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How to Avoid Costly Search Engine Mistakes
If
you have a website then you already know the importance
of traffic. Traffic is to Internet marketing as location
is to real estate. It's the only thing that really matters.
If you cannot generate targeted visitors to your site,
you will not make any sales.
Usually
the owner or designer of the website is the person designated
to drive traffic to the site. The chief ingredient in
generating traffic is the search engine. Of coarse,
you can use advertising, but it's going to cost you.
Using the search engines to generate targeted (interested
in your product) traffic is the least expensive method
known.
Unfortunately,
many website owners do not understand the importance
of search engine visibility, which leads to traffic.
They place more importance on producing a "pretty"
website. Not that this is bad, but it is really secondary
to search engine placement. Hopefully, the following
list of common mistakes, made by many website owners,
will help you generate more targeted traffic to your
site...after all, isn't that what you want.
1.
Not using keywords effectively.
This is probably one of the most critical area of site
design. Choose the right keywords and potential customers
will find your site. Use the wrong ones and your site
will see little, if any, traffic.
2.
Repeating the same keywords.
When you use the same keywords over and over again (called
keyword stacking) the search engines may downgrade (or
skip) the page or site.
3.
Robbing pages from other websites.
How many times have you heard or read that "this
is the Internet and it's ok" to steal icons and
text from websites to use on your site. Don't do it.
Its one thing to learn from others who have been there
and another to outright copy their work. The search
engines are very smart and usually detect page duplication.
They may even prevent you from ever being listed by
them.
4.
Using keywords that are not related to your website.
Many unethical website owners try to gain search engine
visibility by using keywords that have nothing at all
to do with their website. They place unrelated keywords
in a page (such as "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 technique is considered spam by the search engines
and may cause the page (or sometimes the whole site)
to be removed from the search engine listing.
5.
Keyword stuffing.
Somewhat like keyword stacking listed above, this means
to assign multiple keywords to the description of a
graphic or layer that appears on your website by using
the "alt=" HTML parameter. If the search engines
find that this text does not really describe the graphic
or layer it will be considered spam.
6.
Relying on hidden text.
You might be inclined to think that if you cannot see
it, it doesn't hurt. Wrong.... Do not try to hide your
keywords or keyword phrases by making them invisible.
For example, some unethical designers my set the keywords
to the same color as the background of the web page;
thereby, making it invisible.
7.
Relying on tiny text.
This is another version of the item above (relying on
hidden text). Do not try 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.
Many people assume that each search engine plays by
the same rules. This is not so. Each has their own rule
base and is subject to change anytime they so desire.
Make it a point to learn what each major search engine
requires for high visibility.
9.
Using free web hosting.
Do not use free web hosting if you are really serious
about increasing site traffic via search engine visibility.
Many times the search engines will eliminate content
from these free hosts.
10.
Forgetting to check for missing web page elements.
Make sure to check every page in your website for completeness,
like missing links, graphics, etc. There are sites on
the web that will do this for free.
This
is just a few of the methods and techniques that you
should avoid. Do not give in to the temptation that
these methods will work for you. They will do more harm
than good for your website.
Not
only will you spend weeks of wasted effort, you may
have your site banned from the search engines forever.
Invest a little time to learn the proper techniques
for increasing search engine visibility and your net
traffic will increase.
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