6/10/2011

10 Costly Search Engine Mistakes to Avoid

By Malcolm Chua


If you've got a website then you already know the importance of visitors. Visitors would be to Internet advertising as location would be to real estate. It's the only thing that truly matters. If you cannot generate targeted visitors to your website, you'll not make any sales. Generally the owner or designer of the site is the individual designated to drive traffic to the web site. The chief ingredient in generating visitors is the search engine. Of coarse, you are able to use advertising, but it's going to price you. Utilizing the search engines to generate targeted (interested in your product) visitors is the least expensive approach known.

Sadly, several web site owners don't realize the importance of search engine visibility, which leads to visitors. They place much more importance on producing a "pretty" site. Not that this is bad, but it is really secondary to search engine placement. Hopefully, the following list of typical mistakes, made by several web site owners, will assist you generate a lot more targeted visitors to your website...after all, is not that what you want.

1. Not utilizing keywords effectively.

This is possibly 1 of the most critical area of site design. Choose the right keywords and potential clients will locate your web site. Use the wrong ones and your web site will see small, if any, traffic.

2. Repeating the exact same keywords.

When you use the same keywords over and over once more (known as keyword stacking) the search engines may possibly downgrade (or skip) the page or web site.

3. Robbing pages from other websites.

How many times have you heard or read that "this is the web and it is ok" to steal icons and text from websites to make use of on your site. Don't do it. Its one thing to learn from other people who have been there and another to outright copy their work. The search engines are very smart and generally detect page duplication. They may even prevent you from ever being listed by them.

4. Making use of keywords which are not related to your website.

Several unethical web site owners attempt to gain search engine visibility by making use of keywords that have nothing at all to do with their website. They location unrelated keywords in a page (like "sex", the name of a known celebrity, the hot search topic of the day, etc.) inside a meta tag for a page. The keyword doesn't have anything to do with the page topic. However, since the keyword is popular, they think this will boost their visibility. This method is considered spam by the search engines and may trigger the page (or occasionally the whole site) to be removed from the search engine listing.

5. Keyword stuffing.

Somewhat like keyword stacking listed above, this means to assign numerous keywords to the description of a graphic or layer that appears on your website by utilizing the "alt=" HTML parameter. If the search engines locate that this text does not actually describe the graphic or layer it will be considered spam.

6. Relying on hidden text.

You could be inclined to think that should you can't see it, it does not hurt. Wrong.... Do not try to hide your keywords or keyword phrases by making them invisible. As an example, some unethical designers my set the keywords to the same color as the background of the internet page; thereby, making it invisible.

7. Relying on tiny text.

This is another version of the item above (relying on hidden text). Don't attempt to hide your keywords or keyword phrases by making them tiny. Setting the text size of the keywords so small that it can barely be seen does this.

8. Assuming all search engines are the same.

Numerous individuals assume that each search engine plays by the exact same rules. This isn't so. Every has their own rule base and is subject to change anytime they so desire. Make it a point to understand what each main search engine requires for high visibility.

9. Making use of totally free web hosting.

Don't use totally free internet hosting if you are truly serious about increasing web site traffic via search engine visibility. Several times the search engines will eliminate content from these free hosts.

10. Forgetting to check for missing internet page elements.

Make sure to check every page inside your website for completeness, like missing links, graphics, etc. There are sites on the internet which will do this for free of charge.

This is just several of the methods and techniques that you should steer clear of. Do not give in to the temptation that these strategies will work for you. They will do more harm than great for your web site.

Not only will you spend weeks of wasted effort, you may have your site banned from the search engines forever. Invest just a little time to understand the correct techniques for growing search engine visibility and your net traffic will increase.




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