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Top 10 Search Engine Positioning Mistakes
By Sumantra Roy
Top 10 Search Engine Positioning Mistakes - The top mistakes that people make
when they try to optimize their site for the search engines
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 at
at this location
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 at
this location.
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 at
this location
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 at this location
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
this location
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.
Article by Sumantra Roy.
Sumantra is one of the most respected search engine positioning
specialists on the Internet. To have Sumantra's company place your site at the top of the
search engines, go to
1stSearchEngineRanking.
For more advice on how you can take your web site to the top of the search engines,
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