose
you have a page with a white background and a table in that page with a black
background. Further suppose that you have added some white text in that table.
This text will, in fact, be visible to your human visitors, i.e. this shouldn't
be called hidden text. However, the search engines can interpret this to be
hidden text because they may often ignore the fact that the background of the
table is black. Hence, in order to ensure that your site is not penalized
because of this, you should go through all the pages in your site and see
whether you have inadvertently made any such mistake.
6) Creating Pages Containing Only Graphics
The search engines only understand text - they don't understand graphics. Hence,
if your site contains lots of graphics but little text, it is unlikely to get a
high ranking in the search engines. For improving your rankings, you need to
replace the graphics by keyword rich text for the search engine spiders to feed
on.
7) Not Using the NOFRAMES Tag In Case Your Site Uses Frames
Many search engines don't understand frames. For sites which have used frames,
these search engines only consider what is present in the NOFRAMES tag. Yet,
many webmasters make the mistake of adding something like this to the NOFRAMES
tag: "This site uses frames, but your browser doesn't support them". For the
search engines which don't understand frames, this is all the text that they
ever get to see in this site, which means that the chances of this site getting
a good ranking in these search engines are non-existent. Hence, if your site
uses frames, you need to add a lot of keyword rich text to the NOFRAMES tag. For
more information on the different issues that arise when you use frames in your
site, see my article on this topic.
8) Using Page Cloaking
Page cloaking is a technique used to deliver different web pages under different
circumstances. People generally use page cloaking for two reasons: i) in order
to hide the source code of their search engine optimized pages from their
competitors and ii) in order to prevent human visitors from having to see a page
which looks good to the search engines but does not necessarily look good to
humans. The problem with this is that when a site uses cloaking, it prevents the
search engines from being able to spider the same page that their users are
going to see. And if the search engines can't do this, they can no longer be
confident of providing relevant results to their users. Thus, if a search engine
discovers that a site has used cloaking, it will probably ban the site forever
from their index. Hence, my advice is that you should not even think about using
cloaking in your site. For more information on what page cloaking is, how it is
implemented, and why you should not use cloaking, see my article on this topic.
9) Using Automatic Submission Tools
In order to save time, many people use an automatic submission software or
service to submit their sites to the major search engines. It is true that
submitting your site manually to the search engines takes a lot of time and that
an automatic submission tool can help you save a lot of time. However, the
search engines don't like automatic submission tools and may ignore your pages
if you use them. In my opinion, the major search engines are simply too
important for you not to spend the time to submit your site manually to them. In
order to speed up the process of submitting your site, you can use our free
submission tool which allows you to submit your site manually to all the search
engines, without having to go to the "ADD URL" pages of the individual engines.
It is available here.
10) Submitting Too Many Pages Per Day
People often make the mistake of submitting too many pages per day to the search
engines. This often results in the search engines simply ignoring many of the
pages which have been submitted from that site. Ideally, you should submit no
more than 1 page per day to the search engines. While many search engines accept
more than 1 page per day from a particular domain, there are some which only
accept 1 page per day. Hence, by limiting yourself to a maximum of one page per
day, you ensure that you stay within the limits of all the search engines.
11) Devoting Too Much Time to Search Engine Positioning
Yes - I lied. There's another common mistake that people make when it comes to
search engine optimization - they spend too much time over it. Sure, search
engine placement is the most cost effective way of driving traffic to your site
and you do need to spend some time every day learning how the search engines
work and in optimizing your site for the search engines. However, you must
remember that search engine optimization is a means to an end for you - it's not
the end in itself. The end is to increase the sales of your products and
services. Hence, apart from trying to improve your site's position in the search
engines, you also need to spend time on all the other factors which determine
the success or the failure of your web site - the quality of the products and
services that you are selling, the quality of your customer service, and so on.
You may have excellent rankings in the search engines, but if the quality of
your products and services are poor, or if your customer service leaves a lot to
be desired, those high rankings aren't going to do much good.
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Article by Sumantra Roy. Sumantra is one of the most respected and recognized
search engine positioning specialists on the Internet. For more articles on
search engine placement, subscribe to his 1st Search Ranking Newsletter by
sending a blank email to 1stSearchRanking.999.99@optinpro.com or by going to
http://www.1stSearchRanking.net
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