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10 Search Engine Positioning Mistakes
By
Sumantra Roy
When
it comes to search engine optimization, there are certain common mistakes that I
see people making over and over again. Here's a list of the 10 most common
mistakes that I see people making. By avoiding these mistakes, you can avoid a
lot of anguish and frustration in the long run.
1)
Optimizing your site for the wrong keywords
The first
step in any search engine optimization campaign is to choose the keywords for
which you should optimize your site. If you initially choose the wrong keywords,
all the time and effort that you devote in trying to get your site a high
ranking will go down the drain. If you choose keywords which no one search for,
or if you choose keywords which won't bring in targeted traffic to your site,
what good will the top rankings do?
In order
to learn how you can choose the correct keywords for which you should optimize
your site, see my article
on this topic.
2)
Putting too many keywords in the Meta Keywords tag
I often
see sites which have hundreds of keywords listed in the Meta Keywords tag, in
the hope that by listing the keywords in the Meta Keywords tag, they will be
able to get a high ranking for those keywords. Nothing could be further from the
truth. Contrary to popular opinion, the Meta Keywords tag has almost completely
lost its importance as far as search engine positioning is concerned. Hence,
just by listing keywords in the Meta Keywords tag, you will never be able to get
a high ranking. To get a high ranking for those keywords, you need to put the
keywords in the actual body content of your site.
3)
Repeating the same keyword too many times
Another
common mistake that people make is to endlessly repeat their target keywords in
the body of their pages and in their Meta Keywords tags. Because so many people
have used this tactic in the past (and continue to use it), the search engines
keep a sharp lookout for this, and may penalize a site which repeats keywords in
this fashion. Sure, you do need to repeat the keywords a number of times. But,
the way you place the keywords in your pages needs to make grammatical sense.
Simply repeating the keywords endlessly no longer works. Furthermore, a
particular keyword should ideally not be present more than thrice in your Meta
Keywords tag.
4)
Creating lots of similar doorway pages
Another
myth prevalent among people is that since the algorithm of each search engine is
different, they need to create different pages for different search engines.
While this is great in theory, it is counter-productive in practice. If you use
this tactic, you will soon end up with hundreds of pages, which can quickly
become an administrative nightmare. Also, just imagine the amount of time you
will need to spend constantly updating the pages in response to the changes that
the search engines make to their algorithms. Furthermore, although the pages are
meant for different engines, they will actually end up being pretty similar to
each other. The search engines are often able to detect when a site has created
such similar pages, and may penalize or even ban this site from their index.
Hence, instead of creating different pages for different search engines, create
one page which is optimized for one keyword for all the search engines. In order
to learn how to create such pages, see
my
article on this topic.
5)
Using Hidden Text
Hidden
text is text with the same color as the background color of your page. For
example, if the background color of your page is white and you have added some
white text to that page, that is considered as hidden text. Many webmasters, in
order to get high rankings in the search engines, try to make their pages as
keyword rich as possible. However, there is a limit to the number of keywords
you can repeat in a page without making it sound odd to your human visitors.
Thus, in order to ensure that the human visitors to a page don't perceive the
text to be odd, but that the page is still keyword rich, many webmasters add
text (containing the keywords) with the same color as the background color. This
ensures that while the search engines can see the keywords, the human visitors
cannot. The search engines have long since caught up with this technique, and
ignore or penalize the pages which contain such text. They may also penalize the
entire site if even one of the pages in that site contain such hidden text.
However,
the problem with this is that the search engines may often end up penalizing
sites which did not intend to use hidden text. For instance, suppose you have a
page with a white background and a table in that page with a black background.
Further suppose that you have added some white text in that table. This text
will, in fact, be visible to your human visitors, i.e. this shouldn't be called
hidden text. However, the search engines can interpret this to be hidden text
because they may often ignore the fact that the background of the table is
black. Hence, in order to ensure that your site is not penalized because of
this, you should go through all the pages in your site and see whether you have
inadvertently made any such mistake.
6)
Creating Pages Containing Only Graphics
The search
engines only understand text - they don't understand graphics. Hence, if your
site contains lots of graphics but little text, it is unlikely to get a high
ranking in the search engines. For improving your rankings, you need to replace
the graphics by keyword rich text for the search engine spiders to feed on.
7)
Not using the NOFRAMES tag in case your site uses frames
Many
search engines don't understand frames. For sites which have used frames, these
search engines only consider what is present in the NOFRAMES tag. Yet, many
webmasters make the mistake of adding something like this to the NOFRAMES tag:
"This site uses frames, but your browser doesn't support them". For
the search engines which don't understand frames, this is all the text that they
ever get to see in this site, which means that the chances of this site getting
a good ranking in these search engines are non-existent. Hence, if your site
uses frames, you need to add a lot of keyword rich text to the NOFRAMES tag. For
more information on the different issues that arise when you use frames in your
site, see my article on
this topic.
8)
Using Page Cloaking
Page
cloaking is a technique used to deliver different web pages under different
circumstances. People generally use page cloaking for two reasons: i) in order
to hide the source code of their search engine optimized pages from their
competitors and ii) in order to prevent human visitors from having to see a page
which looks good to the search engines but does not necessarily look good to
humans. The problem with this is that when a site uses cloaking, it prevents the
search engines from being able to spider the same page that their users are
going to see. And if the search engines can't do this, they can no longer be
confident of providing relevant results to their users. Thus, if a search engine
discovers that a site has used cloaking, it will probably ban the site forever
from their index. Hence, my advice is that you should not even think about using
cloaking in your site. For more information on what page cloaking is, how it is
implemented, and why you should not use cloaking, see
my
article on this topic.
9)
Using Automatic Submission Tools
In order
to save time, many people use an automatic submission software or service to
submit their sites to the major search engines. It is true that submitting your
site manually to the search engines takes a lot of time and that an automatic
submission tool can help you save a lot of time. However, the search engines
don't like automatic submission tools and may ignore your pages if you use them.
In my opinion, the major search engines are simply too important for you not to
spend the time to submit your site manually to them. In order to speed up the
process of submitting your site, you can use our free submission tool which
allows you to submit your site manually to all the search engines, without
having to go to the "ADD URL" pages of the individual engines. It is
available here.
10)
Submitting too many pages per day
People
often make the mistake of submitting too many pages per day to the search
engines. This often results in the search engines simply ignoring many of the
pages which have been submitted from that site. Ideally, you should submit no
more than 1 page per day to the search engines. While many search engines accept
more than 1 page per day from a particular domain, there are some which only
accept 1 page per day. Hence, by limiting yourself to a maximum of one page per
day, you ensure that you stay within the limits of all the search engines.
11)
Devoting too much time to search engine positioning
Yes - I
lied. There's another common mistake that people make when it comes to search
engine optimization - they spend too much time over it. Sure, search engine
placement is the most cost effective way of driving traffic to your site and you
do need to spend some time every day learning how the search engines work and in
optimizing your site for the search engines. However, you must remember that
search engine optimization is a means to an end for you - it's not the end in
itself. The end is to increase the sales of your products and services. Hence,
apart from trying to improve your site's position in the search engines, you
also need to spend time on all the other factors which determine the success or
the failure of your web site - the quality of the products and services that you
are selling, the quality of your customer service, and so on. You may have
excellent rankings in the search engines, but if the quality of your products
and services are poor, or if your customer service leaves a lot to be desired,
those high rankings aren't going to do much good.
Article by Sumantra Roy. Sumantra is one of the
most respected search engine positioning specialists on the Internet. To have
Sumantra's company place your site at the top of the search engines, go to
http://www.1stSearchRanking.com/