|
SEO Search Engine Optimization: The 5 Most Common SEO Mistakes1) Non Utilization of the Title TagMost search engines index the content of title tags and consider it to be one of the most important factors in their relevancy algorithm. What you place in your title can make or break your ranking for particular search terms on the various engines. If you don't include your most important search phrases within your title tag, you are overlooking a vital opportunity in your quest for higher search rankings. Keep your title tag to a maximum of 200 characters, as that is the average limit most search engines will truncate to. If you really insist on including your company name in your title and you're willing to sacrifice good keywords, put it at the very end of the tag, because search engines give more relevancy "weight" to content at the start of your tag. 2) Use of Untargeted Keywords and Phrases Targeting a generic word is a waste of time. What you need to do instead is optimize your site for search terms and phrases that are highly targeted to your precise business. Use a tool such as Wordtracker (keyword location software) to find what people are actually typing in to the search engines to find goods and services similar to yours and concentrate on ranking well for those terms. The more qualified your site visitors are, the more likely you are to convert those visitors into paying customers. 3) A Lack of Optimized Body Text This one is very common. Beginner SEO's often make the mistake of creating an optimized title tag and META tags and believing their work is done. WRONG. If you want a web site to rank well in the search engines, you need to give them what they want to see - visible content that is optimized just as well as the invisible content. That means adding keyword-filled body text to any page you want ranking high. This is because most search engines can't index images. Some engines don't even index META tags anymore. So a site with no visible content becomes effectively invisible to a search engine and has almost no chance of appearing in the rankings for logical searches. Also, search engine algorithms have become smarter and are now checking that sites contain highly relevant content before including them in their index. If you expect to rank well for a particular keyword or phrase, it's not too much to expect to find that keyword or phrase within your site is it? 4) Submitting to 1,000 Search Engines Studies show that approximately 90% of search traffic still comes from the 10 major U.S. search engines and directories (a list is available at the bottom of this article). Companies that advertise submission to thousands of search engines are usually including in that list minor engines or directories that utilize the databases of major engines anyway (so don't require submission) or a large number of Free For All (FFA) sites. Submitting your site to FFA pages can damage your site's reputation in the search engines, because they consider FFA sites to be of very low quality and utilizing spamdexing techniques in an attempt to falsely inflate a site's link popularity. I've even seen examples of sites being banned from a search engine for having their pages listed on FFA sites by ill-informed webmasters without the site owner's knowledge. If you are targeting specific geographic markets, you might like to submit your site to the most popular regional search engines in those countries, but the fact is that most people worldwide continue to use the U.S. versions of search engines such as Yahoo and AltaVista despite the fact that there are local versions available. The bottom line? Get your site listed on the 10 most popular search engines and directories and you will have the major worldwide traffic sources covered. 5) Resubmitting Too Soon and Too Often Depending on the search engine, they can take up to twelve weeks to include your site in their index. Each search engine and directory work to their own time frame. You need to check their average submission times (see the chart at the bottom of this article) and be patient. Once you're in a search engine's database, there is no need to resubmit your site. It's pointless actually, because they already know about your site and their robot is scheduled to revisit and reindex all sites in the database on a regular basis. Resubmitting wastes everybody's time and can actually get your URL permanently banned from a search engine for "spamdexing". The only time you need to resubmit your site to a search engine is if your URL changes or if your domain suddenly drops out of their database entirely. NOT if your ranking drops, NOT if your content changes, but if the domain is actually nowhere to be found in the index (this can happen from time to time as the search engines Spring clean their databases). A good SEO will monitor your rankings regularly (monthly is fine) and only resubmit when absolutely necessary. <table> <tr> <th><font color="red">Most Popular and Important US Directories</th> </tr> <tr> <td><a href="http://www.yahoo.com/">Yahoo</a></td> </tr> <tr> <td><a href="http://dmoz.org/">Open Directory</a></td> </tr> <tr> <td><a href="http://www.about.com/">About.com / Sprinks</a></td> </tr> <tr> <td><a href="http://search.aol.com/">AOL</a> (portal)</td> </tr> <tr> <td><a href="http://www.looksmart.com/">Looksmart</a></td> </tr> <tr> <td><a href="http://search.msn.com/">MSN</a> (portal)</td> </tr> <tr> <th><font color="red">Most Popular and Important US Directories</th> </tr> <tr> <td><a href="http://www.google.com/">Google</a></td> </tr> <tr> <td><a href="http://www.excite.com/">Excite / Web Crawler</a> (now defunct)</td> </tr> <tr> <td><a href="http://www.altavista.com/">AltaVista</a></td> </tr> <tr> <td><a href="http://www.directhit.com/">Direct Hit</a></td> </tr> <tr> <td><a href="http://www.alltheweb.com/">FAST / All The Web</a></td> </tr> <tr> <td><a href="http://www.hotbot.com/">HotBot</a> (META Engine)</td> </tr> <tr> <td><a href="http://www.lycos.com/">Lycos</a></td> </tr> <tr> <td><a href="http://www.ask.com/">Ask Jeeves / Teoma</a></td> </tr> <tr> <td><a href="http://www.inktomi.com/">Inktomi Index</a> (supplier to other engines)</td> </tr> </table> <br> <table> <tr> <th colspan="2"><font color="red">Other U.S. Search Engines & Directories of Importance</th> </tr> <tr> <td><a href="http://www.gimpsy.com/">Gimpsy</a> (International)</td><td><a href="http://www.goguides.org/">Go Guides</a> (International)</td> </tr> <tr> <td><a href="http://www.joeant.com/">Joe Ant (International)</a></td><td><a href="http://www.wisenut.com/">Wisenut</a></td> </tr> <tr> <td><a href="http://www.zeal.com/">Zeal</a></td><td><a href="http://www.overture.com/">Overture</a> (PPC)</td> </tr> <tr> <td><a href="http://search.netscape.com/">Netscape</a> (portal)</td><td><a href="http://www.findwhat.com/">FindWhat</a> (PPC)</td> </tr> <tr> <td><a href="http://www.northernlight.com/">Northern Light</a></td><td><a href="http://www.kanoodle.com/">Kanoodle</a> (PPC)</td> </tr> <tr> <td><a href="http://www.gigablast.com/">Gigablast</a></td><td><a href="http://www.websavvy.cc/">WebSavvy</a></td> </tr> <tr> <td><a href="http://www.skaffe.com/">Skaffe</a></td><td><a href="http://www.vivisimo.com/">Vivisimo</a></td> </tr> </table> <br> <table> <tr><th colspan="2"><font color="red">Approximate indexing times for the major engines and directories</td></tr> <tr> <th>Search Engine / Directory</th><th>Time to Index</th> </tr> <tr> <td>Yahoo </td><td> 4-6 weeks (7 days if using Express Submission)</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Google </td><td> 2-5 weeks</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Direct Hit </td><td> 8-10 weeks</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Fast / All The Web </td><td> 9-12 days</td> </tr> <tr> <td>AltaVista </td><td> 4-6 weeks (faster if using Express Inclusion)</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Netscape </td><td> 2-3 weeks</td> </tr> <tr> <td>HotBot / AOL </td><td> 1-3 weeks</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Inktomi </td><td> 1-3 weeks (faster if using Search Submit Inclusion)</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Lycos </td><td> 6-8 weeks (faster if using InSite Select Inclusion)</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Open Directory </td><td> 2 weeks to several months</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Looksmart / MSN </td><td> 7 days (must use LookListings)</td> </tr> </table> |
