11 Deadly Sins of SEO

There is so much misinformation floating through the cyberspace regarding hunt engine selling and optimisation that it's important to cast some visible light on a few common mistakes and misconceptions. The followers listing foregrounds some of the most critical issues involved in determining the success or failure of a web site's hunt engine optimisation and selling strategies.

1. Lack of "Search Friendly" Content. Every hebdomad I reexamine web land sites with no existent hunt engine indexable content. Web pages composed mostly of graphics, flash and other bells and whistle are commonly over-looked side the hunt engines. Search engines find what content is of value per web page based on the textual matter used on that page. A truly optimized land site should incorporate at least 200 words of keyword-dense text. There is some argument among experts on exactly how many words should be used, but generally 200 words will suffice. As a point of mention this paragraph incorporates about 200 words. It is equally of import for textual matter content to incorporate keywords that lucifer the page titles. For example, a land site merchandising peanut butter owned by a company called "ACME Foods" might have got a statute title of "Acme Foods, Inc. Wholesale Food Products". We have got to see how many people are likely to seek for the term "Acme Foods, Inc. Wholesale Food Products" it is much more than likely that people will seek for the term "peanut butter". Knowing this, we can state with assurance that it would be a wiser pick to statute title a page, "Peanut Butter, acme Foods" and the page content should reflect this same keyword strategy.

2. Insufficient Link Popularity. Search engines do every effort to measure up the consequences which are displayed in hunt results. One of the ways that they make this is by trailing the figure and quality of the incoming golf course to a web site. A land site with a big figure of incoming golf course from quality land sites is given a higher ranking in hunt results. This is an of import consideration that is sometimes over-looked side those attempting to marketplace web sites. Services that promise to associate your land site to one thousands of other land sites are far from productive; in fact they can sometimes make more than injury than good. Most hunt engines these years see services like this to be spam, so called "link farming" and often give land sites with these types of golf course a low ranking or driblet them all-together from the hunt results. Incoming golf course to a land land land site that compliment it and are relevant to the site table of contents are aureate and can greatly hike a site's ranking. Google's page ranking system is a good example. A land land site with a page rank of 1 if given a nexus from a site with a page rank of 8 can see its page rank encouragement to 4! Link popularity is one of the most clip consuming and hard facets of hunt engine optimization. It's no wonderment that many of the hunt engines give so much importance to this web land site measurement.

3. Lack of Keyword Research And Updates So, you have got a web site. Bash you cognize what pages in your web land site are generating the most interest? Bash you cognize what footing people are searching for that consequence in them finding your site? Probably not. Let's usage the peanut butter analogy again. You have a web land site that sells peanut butter. You pass some money on paid hunt advertising, logically; you presume that the cardinal phrase "peanut butter" is a premier campaigner to target. What happens? usually one of two things, one, the term peanut butter is such as a popular hunt term that thirty million other web land sites are competing for the same key phrase. Two, the term peanut butter is so unpopular that it's unlikely that it's searched for more than than once in this lifetime. Proper keyword research can work out these problems. Let's say for the interest of statement that keyword research is performed and that it is determined that a important figure of people are searching for "organic peanut butter". It just so haps that our peanut butter company fabricates a whole line of organic, all natural peanut butter. We have got discovered a niche. The right amount of people searching for the specific merchandise that we desire to sell. It's the perfect match. So, what must be done to capitalise on our findings? First we optimize our web pages for our mark keyword, we change the title, and the content so that they include the term "organic peanut butter", then we trash all of the paid hunt advertisement that wasn't working and focusing on targeting our "organic peanut butter" market. The point is, successful hunt engine selling trusts on changeless research and updates the cyberspace is unstable and evolving. What works today might not work tomorrow, we have got to be able to place strengths and failings in our cyberspace selling political campaigns and must be prepared to research, update and adapt.

4. Design First, Optimizing Later I have got seen this error repeated 100s of times. Even experienced web interior designers neglect to see the consequences of designing determinations on hunt optimisation until it's too late. What is the point of disbursement one thousands of dollars for a well "designed" web land site if cipher ever sees it? Consult a hunt engine specializer early in the designing process. Even if your web land land site selling scheme trusts heavily on paid hunt advertisement a audience with a professional optimisation expert may expose flaws in your site's layout. Points in the flowing of information that be given to do users to lose involvement or go confused may go apparent, better to turn to these issues early on.

5. Relying Too Heavily On Paid Search Ad This is a error made by Luck 500 companies and little concerns alike. The fact is that most businesses, little and big aren't getting it right. The principle is that since hunt advertisement can be purchased it isn't necessary to concentrate on hunt optimisation techniques. On the surface this mightiness do some sense, you can purchase certain keyword phrases that people are searching for, so why trouble oneself optimizing your land site for the hunt engines? For a company with a immense cyberspace advertisement budget this agency disbursement immense amounts of money to drive traffic to their sites, when, if their land site had been properly optimized from the beginning, these costs might be half as much for the same amount of viewers. For many littler concerns trying to vie in the cyberspace marketplace simply goes overwhelming. While paid hunt advertisement is a highly effectual agency of targeting an audience, organic hunt optimisation greatly increases the opportunities of success for any web site. Brand certain that the land site you are advertisement is one that people can happen easily without the aid of a paid hunt campaign.

6. Not Supporting the Conversion Procedure A few hebdomads ago my married woman decided that she wanted to purchase some Australian made babe clothing that we can't happen here in the states. So being the cyberspace understanding father to be, I decided to have got a expression on the cyberspace for the peculiar trade name she was interested in. I breaker to a hunt engine and type in the trade name name. A few secs later I'm greeted with a listing of web land sites that supposedly have got what I'm looking for. I chink on the first land site in the list. I happen myself at the land site of a clothes importer based out of California. There are golf course to respective classes of clothing, none of which look to have got anything to make with babies, eventually after a batch of searching I happen a nexus on the children's clothes page for baby garments. The baby garments page have a few mental images of clothes but not the trade name I'm looking for. I look to see if there is manner to seek for clothes by trade name name. There isn't. I look to see if there is a listing somewhere on the land site of trade name name calling carried by this distributor. There isn't. I look to see if there is a toll free figure to call. There isn't. The cyberspace optimisation portion of my encephalon is boiling by this point, so to add abuse to hurt I travel back to the children's garments subdivision of the site. I chink on a nexus to buy a bright greenness jacket. I'm confronted with a page that is requiring me to fill up in a clump of personal details. Ok, so I fill up in the inside information and chink submit. Now I happen myself back at the bright greenness jacket page. Apparently now I'm qualified to buy something. I chink the "check out" button. The web page travels blank. I cognize that this is the consequence of bad programming. I cognize what's going to go on next. "Error 404 page not found". Have this type of thing happened to you? If you have got ever tried to buy something on the internet, I'm sure it has. This is an illustration of a web land land site that is well ranked in the hunt engines but have not taken the clip to make a site that is designed for its users. I was forced to Hunt through the web land site to seek and happen what I was looking for. The flowing of information was counter-intuitive. There was no online support. All-in-all the whole land site was a joke. I would be surprised to larn that the land site in inquiry made any gross sales at all, ever. There were respective points in this online experience that I felt like giving up. In the industry this is known as "abandonment", This is a critical point in what is known as the "conversion process", the enactment of turning web land site viewing audience into online purchasers. This is an issue that should never be underestimated. In fact it is the figure 1 factor that finds a web site's success or failure. A web land site with a million dollar selling budget and billions of visitants will not win unless it functions to understand its user's demands and expect its viewer's questions.

7. Artwork Used For Text Links. Web interior designers often utilize artwork to stand for a nexus in a web site. There are many grounds for this choice. Unfortunately for web designers, the major cyberspace browsers show web pages in different ways. Since founts show differently on individual computing machines and in different browsers, it is a much simpler proposition for interior designers to make graphical golf course than it is to try to make cross-browser text links. The downside to this work-around is that hunt engines have got no thought if a graphical nexus associates to a specific web page or a nexus to download the up-to-the-minute Britney Spears MP3. For hunt engines to understand what a nexus is truly representing, they necessitate to happen words in plain, good old fashioned text. If a web land site must utilize artwork for pilotage it is of import to include a set of apparent textual matter golf course somewhere on the web page, usually at the underside of the page.

8. Use of Frames. Search engines have got a difficult clip indexing land sites that are created in frames. Framed land sites utilize respective hypertext markup language data files to expose one page. Search engines are often confused by the frameworks method of creating web sites, usually only indexing the first hypertext markup language data file within the framPages that aren't indexed will never demo up in hunt engine results. Also, many people that usage the cyberspace regularly for research and purchases, so called "power users", be given to avoid land land sites built with frames, especially those sites which necessitate the user to coil content in separate frames. Simply put, frameworks are bad.

9. Splash Pages. Entry pages that instruct the user to "Enter", usually decorated with a big graphical or a flash animation. The index page of a web land site is the 1 that hunt engines read first. More often than not the lone readable content on this type of page is a nexus that says, "skip intro" Splash pages deficiency indexable content, usually incorporate no golf course and often incorporate a "redirect" to the existent place page. Search engines make not like redirects, they desire the existent thing. Avoid splash pages unless you aren't serious about being establish by hunt engines.

10. Submitting To 10,000 Search Engines I sometimes have got a hard clip believing that these services are still making money, more than importantly that people still believe that they work. The fact is that a smattering of hunt engines business relationship for about 90% of all the web traffic generated and the remainder come ups from people typing in a web site's uniform resource locator indirectly into their browser's computer address bar. The amount of viewing audience generated from these Mega-Search Submittal services is so negligible that it's hardly deserving consideration. Don't blow your clip or your money.

11. Not Clearly Defining Action Points Another error that is repeated quite is often is the failure to clearly define what the aims of a web land site are. What are the chief ends of a site? Who will the primary audience be? What actions are desired of the site's visitors? If these inquiries aren't answered prior to designing a land site they will reflect a mediocre user experience in the concluding result. Action points or phone calls to action are a nomenclature handed down from the traditional selling world. They function to define a desired action and are often supported by persuasive gross sales copy. Though the basic conceptions are the same as traditional marketing, names to action can take many different word forms on the internet. Often they look as golf course or as portion of a shopping cart. The nature of a web land site finds its type of action point. The most of import thing to see is that without them, viewing audience have got small or no thought what the intent of your land site is. Imagine an infomercial running a one-half hr long advertizement on television, yet the observer states nil during the whole ad, just stand ups there holding a composition board box, you are left trying to think what's inside, the advertizement offerings no accounts or intends of contacting the company involved. Pointless isn't it? This is exactly what a web land site without clearly defined points of action accomplishes; nothing. It's an exercising in futility.