Whether you’ve been optimizing your web pages for quite some time or are new to the strategy, everyone makes mistakes. While the bad news is that these mistakes can have a significant effect on your page ranking, the good news is, they’re reversible. Here are five SEO mistakes to avoid (And if you’ve already made them, not to worry, you can make changes and move forward with your SEO strategy).
SEO Mistake #1 – Not using keywords correctly.
Many webmasters are concerned about being banned from the search engines for keyword spamming or stuffing so they limit the use of keywords on their web pages. As long as your content sounds natural and reads easily, the chances are you have not overused your keywords.
Make sure your keywords are included in the first paragraph, in your headings and in your title and meta tags.
SEO Mistake #2 – Trying to fool search engine spiders.
Search engines are a lot more sophisticated than most of us realize. They recognize, and penalize, hidden text, keyword spamming, and cloaking, which is showing different content to the search engine spiders than to your visitors. All of these practices only serve to hurt your page ranking and can in fact cause your website to be banned by the search engines, which means no one will find you and no traffic means no profits.
SEO Mistake #3 – Using Flash
Flash is a great presentation tool and can be dramatic and effective if used sparingly. It’s particularly appropriate if you have a media related website and want to demonstrate your industry savvy however for most website owners, it’s just not necessary and can harm your page ranking. Search engine spiders cannot read content embedded in Flash files, which means they’re not recognized or indexed.
SEO Mistake #4 – Using Your Company Name As a Title Tag
Unless you’re branding your company name, your company name shouldn’t’ be the only element in your title tag. Feel free to include it, however it’s also important to use your primary keyword for each webpage title tag. This is more useful for your customers and helps the search engines identify the various pages on your site.
SEO Mistake #5 – Using A Splash Page
A splash page, in case you’re unfamiliar, is a web page with a large graphic or company logo, and a link to enter the site. This is an ineffective strategy for a number of reasons:
* No keyword rich text on the page, nothing for the spiders to index.
* Only one internal link on the page
* These pages often have a redirect which often causes spiders to ignore them
If search engine optimization is important to your business, you may need to forgo the splash page. Your home page should be easy to navigate, content rich, and link visitors and spiders to other main web pages.
In general, unless you’re trying to outsmart the search engines and using nefarious tactics, the majority of search engine mistakes are reversible. If you’ve committed a few of these mistakes, simply correcting them can increase your page ranking almost immediately. Take some time to evaluate your SEO strategy and eliminate these SEO mistakes.
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Hi Mark, I must admit I have been guilty of not using keywords correctly, but I am trying to get better and at least I do some research now rather than just guess work, thanks for those tips, I will make sure I apply them all in future, Sally
Mark,
I have made all of those mistakes…live and learn. If this where a ‘top 6′ I could add not using categories correctly. Maybe this could fall under number 1, keyword!
Thanks again for sharing great information…
Todd
Hiya Mark,
I to am guilty of misused keyword placement, and I
think that everybody especially those of us who are just
starting out into the internet marketing industry
definitely fall into this trap.
Also, not from “experience myself of course” know from
doing extensive research myself that using “black hat”
techniques to fool the search engines is stupid, and
and short term because when the spiders catch you
your done!
Thanks for the tips this is good info.
Your friend in the “BIZ”…………Scott.
Hi Mark,
Good points. I don’t think that I’m guilty of any but I’m still having a nightmare getting an alexa ranking. Still at least it keeps my persecution complex happy.
Have fun,
Mike