SEO
Search Engine Optimization More and more people are joining the SEO bandwagon and there is an information overload with regard to SEO tips and tricks on the Internet. The fact of the matter is that SEO requires a lot of dedicated effort and constant
supervision. Most non professionals who use SEO techniques for their websites are not necessarily the best informed people in the SEO business. And yet, it does not stop them from publishing their tips on the Internet. It is very important to understand the process of SEO before you implement any SEO techniques on your website.
Some Common mistakes
Following are some of the most common mistakes made while implementing SEO techniques and it is important that you avoid them to ensure the success of your website through search engine results:
Don't Lose Focus on Website:
Your website is the primary vehicle for your business on the Internet. It is important that you give the deserved attention to the development of the website and not just SEO techniques. Ensure that your website is well designed, easy to read and easy to navigate. Not only will this help attract and retain targeted users to your website, it will
also help with your search engine page rank.
Don't target very general keywords:
It is important that there is a common theme to every page on your website and that the content on your website is keyword rich. However, it is important to choose your keywords with care. You will not get very far if you use very general keywords like 'books' or 'games'. You need to use targeted and highly specific keywords like 'bedtime
story books' or 'multiplayer strategy games.'
Don't cram content on Few Pages:
For SEO to be effective, it is important that every page a separate and distinct theme to itself. This will also help you organize insertion of relevant keywords in the content on your page. If you cram too much information on few web pages, it is very likely that every page will not have a unified theme and there will be different sets of
keywords vying for the web crawler's attention. But, a large variety of unrelated keywords will confuse the web crawler about the content on your page and your page rank is likely to drop because of it.
Don't Forget the Title Tags:
The HTML title tag is amongst the most powerful of all SEO techniques. Ensure that every page has a relevant title tag. Also ensure that your most relevant keywords appear in the title tag. This makes it very easy for the web crawler to find your web page. Additionally, your title tag is what will show up in big blue fonts on the search engine page
results. If the keyword is present in the title tag, it will make the result even more relevant to the user and increase your chances of getting a click.
Don't Duplicate Title tags: There are some people who will use the same title tag for their entire website instead of providingdistinct and unique title tags for each page. This can be very detrimental to your SEO efforts.
This will not only drop the relevance of your website for the web crawler, you may also end up with duplication issues with Google and find that your website has been blacklisted. Once a website has been blacklisted, it is extremely difficult to get a search engine to start listing it again. And, if your domain name is important for your business, which it usually is, you could suffer huge losses because of the blacklisting of your website.
Don't use Splash Pages:
There are a number of reasons to avoid splash pages if your are implementing SEO techniques on your website and here are some of them:
• From the web crawler's point of view, the most important information on a page is the title tag of the page along with the content. A Splash page contains no information and cannot be read by a web crawler.
• Splash pages cannot be linked in the same way regular web pages can be linked. In fact, one rarely comes across any links on a splash page of a website, except the home page. This takes away the opportunity for you to use link in your SEO implementation and it leads the web crawler to believe that only page on the internet (the home page) is relevant to the splash
page. This will lead to a huge drop in your page rank.
• Most splash pages redirect to other pages of the website. This is the reason they are ignored by most search engines.
Search engines are interested in web pages that directly deliver the information sought by the user, and since splash pages don't deliver any information at all, they are ignored by search engines.
Don't use Java Scripts in Menus:
The use of JavaScript is very popular for site navigation. However, if you are implementing SEO
techniques for your website, it is important to remember that search engine web crawlers do not read JavaScript. Ideally, you should avoid menus in JavaScript altogether, but even if you simply can't do without one, there is a simple solution to the
problem.
Build Sitemap:
Ensure that you also build a sitemap for your website which links to all the pages on your website. This way you can ensure that all your links will be recognized by a web crawler.
Don't Underestimate the URL: Unless your company is a household name like GM or Apple, people are not searching directly for your company name. This means that it is only on the basis of keywords that you can get a high page rank on search engines.
Having your keyword in the URL can give you an edge over your competition. Additionally, when your link does show up on the search results page, the keyword in the URL will get highlighted and this will also help grab the attention of the user and will increase your chances of getting a click.