While getting to the top of search engines is one of our priorities, many tend to overlook the things they should avoid while implementing their SEO strategies.

Following are the 9 Biggest SEO Mistakes which Web Designers & Web Developers should avoid.

Splash Page

I’ve seen this mistake many times where people put up just a big banner image and a link “Click here to enter” on their homepage. The worst case — the “enter” link is embedded in the Flash object, which makes it impossible for the spiders to follow the link.

This is fine if you don’t care about what a search engine knows about your site; otherwise, you’re making a BIG mistake. Your homepage is probably your website’s highest ranking page and gets crawled frequently by web spiders. Your internal pages will not appear in the search engine index without the proper linking structure to internal pages for the spider to follow.

Your homepage should include (at minimum) target keywords and links to important pages.

Non-spiderable Flash Menus

Many designers make this mistake by using Flash menus such as those fade-in and animated menus. They might look cool to you but they can’t be seen by the search engines; and thus the links in the Flash menu will not be followed.

Image and Flash Content

Web spiders are like a text-based browser, they can’t read the text embedded in the graphic image or Flash. Most designers make this mistake by embedding the important content (such as target keywords) in Flash and image.

Overuse of Ajax

A lot of developers are trying to impress their visitor by implementing massive Ajax features (particularly for navigation purposes), but did you know that it is a big SEO mistake? Because, ajax content is loaded dynamically, so it is not spiderable or indexable by search engines.

Another disadvantage of Ajax — since the address URL doesn’t reload, your visitor can not send the current page to their friends.

Versioning of Theme Design

For some reason, some designers love to version their theme design into sub level folders (i.e. domain.com/v2, v3, v4) and redirect to the new folder. Constantly changing the main root location may cause you to lose backlink counts and ranking.

“Click Here” Link Anchor Text

You probably see this a lot where people use “Click here” or “Learn more” as the linking text. This is great if you want to be ranked high for “Click Here”. But, if you want to tell the search engine that your page is important for a topic, than use, that topic/keyword in your link anchor text. It’s much more descriptive (and relevant) to say “learn more about {keyword topic}”

Warning: Don’t use the EXACT same anchor text everywhere on your website. This can sometimes be seen as search engine spam too.

Common Title Tag Mistakes

Same or similar title text:
Every page on your site should have a unique <title> tag with the target keywords in it. Many developers make the mistake of having the same or similar title tags throughout the entire site. That’s like telling the search engine that EVERY page on your site refers to the same topic and one isn’t any more unique than the other.

One good example of bad Title Tag use would be the default WordPress theme. In case you didn’t know, the title tag of the default WordPress theme isn’t that useful: Site Name > Blog Archive > Post Title. Why isn’t this search engine friendly? Because, every single blog post will have the same text “Site Name > Blog Archive >” at the beginning of the Title Tag. If you really want to include the site name in the title tag, it should be at the end: Post Title | Site Name.

Exceeding the 65 character limit:

Many bloggers write very long post titles. So what? In search engine result pages, your title tag is used as the link heading. You have about 65 characters (including spaces) to get your message across or risk it getting cutoff.

Keyword stuffing the title:

Another common mistake people tend to make is overfilling the title tag with keywords. Saying the same thing 3 times doesn’t make you more relevant. Keyword stuffing in the Title Tag is looked at as search engine spam (not good). But it might be smart to repeat the same word in different ways:

“Photo Tips & Photography Techniques for Great Pictures” “Photo” and “Photography” are the same word repeated twice but in different ways because your audience might use either one when performing a search query.

Empty Image Alt Attribute

You should always describe your image in the alt attribute. The alt attribute is what describes your image to a blind web user. Guess what? Search engines can’t see images so your alt attribute is a factor in illustrating what your page is relevant for.

Hint: Properly describing your images can help your ranking in the image search results. For example, Google image search brings me hundreds of referrals everyday for the search terms “abstract” and “dj”.

Unfriendly URLs

Most blog or CMS platforms have a friendly URL feature built-in, however, not every blogger is taking advantage of this. Friendly URL’s are good for both your human audience and the search engines. The URL is also an important spot where your keywords should appear.

Example of Friendly URL: domain.com/page-title Example of Dynamic URL: domain.com/?p=12356

These things are the pillars of Search Engine Optimization and so to your web site’s success path.

Related Post

• November 8, 2008 — Getting High Pagerank
• November 5, 2008 — Are You Up There With Your SEO?
• October 10, 2008 — Promote Your Website and Blog
• July 16, 2008 — Death of SEO
• May 21, 2008 — Truth About Search Engines
• March 9, 2008 — Rank high in Google

Any seasoned webmaster or blog owners know the importance of having a high pagerank site and one way to achieve that is to get a backlink from another high pagerank site back to yours. But it is not always easy as they might not want to put your link on their site.

Well, you can start with this one. PR10s.com is giving it free for you to submit your link into its site. go here to submit www.pr10s.com

It is free for now and those 5 letter domain name will get hot very soon so why not just submit your link there while it is free.

Cheers and Enjoy!

Related Post

• May 8, 2009 — Avoiding Top SEO Mistakes
• November 5, 2008 — Are You Up There With Your SEO?
• October 10, 2008 — Promote Your Website and Blog
• July 16, 2008 — Death of SEO
• May 21, 2008 — Truth About Search Engines
• March 9, 2008 — Rank high in Google

You have optimized your website for winning keywords, are mid-way with your link building campaign, and have been going absolutely crazy creating fresh SEO friendly content that pleases the users and search engines.

You are obviously very serious about your online business, and yet you cannot seem to cross the Rank # 20, Page 2 barrier of Google search listing for your primary keywords.

A series of questions arise from the imaginary situation above:

1. Why is my ranking for the particular keyword not going up?
2. Am I missing out on any SEO strategies?
3. Maybe I am not building enough links? How much will be enough?
4. Do I have to improve my content quality?
5. The search engine has changed their algorithm (again)
6. Others are using illegal SEO techniques

Now while one could go over the questions in your head, read up on latest search engine algorithms, contact a SEO expert, or blindly start buying links out of desperation, there is an easier way to find your answers.

Simply ask why are the other 10 websites ranking before your website?

Now that does not mean that the above questions 1 to 6 are not relevant, but simply put, one of the easiest ways to boost your search rankings is to study the top 5 to ten websites for your keyword and then apply what working for them into your own strategies.

Now I am not asking you to copy the competition or have a strategy that just involves beating the competition at the ranking game. It never works. What is needed is a better balance between your company’s SEO strategies and of those of your competitors.

Like in any business strategy, you have to know your competitors, study what strategies they are using, and then apply the best of those strategies to your own game plan.

In the same way, in defining the SEO path ahead for your website you must analyze your competition. What are they doing to rank in the top 10 that you are not doing? After all those websites are listed on the top for a reason, and they are applying SEO strategies that the search engine in particular seems to like.

Now while finding the answers to those questions in the real business world may be difficult, in the online world all you have to do is to right-click and view the source of the page.

The below simple steps will open up a world of information to you.

1. Does the domain name contain the keyword? If the link is a sub domain then does the sub domain contain the keyword?

2. In what Meta tags, title, etc has the competition placed their keywords?

3. Does the link name contain the keyword? eg. www.seo-optimization-experts.com/mumbai-seo-expert.html

4. How many keywords are listed in the keyword tag i.e. is the page focused around one or two keywords, or is it a jumble of keywords listed out.

5. Is the title and description captivating enough? How has the keyword/s been placed in the title and description and at what position?

6. Is the page graphic intensive? Is the site using a lot flash or active server pages? Search engines cannot understand graphics, only the text it can read on the page. Make sure there is a good balance between the graphics and content.

7. How long is the body text? Writing 400 to 600 words is normally fine.

8. Has the keyword (keyword weight) been used appropriately in the body content? Ideally the first 25 words of content should be keyword rich, and the keyword should appear after every 100 words in remaining content.

9. Is the content interesting to you as the reader? Does the content follow a theme? Is the content relevant to what keyword the page has been optimized for?

10. What is the page rank of the page (You can check page rank of any website by downloading the Google Toolbar at http://toolbar.google.com.

11. Which is the first place in the source code the keyword appears?

12. Has the keyword been used appropriately in headline tags and link text?

13. Does the site use java script, tables, frames, dynamic content, CMS etc?

14. Is the page focused around a theme?

15. How many inbound links are there to the page? You can check the link popularity of the page on www.marketleap.com? Visit the sites that have given the link. What is their page rank? What is the link text that describes the link to the website? Has the keyword been used in the link text?

16. How many pages does the site have?

17. Does the site have a good site map that lists all the content pages, videos on the site that search engine spiders can crawly easily?

18. Are there any 404 errors on the website?

19. What is the domain name extension e.g. .com,. net, .edu, .co.in

20. How long has that domain name been in existence? Search engines rank those sites better that have been around for a while, or those that plan to be around for a while?

21. How many directories has that page/website been submitted to?

Please note that sometimes you will find no reasons why the competitors’ website is ranked above yours. And that’s ok. I have experienced many cases of certain sites which go against the search engines guidelines (set by search engines themselves), and yet they rank above meticulously optimized pages.

Search engines are constantly trying to remove badly optimized or spam pages which offer little or no value to the users. Our intent here is not to focus on the missing pieces/loopholes of search engines algorithms or isolated instances of sites that don’t deserve it and yet are ranking high, but to work within the framework and guidelines for the long haul.

By mapping out the answers to the above questions (preferable on a spread sheet), you will find the overall patterns of what is working for those sites and why, and then figure out ways to modify your SEO strategies to improve your rankings.

Related Post

• May 8, 2009 — Avoiding Top SEO Mistakes
• November 8, 2008 — Getting High Pagerank
• October 10, 2008 — Promote Your Website and Blog
• July 16, 2008 — Death of SEO
• May 21, 2008 — Truth About Search Engines
• March 9, 2008 — Rank high in Google

By just having a beautiful website will not get you anywhere if you don’t start promoting it. You need to start drawing attention to the public about your new website.

While at times new websites can experience organic search rankings in a matter of months, for the most part, it can take well over a year before you start to see any progress, and that is if you start promoting right away!

SEO
If your new website has not been properly optimized for the search engines, then this is a necessary first step you must take. Ensure that your new site has integrated the appropriate keywords into all the fundamental areas of the site. Without this critical step of optimizing your site, in many cases no level of promotion will help you get those search rankings.

Press Releases
The first thing you should do when your site goes live is issue a press release. Be sure to include a link back to your website, preferably with your target phrase hyperlinked as well. Submit this press release to an aggregator such as PRWeb. This will help get the word out that your site is live, draw some attention from the public, and also get you that first valuable link to your website.

Search Engine Submission
This days search engines will find your site on their own, and submitting to them is not necessary. If you feel you must submit your site to the engines, submit it only once and shortly after the site goes live.

In order to help the search engines fully spider your new site, the best thing you can do in terms of submissions, is to create and submit an XML sitemap. Submit this sitemap to your Google Webmaster Tools account, and also be sure to include a call to it within your robots.txt file by adding the following line including a complete path to your sitemap:

Sitemap: http://www.domain.com/sitemap.xml

There are many tools out there to help you build your xml sitemap. Google has placed a list of some of these tools on their “Third Party Programs” page.

Link Building
There are a number of ways you can work to grow your back links. Today they play a significant role in search rankings for most industries, especially in Google. While the future will almost undoubtedly still see search value in links, even if that value declines, or disappears entirely, quality links can still help drive traffic as well, and a strong base of inbound links can deliver you customers well into the future.

Explore the different ways to build links to your site. A steady progressive rise in inbound links will help Google look positively in your direction. Do not be afraid of reciprocal links either. If you are trading with highly relevant websites to your industry, then you should have nothing to be afraid of.

Social Media
Promotion largely consists of building links and becoming recognized by the search engines, but in order to help you build those links, getting your name and brand out there can really do wonders. By increasing awareness of your site and product, the public will often help create the buzz you need, and often, this can result in fresh links to your website.

To help get your site in the eyes of as many people as possible, take a look into Social Media and consider creating profiles on some of the popular platforms. This can include creating a YouTube account and uploading instructional, informational, or interesting product videos. You can set up a Facebook page, and work to build a community around your product. Create a profile page on Squidoo, MySpace, and Flickr, amongst many others.

These pages often act as backlinks to your site, and also help spread awareness. Your use of social media does not have to be exactly about your company. For instance, let’s say you sell cars. Your use of the social platform, while it may note your business, can focus on other car info including trivia, news, photos, etc. The key is to keep it relevant, not identical – you are not looking to create a mirror of your site.

Article Writing
Write articles about the subject of your website and submit them to various services such as EzineArticles. Consider also writing for your blog to help grow your site content. By writing and distributing relevant articles you can create a nice cushion of relevant incoming links. By writing articles that closely match the topic of your site, and including a link back to relevant content within your site, you can help out not only with search engine rankings, but by creating an extra traffic stream for your site.

Summary
In general, reference your website everywhere possible. Get links from every relevant source you can think of, issue a press release, and get your site listed in the key directories for your industry. The more eyes you can put your URL in front of and the more relevant sites you can get to link back to yours, the sooner you will start to see progress in the search engines.

For many industries it can literally take years to get those coveted first page results – in some industries it may be near impossible, but if you want a chance, you need to start promoting that new site of yours immediately.

Related Post

• May 8, 2009 — Avoiding Top SEO Mistakes
• November 8, 2008 — Getting High Pagerank
• November 5, 2008 — Are You Up There With Your SEO?
• July 16, 2008 — Death of SEO
• May 21, 2008 — Truth About Search Engines
• March 9, 2008 — Rank high in Google

It used to work before but not anymore. We heard this many times and have seen too many of it. As search engine getting smarter each day, many SEO experts are left with no clues of what is going on. It used to be so simple – yeah that was many years back when search engines were not advance enough to show relevant information. 

It used to be easy to rank high in Google years back and why is this so? When I started selling online, it was so damn easy to rank high in Google. There were little competitor and it was easy to beat them in the SEO game. It only takes you a couple of minute to put the relevant metatags and within few days, you are there – even a donkey can do the job. 

I moved from metatags to inbound links with the right anchor text and continued my domination. It was easy and not difficult at all. That was back then and you can call it guaranteed SEO placement and dominance. 

Eventually, the search engines get smarter and ended the concept of guaranteed placement but some people (SEO Expert) are still in denial. There no longer the term “guaranteed placement” on the search engines and that is why, when anyone comes up to you and tell you that they can guarantee you top placement in Google, you should start running as far as you can and don’t turn back.

Here is why SEO is a dying industry and it will continue that way. Search engines are too smart and they have a different agenda. They do not want to reward crummy companies that play SEO games–they want to give the top listings to the best companies. And they are quickly gaining access to the information they need to do exactly that. They will use traffic and buying stats to figure out who the top companies are and it’s a good thing in a way too. They will also use stats that track how long your visitors stay on your website after they arrive. If your site is relevant to your visitors, they will tend to stay longer and not just get out within 3 seconds.

So the real thing now is for any company to succeed in getting SEO traffic, there’s a lot of other factors that they need to fulfill and I think it is just a fair game that the search engines are now moving towards this.

Related Post

• May 8, 2009 — Avoiding Top SEO Mistakes
• November 8, 2008 — Getting High Pagerank
• November 5, 2008 — Are You Up There With Your SEO?
• October 10, 2008 — Promote Your Website and Blog
• May 21, 2008 — Truth About Search Engines
• March 9, 2008 — Rank high in Google

There a lot of factors that will influence your search engine results and there’s no guarantee that you will end up there. Most people have fallen into the idea that SEO companies can help then get the results that they want. As for me, all I can say is, if they can promise you that, take a hike and run as far away as possible.

Below are the few things that you need to factor in when implementing your search engine optimization strategy.

Rule #1: No Guarantee

Whatever you do, do not try to trick the search engine. Do not go into any black hat method just to get rank high for just a moment because it will get you ban forever. The rule is very simple. You must make your website or blog logical. All the content on your site or blog is primarily for visitors and not search engine crawlers.

There’s no guarantee to search engine ranking and there’s no shortcuts to search engine success.  There’s only hard work and playing by the rules in developing good relevant contents on your website  or blog .and the links to your website or blog

Rule #2: Write good relevant content

Believe it or not, your content is what that will determine whether site visitors stays and come again to visit your website. Great content brings repeat visits and increases the chance of conversion.

Even if your website site is technically perfect for search engine robots, it won’t do you any good unless you also fill it with great content. Keep adding relevant content to your site regularly.

Rule #3: Use search engine friendly and user friendly design

Keep your design neat and clean and avoid using long query URL. Use short and easy to remember URL. Do not over do your URL with keywords and more keywords. Just one will do that best describe your page.

 Do not clutter all your content and links. Easy to navigate site will be appreciated by site visitors.

Rule #4: Get relevant links

Both reciprocal and one way links works for search engine success. Be prudent in your link exchange.

Good links improve your webpage’s equity on the search engine and bad links make a dent in your equity and credibility. Be selective in reciprocal linking. Only exchange links with relevant site or blog.

Getting relevant links from a higher page rank site will improve your search engine rank too. It ask as a vote of confident the site gave to your site and so search engine will see it as a good vote thus it will improve your search engine standing.

Rule #5: Getting visitors to stay on your site

This has always been overlooked by most site owners. If you want to rank high on the search engine, you must make your visitors to stay long on your site. It just does not make sense to Google if all your visitors just stay 3 seconds at your site!

This shows that your site doesn’t provide good relevant content to the readers and believe it or not, it will have an effect on your search engine standing.

So the idea is also to make your visitors to stay slightly longer at your site if you want to have a higher search engine ranking.

These are some of the important factors you need to take note when building up your site for search engine success. There are also other factors which I do not include here.

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Related Post

• May 8, 2009 — Avoiding Top SEO Mistakes
• November 8, 2008 — Getting High Pagerank
• November 5, 2008 — Are You Up There With Your SEO?
• October 10, 2008 — Promote Your Website and Blog
• July 16, 2008 — Death of SEO
• May 27, 2008 — Getting The Readers Commitment
• March 9, 2008 — Rank high in Google

• The number of quality backlink to your site will count as one of the major factor
• The number of broken link on your onpage SEO will definitely get your site penalize
• Your onpage optimization (title, meta,H1, etc etc) even though now onpage optimization will only affect very little.
• You offpage optimization campaign

Related Post

• May 8, 2009 — Avoiding Top SEO Mistakes
• November 8, 2008 — Getting High Pagerank
• November 5, 2008 — Are You Up There With Your SEO?
• October 10, 2008 — Promote Your Website and Blog
• July 16, 2008 — Death of SEO
• May 21, 2008 — Truth About Search Engines