When making a website, the main goal is for people to see it and easily navigate through it. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the art of making a website friendly to users and search engines. When it comes to this industry, there are a few common mistakes that people make when optimizing a website. Here are few mishaps that regularly occur:
Content. The number one most important factor for both users and search engine spiders to reach the website is content. If the information on a website is poorly written, never updated or irrelevant, then users will never find the website in a search engine. Search engine spiders feed on information, and it is the key to higher page rankings.
Keywords and Phrases. To make or break a website is a lack of phrases and keywords. When a user goes onto a search engine and types in keywords, one would want their website to show up. Targeting keywords or phrases on a website, will aid in the spiders and users to reach the site. Again, make sure the keywords and phrases are relevant to the content.
Black Hat SEO. Black Hat is a practice that is unethical and frowned upon by search engine spiders. To simplify, it is keyword stuffing, invisible text, doorway pages and more. These practices can increase rankings for a short period, but search engines spiders will find it. Once it is noticed, a website banning follows. Important tip: Avoid it all costs.
Website Design. A website that is not designed well, will not only push away users but the search engine spiders as well. Without a clear navigation, properly designed frames and large loading graphics can actually block the spiders from crawling. Having a clean website is very important for users to search a website. It benefits both the users and the spiders, which is important.
Meta Tags. Meta tags are in the past now. By creating the perfect meta tags will not get a website to rank solely on this. In fact, Google posted a blog a few years back stating that they do not take this into relevancy. This technique will not make or break a website for rankings.
URLs. A common mistake is underestimating a good URL. Having a keyword in the URL gives one an advantage over a competitor. It is still possible to rank well without a keyword, but it gives one that extra push. For MSN and Yahoo!, it is more important for keywords in the URL. Even with Google, the weight is relatively high.
Backlink Spamming. Like most people (especially myself), do not like spammers. To create more weight in SEO, one wants backlinks. The misconception is the more the better. Well, this is correct to a point. The problem begins with some web masters resort to link farms, forums and blog commenting. I am not sure how some feel about this, but I don’t want my backlink next to a “how to enlarge your you know what.”
Backlink spamming can resort to a website banning. Always resort to quality backlinks. This will be explained in more detail on future posts.
