"Top 10 Search Engine Positioning Mistakes!"
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?
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.
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.
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.
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 at
http://www.1stSearchRanking.com/t.cgi?2064&submission.htm
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.
|
