| Top SEO Mistakes to Avoid
Building a web site with search engine optimisation in mind means also knowing what mistakes to avoid!
There are some things you can do to your site to really improve your page ranking, but there are some equally damaging things you can do that will hurt your chances of being ranked well.
Let's look at some of the top SEO mistakes.
Poor Keyword Choices
Choosing keywords that explain what your website is about is not the same as optimising your site for effective SEO keywords. You need to consider what your visitors would search for in order to find your site. These two things are not likely to be the same phrase.
If you have a site about golfing and you choose to optimise your site around the keyword golfing, your visitors might never type this word into a search engine. They may be looking for 'golf tips', 'golf clubs' or any other variant.
Be sure you choose relevant keywords that more accurately reflect what your site's information is about.
Incorrect Keyword Density
Once you've chosen your keywords, putting them into the content a few times may not quite be enough of a percentage to count in your SEO efforts.
On the other hand, over-using your keywords in your content can be even more damaging. Cramming as many keywords as you can into a few sentences with very little other content on a page is called keyword stuffing. Search engines hate this.
The correct percentage is often debated, but you should be okay to include your keywords or key-phrases once within the first paragraph, another couple of times through the next few paragraphs and again in the final paragraph of a good quality page filled with informational content.
You can also include your keywords in your Title tag and within your URL or page file name.
Lack of Quality, Unique Content
If your site is a crazy mess of banners, affiliate links and repeated keywords not only will visitors never visit your site, but the search engines will hate it too.
Offer people a reason to want to visit your site. Give them good informative content they can't find anywhere else. Your site should be more than 10 pages deep. Search engines also reward unique content. If you can't write content on your own, search for a content creation company with a good reputation and get one of their writers to create some content for you.
Poor Site Navigation
If a visitor can't find their way through your site, how do you expect a search engine crawler to do the same?
More importantly, if you use java script for your navigation or menu bars remember that search engines can't always crawl these to find the internal pages of your site. This is also true if you use graphics for your navigation menus. A search engine can't read an image.
Be sure you offer a HTML alternative for crawlers and visitors to access the internal pages of your site.
No Title Tag
It's amazing how many webmasters put huge amounts of effort into creating a great website with good content and then leave the title tags off each page. The title tag not only tells your visitor what information they're getting on each page, it also tells a search engine what keywords to look for within that page.
No Site Map
Creating a site map isn't the most exciting way to spend an afternoon, but it can seriously hinder your SEO campaign if you don't have one. By creating a site map of every internal page on your site, you make it easier for search engines to access all your content quickly and easily.
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Author - Julian Hall, Search Director of Pure Online Genius
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