4 Proven SEO Mistakes That Stop You Making Money Online

admin    SEO Video     Making, Mistakes, Money, Online, Proven, Stop

4 Proven SEO Mistakes That Stop You Making Money Online

1): Failure to apply constant effort in optimizing a website for search engines. SEO involves continuous effort in carrying out all the key activities that can help you rank high on search engines. Many people fail in their efforts to rank high on search engines because they expect overnight success, and they soon give up when they fail to see immediate results. It is important for you to gradually add new content to your website so that search engines visit your website more often.  You also need to steadily build links to your website in order to improve your ranking on search engines.

2): Failure to use different SEO strategies and tools. It is important for you to use different tools for optimizing your website. You must also aim to rank high on several major search engines. Choose about four main search engines and aim to rank high on them. Write and submit articles, participate in relevant forums, submit your website to many directories and search engines and exchange links with related websites that have high popularity rank. List the strategies that you intend to follow in optimizing your website for search engines, and make sure that you carry them out on a regular basis.

3): Lack of a good understanding of your niche’s keywords and phrases. If you want to successfully optimize your website, it is important that you know all your keywords and it is also important that you use these keywords on your website content, in your articles, and in any other content that you use to promote your website. Many people make the mistake of using untargeted keywords and phrases on their websites and other content that is meant to drive traffic to their website. Some internet marketers and website owners also fail to use their keywords on the title tag of their website.

4): Lack of patience. Many web masters get impatient and they want to see their website rank high on search engines immediately. They fail to apply constant effort in implementing their SEO strategies. SEO requires that you patiently use your selected strategies and tools in optimizing your website for search engines.

If you want to succeed in optimizing your website for search engines, it is important that you avoid the mistakes outlined above.

Did you find this article useful?

If you did watch free videos only at:-

http://www.chezzyonline.com

Four Web Design Mistakes That Can Prevent a Front Page Listing

admin    SEO Flash     Design, Four, Front, Listing, Mistakes, Page, Prevent

Four Web Design Mistakes That Can Prevent a Front Page Listing

Getting targeted visitors to your site takes much more than creating something that’s visually appealing, choosing some keywords, and then waiting for the traffic to arrive. These four web design mistakes can either prevent people from finding your website or make them want to leave it immediately if they happen upon it. They are:

Assuming that keywords which will drive traffic are obvious – This is a common mistake that can waste a lot of time, effort, and money. Without extensive keyword research, choosing which keywords and phrases will hopefully drive traffic is pure guesswork. Usually those guesses end up being either too broad or too narrow, making any kind of SEO success close to impossible. Going too broad means that futile SEO efforts will be spent on a competitive an unfocused search segment. Imagine trying to get to the top of search rankings for a term like “clothes”. Go too narrow and there won’t be any traffic because no one is using those search terms. Keyword research can define a sweet spot of good traffic numbers combined with light competition making SEO success much more likely.

Putting an entry page on the site – These are usually flash based pages which visitors land on first. Visitors land and then have to watch some graphics while waiting for the “To enter, press here” button. These are precious seconds in terms of keeping a visitor on the site and a high percentage of them won’t wait and will quickly bounce off to another site.

Go with form over function – Flash may look great but visitors may not appreciate it (see #2) and the search engines don’t like it either. The dislike (it might be more like ambivalence) of the search engines comes from the fact that their spiders have a problem reading Flash. Regardless of its relevance, without input from the spiders the content is not going to be indexed.

Static content – Without fresh content, visitors are unlikely to return and search engines will ignore the site. Fresh quality content will keep both sides happy.

Avoiding these mistakes from the beginning on a new website or a redesign of an existing one will go a long way toward generating traffic and then keeping it on the site once it gets there. For a free consultation on getting your web design done correctly from the beginning, For more info please visit our website: http://www.designsbyinet.com/

Search Engine Ranking Optimization. 10 Mistakes to Avoid

admin    SEO Flash     Avoid, Engine, Mistakes, Optimization, Ranking, Search

Search Engine Ranking Optimization. 10 Mistakes to Avoid

No traffic, no money. You already know that. You also know that be listed in the top search engine results will drive to your site tons of visitors. Maybe what you don’t know is what to do in order to rank well, right? Search engine ranking optimization is basically tweaking your website in some strategic points to make search engines love it.

 There is no magic secret or tool that will automatically make your site rank in position one. (Sorry!). Search engine ranking optimization is a complex task, where a lot of changing factors should be taken into account. However, there are some basic (and more advanced) practices that can help you build search engine friendly sites.

 I’m not going to outline here a search engine ranking optimization guide but to tell you the 10 big mistakes you should avoid.

 – Targeting the wrong keywords.

   Choosing the right keywords is crucial. Even if you do the best search engine ranking optimization job, it will be useless if you do it for the wrong keywords.
Avoid using keywords with a lot of strong competitors or with not enough searches to generate the traffic you need. Be realistic. Some websites are very difficult (if not impossible) to beat, especially those with the highest page rank and a lot of backlinks.

– Optimizing each page for too many keywords.

   Optimize each page of your site for different keywords and just for one or two keywords. No more than that. If you try to optimize for too many keywords, you will end up with a page that is not well optimized for any of them.

– Ignoring the title or wrong optimization of it.

Always use the title tag and do it right. Avoid keyword stuffed titles with no semantic meaning. This is good not only for search engine ranking optimization but also to persuade people to click and actually visit your site.

– Poor navigation system.

Your internal links are the road map that robots use to crawl your site. It is through the internal links in your page that robots find, crawl, and index the different pages on your site. Avoid using flash and javascript. They look very nice but do not help search engine ranking optimization. Robots cannot read flash and javascript. Thus, they will not see (and follow) the links. If you insist on using them, at least don’t forget to provide a site map.

– Using images in titles and headers.

Doing so you are wasting a great opportunity to improve your search engine ranking optimization. Instead use H1, H2 tags and place keywords in them. This will help search engines to establish content hierarchy and understand the words in the headers as relevant content.

– Flash websites.

 As we have said, robots cannot read flash, so they can’t index a Flash site. If you, for whatever reason, must use Flash, provide an optimized HTML version to allow your site to be indexed.

– Lack of keywords or keyword stuffing.

Some people write the content of the site without using keywords; others, overusing them. Neither is good.

–”Click here” or similar anchor text on links.

Instead of using these generic phrases as the clickable part of the links on your page, use descriptive, keyword rich text.

– No canonical redirect.

You have two different URLs for your domain– one with www and another without it- You should choose one of the two URLs as your preferred (or main) one and then redirect from the non-www version of the URL to the www version (or vice versa).  Many people forget to do this. No redirecting means that links to one of the two URLs will just benefit that URL, not the other one. By redirecting, the links to any of the two URLs will be counted together, as links pointing to the URL you have set as preferred, this will benefit the rank of your site.

 – Forgetting about off-site SEO.

Optimizing your title, images, and other on-site elements is not enough. For effective search engine ranking optimization you also need to work on what is called off-site SEO. It refers to techniques that are not performed in your own site. The most important one is getting quality relevant backlinks. This is sometimes neglected or even ignored.

Mistakes You Have to Avoid Committing in Internet Marketing

admin    SEO Flash     Avoid, Committing, Internet, Marketing, Mistakes

Mistakes You Have to Avoid Committing in Internet Marketing

The use of internet in marketing has become a huge success since the time it was first introduced. Apart from its cost, which is far cheaper than putting up TV advertisements, the Internet can also provide a wider market. Rather than targeting those that can be read on billboards or newspaper advertisements, the Internet targets activities that involve buying, selling, communicating, learning, and having fun. Simply setting up a website is enough to get things going– or so they say.

Internet marketing does not simply involve putting up a site and letting it do its own job. Much like offline marketing, online marketing also involves a lot of strategies, research, and most of all, work. The only difference is that offline marketing targets those that only have interest in what the advertiser may provide. Online marketing on the other hand, is more personal, which targets what people want through their personal interest.

Setting up a website is the simplest form of marketing on the internet, especially when internet marketing firms gain more numbers to accommodate the demand for web development and web solutions.

But let me ask you these: is your site easily accessible by  search engines? Can your visitors tell what your site is all about? Can your users easily navigate through your pages? Does your site clearly state how to do business with you? Does your site provides a way for users to communicate with you? Is your site optimized for SEO? Are your keywords relevant with your site’s content? Have you applied any On Page SEO campaigns such as optimizing your site’s title and description? And, do you keep a fresh article out?

Though some may think that developing a website is simple, wait till you see what goes on in making it successful. The reason why I asked those questions is to serve as an awareness-call and let you be conscious about your internet marketing campaign and how it currently fares. If you answered no to all of the above, then you’re making some of the biggest mistakes that websites are suffering from right now. But if not, then here are some tips to avoid making these grave website mistakes.

The Design of Your Site

The design of your site is very important if you want to be successful in your internet marketing campaign. A lot of designers today are making the mistake of overly designing their websites in the belief that this will attract more users to visit their site. This is true in a way but putting a lot of flash movies, animations, and graphics in it is simply over-kill.

Visitors rarely marvel on the site’s design and artistry anymore, all that’s important to them is getting what they want and fast. Users usually take 8 to 10 seconds to look at the sites’ design then go on and look for what they came for. So it’s important that within that time limit, your site must be able to convey what it’s trying to say and what products or services you’re trying to offer. Otherwise, your visitors may get the wrong idea about your business and leave.

A popular way of letting them know easily is highlighting what your site is offering. Enlarge the details that you would want the visitors to read or notice when they visit the site. This way, they’ll know what your site is about and what services you’re offering. But be discreet! Don’t enlarge or highlight all that you can offer. Just choose the one that would most likely grab your visitors’ attention and concentrate on that.

Also, make sure that you’re not using too many flash and high-definition images. Using too much of these things could cause your site to load slower than usual, which will cause your visitors to leave your site. Just make it simple. But not too simple because this may not yield a good result on your site’s credibility.

And make sure that your site is SEO friendly, otherwise, it’s going to take more time to optimize the site for SEO. Visit an SEO Philippines site to learn more about process that goes on in SEO.

Your Site’s Content

Some of the sites that I’ve visited before lacked the basics the visitors needed to learn of what the site is about. Some have placed too much information that made the page overly crowded and confusing. Organization is important in the construction of the site’s content. Don’t cram too much information in a single page because, as I’ve said, visitors would likely look at the strong headlines or those that are good attention grabbers.

It’s fine to include summary pages, but break them into independent product pages if possible. If you’ve done your keyword research properly, make sure that you include 2 to 3 keywords or phrases in the content. Make sure that the keyword matches the content you’re trying to put on. Get to know about SEO in any SEO Philippines site that you can visit.

Contact Information

Your contact information is very important because this is the only way that visitors could contact you if they have any questions about the service or product you’re trying to offer. Sadly some websites do not do this. In fact, some websites hide this information from their visitors.

Putting your contact information in your website is important if you want to build up your credibility with your visitors. If possible, you can  place your contact information even on your homepage or on all of your pages. Visitors tend go up and down the page to scan for the information they needed, so the footer or the bottom of your page is the most appropriate place to put your contact information. This way, it won’t get in the way of your content but still visible to all the visitors that visit the page.

Adding a sitemap, contact us section, terms of service and privacy policy are all benefits for users and search engines alike.

SEO

Applying the basics of SEO is very, VERY, important if you want your website to be successful in internet marketing. Because of the success of SEO, newer and more effective strategies are coming out which cause other SEO optimizers to leave out the basics in SEO. This is a grave mistake in an SEO campaign.

A unique title that matches your keyword as well as a web copy that supports your topic meet more than 50 percent of the requirements for most search engines.

Link building, as far as we know, is still the most effective form of SEO. So don’t leave this out. Article submission is also among the basics that we shouldn’t leave out. Although some have left this out and focused on other strategies, articles can still contribute largely because of the backlinks it can generate.

Even though you’re applying the latest trends in SEO, make sure that you don’t leave out some of its most important basics. Because these basics still make up the majority of your website’s success in SEO and in the internet. Check out what SEO Philippines sites can provide with these and other SEO trends.

The 7 Most Common Search Engine Optimisation Mistakes Made By Businesses In Auckland

admin    SEO Flash     Auckland, Businesses, Common, Engine, Made, Mistakes, Most, Optimisation, Search

The 7 Most Common Search Engine Optimisation Mistakes Made By Businesses In Auckland

Every website owner would like to be at the top of Google.  After all, according to NielsenOnline, the international market research agency, 80% of potential customers go online to find out about new suppliers. From Google’s own figures, 94% of people don’t get as far as Page 2.  And Number 1 gets around 42% of all clicks. So being at the top of Google is crucial for your business.

Yet very few companies in any market get to Page 1.  And for most markets it isn’t even ten who get to that coveted place.  Look at all the videos, directories and wikis that you see.  

So it’s not even about being in the Top Ten.  It’s the top four or five.

So why aren’t more companies up there on Page 1?  Or more to the point, why isn’t your company up there?

There are many reasons but there are seven which stand out time and again with the clients that come to me.

1 Old copy on your pages
Google loves new content.  As far as Google is concerned, the newer the better. Yet most sites are as fresh as the day they were put up.  

Five years ago it may have been OK to have a site that you set-and-forget but now, if that’s how your site is managed, then it’s Google that forgets.

Simply, you must have fresh content on your site.

2 Not enough content
This is also a throw-back to the initial thinking about a website.  Create a few pages about your company or products to create an online brochure.  But that doesn’t work any longer.

Google wants to see a site that has plenty of informative, good quality copy that tells the visitor what they are looking for.

A common response is that visitors to a site don’t have time or want to read lots of copy on your website.  Well, yes and no.

If the copy on a page is not relevant then they won’t read it.
If the pages are badly written or boring, then people won’t want to read it.
If the words don’t give people useful information, then they won’t want to read it.

But, if you can give your visitor information specifically about what they are looking for, that is informative, well written, engaging and leaves them feeling confident about your company, then they will read it.

Even though we are all busier than ever, we are reading more than ever as we spend more and more time on the Net engaging in what interests us.

3 Talking about the yourself
Do you know any websites with a Home Page like this?

“Welcome to our site. We’ve been in business for 15 years and have 23 dedicated employees who are our greatest asset.  We pride ourselves on the quality solutions we deliver and the lowest price.”

Firstly, you’ve got three seconds to keep your visitor on your site.  If the first words they read don’t match what they are looking for, they are gone.  Re-read that paragraph..  What was it?  5 or 6 seconds?  And how did that answer anyone’s problem that they were searching for?

It didn’t tell anyone anything, because it was all about “The Company” and nothing about the visitor and their problem.  They might want to know all that sort of stuff but only after they are satisfied that you can deliver whatever package, program or widget they are after.

So, write about what people are searching for.  And here’s a million dollar tip. Use their language, not yours.  You are an expert.  They have a problem.  They don’t want to learn your techno-speak.

4 Flash intros
How many sites do you go to where there’s a little graphic – 10% loaded, 20% loaded?  I don’t know anyone who waits until it’s 100% loaded.  I’m gone.

Most either skip the Intro so why spend money creating it? Or people just leave your site.  Remember – 3 seconds for people to find what they want.

From a technical point of view, Google doesn’t read Flash so if that is your main “marketing” piece on your Home Page, Big G just isn’t going to index it which means you won’t be found in the searches.

So two reasons not to have a flash intro. Neither people nor Google like it.

5 Not using the code options properly
Finally we get to a “proper” SEO technique.  

Google uses “tags” to quickly assess if a site is relevant to someone’s search.  The tags, the Title, Meta Description and the Header or h1, should contain your primary keyword for the page your want to optimize.

So many pages have the company name and a bland description of the page, usually for the web-designer’s ease of recognition rather than for the benefit of the reader or… Google.

But bear in mind that when Google returns the search results, it is giving you three opportunities to sell yourself or to generate a click.

The Title tag is the first line of the search and is the top line you see on your screen in the thin blue bar at the top.  That tells Google – “Pick me, pick me” And it says exactly the same to the searcher.  If it is line that answers their query, they are more likely to click it.

Sell yourself again
The Meta Description is the 2 or 3 lines below the title in the search results.

Here you have the opportunity to sell yourself again.  Maybe a special offer.
A phone number. A short testimonial.  Be creative but be relevant.

Then finally the headline on the page should be enclosed in the h1 tag. (Ask your web designer to make sure that happens). BTW – you do have a properly crafted headline don’t you.  One that intrigues, leads or is benefit-driven. Not the ubiquitous “Welcome to our website.”

6 Leaving SEO to people with different skills
Many times I talk to potential clients who say, “Our IT guy looks after our website.”  Or, “Our web-designer handles that.”

I’m sure they are skilled at their particular role but neither of those are SEO or marketing roles. It’s like saying that the plumber can fix the electrical problem on the basis that they are both involved in the construction industry.   It’s the same with your website.

From a practical point of view, Google doesn’t even consider the shade of green that a designer has lovingly agonized over.  Or whether the picture should go up there on the right or down here on the left side of the logo.  While bad design may lose a sale, good design won’t get you found by Google.  And as discussed before, if your content is good, then your visitors are more likely to become customers.

Another common phrase I hear is “We will optimise it after the site’s been built.”  Would you call the architect after the builder has finished?  Leaving your SEO until after the site has been completed inevitably leads to extra, unnecessary expense.  Plus it probably means that your site is not targeted at your market properly so you will have fewer visitors and less business.

7 Bad linking strategy
All of the foregoing is about stuff on the actual website yet the absolute most significant aspect affecting your rankings in Google, is the back-links to your site.  

What are back-links?

It’s the other sites that link to your site.  And the more sits that link the better Google regards your site.  To a degree.

Not all links are created equal so it’s important to link with the “right” type of link.

This subject is so vast and so important that it will be a separate article but for now, aim to get links from other sites in your industry or from “clean” sites like relevant government or education organisations.

How can you make it all better?
1 Find out what your prospects are looking for
The foundation to your site structure, page titles, Tags and web-page copy is keyword research.  You must find out what your future customers are looking for and that means the actual terms they use.

You need to assess the competition and its strength too. Again that is another article to give it full justice.

However, once you have found out the keywords people are using, then use those in the Tags, page titles and throughout the web page content.

The more that it reads like a useful document the better.  A list of keywords isn’t going to help you nor the customer.  Remember, Google wants to give its customers good products i.e. good quality information.

2 Use the right skilled people
Simply, get the right people for each task.  A web-designer designs.  They rarely know how to do keyword research properly.  Fewer still now how to write good copy for your pages.  And your IT Department Manager has too many programming issues to take care of to worry about your website.

As an SEO guy, I freely admit I have no idea how to program a website, a Linux box or how to design a web-page.  And I am more than happy, in fact hanging out to hand over that side of the project…. after the foundational SEO work has been done.

3 Write more and better copy
Yep, daunting as it sounds, that is the secret to long-term growth and prominence of our site.

Think of it this way.

You publish your web-site don’t you.  Does a newspaper publisher publish one edition of his paper?  Obviously not and it’s the same with your site.  It’s not a one-time activity. Keep publishing more pages to make your site bigger.  Provide more and newer thoughts and ideas to your prospects so that they come back so that they may become customers.

4 Get more links
Getting links is to be honest, a pain.  It can take hours to get a good link.  But the more good content you create, the more people will want to link to your site. And the more places you can place your content too.  

But get your links gradually rather than loads at a rush because Google will think there is something amiss if there is a massive leap in links to your site.  G will presume some artificial linking device which by implication is not good content for its customer, the searchers.

Is that the whole answer to good results in Google?
There are many more issues and mistakes to consider.  And even more solutions but if you fix those you will inevitably see your site rise in Google.  Plus you will be giving your visitors so much more value that they will be much more likely to become paying customers.  And at the end of the day, that is why we are in business isn’t it?  To get customers not just visitors.

Common Web Design Mistakes

admin    SEO Flash     Common, Design, Mistakes

Common Web Design Mistakes

NOT THINKING ABOUT THE VISITORS NEEDS – Too many web designers are too concerned about how they want their website to look and not what the visitors will appreciate. You need to provide the information that the visitor’s expect, otherwise you will loose them. It is therefore important to research your visitor’s needs and expectations before your Web Design begins.

POOR NAVIGATION – Navigation should be consistent throughout, and is an important part of the visitor experience. The most important pages should be one click away at all times, while ideally no page should be more than three clicks away from any other. Having a navigation bar at the top or side of the website that is the same across all pages is recommended.

LARGE IMAGES – Large images can take a long time to load. Not only that, but they result in the whole webpage loading slowly. This frustrates visitors as they want the page to appear as quickly as possible and get on with it. This also applies to video and other large media files.

NOT HAVING EASY TO READ TEXT – This sounds simple but is something many get wrong; your text needs to be easy to read. It is no good having lots of informal text if your visitors struggle to read it. You need the right contrast in colour between the text and the background. If you wish to have a background image it is important to consider this carefully. Detailed images behind text can cause difficulties for the reader.

TOO MUCH OR TOO LITTLE TEXT – Either too much or too little text can work against you. If you have too much it can be complex reading, especially if you are going into much more detail than necessary. Visitors may just give up and leave. More of a common mistake is not having enough text. The problem here is two fold. Firstly, it doesn’t give your visitors (and potential customers) enough information on your products or service, and secondly it is bad for SEO purposes.

NOT THINKING ABOUT THE TEXT CONTENT – Too many worry only about the design of a website and making it look good. Depending on the nature of the site, the text can be just as important. It gives visitors the information they are seeking and this is often the real purpose of the site. It is amazing how many websites are grammatically poor.

OVERUSING FLASH – A fancy flash graphic is really what people are visiting your site for. Flash may look good, but seeing it as they reach your site is not going to make visitors stay; it is more likely that they will be turned away. If visitors have to wait for a flash graphic to finish they may leave the site, especially if on a splash page. Splash pages are rarely useful to visitors, and often just the designer looking to show off. This is not what the website is for.

UNDER THINKING OR OVER THINKING SEO – You do not want to design the website purely for SEO purposes. Doing this means it won’t be built for the benefit of your visitors, but for the benefits of the search engines. Text needs to make sense to the visitor not just be written for SEO. It doesn’t matter how high you appear in the search engines, if your visitors never stay on the site and it never gets you any business. However, it doesn’t matter how impressive or useful the site is if people can’t find it, so SEO does need to be considered.

TOO MANY ADVERTS – You may want adverts to generate some extra income, but remember this isn’t the main purpose of the site. For business sites it would be recommended that there are no adverts, but if you do choose to have them make sure they do not take over. If they feel the website has been taken over by adverts, visitors will look to your competitors instead. They will be visiting the site looking for your products, services or information, not to be taken elsewhere via adverts.

LACK OF CONSITANCY – Some web designers do not think about consistency and design each page with an individual feel. Although the content of your site should differ throughout, the look and design should be consistent all the way through.

Andrew Marshall ©

Common Web Design Mistakes

admin    SEO Flash     Common, Design, Mistakes

Common Web Design Mistakes

NOT THINKING ABOUT THE VISITORS NEEDS – Too many web designers are too concerned about how they want their website to look and not what the visitors will appreciate. You need to provide the information that the visitor’s expect, otherwise you will loose them. It is therefore important to research your visitor’s needs and expectations before your Web Design begins.

POOR NAVIGATION – Navigation should be consistent throughout, and is an important part of the visitor experience. The most important pages should be one click away at all times, while ideally no page should be more than three clicks away from any other. Having a navigation bar at the top or side of the website that is the same across all pages is recommended.

LARGE IMAGES – Large images can take a long time to load. Not only that, but they result in the whole webpage loading slowly. This frustrates visitors as they want the page to appear as quickly as possible and get on with it. This also applies to video and other large media files.

NOT HAVING EASY TO READ TEXT – This sounds simple but is something many get wrong; your text needs to be easy to read. It is no good having lots of informal text if your visitors struggle to read it. You need the right contrast in colour between the text and the background. If you wish to have a background image it is important to consider this carefully. Detailed images behind text can cause difficulties for the reader.

TOO MUCH OR TOO LITTLE TEXT – Either too much or too little text can work against you. If you have too much it can be complex reading, especially if you are going into much more detail than necessary. Visitors may just give up and leave. More of a common mistake is not having enough text. The problem here is two fold. Firstly, it doesn’t give your visitors (and potential customers) enough information on your products or service, and secondly it is bad for SEO purposes.

NOT THINKING ABOUT THE TEXT CONTENT – Too many worry only about the design of a website and making it look good. Depending on the nature of the site, the text can be just as important. It gives visitors the information they are seeking and this is often the real purpose of the site. It is amazing how many websites are grammatically poor.

OVERUSING FLASH – A fancy flash graphic is really what people are visiting your site for. Flash may look good, but seeing it as they reach your site is not going to make visitors stay; it is more likely that they will be turned away. If visitors have to wait for a flash graphic to finish they may leave the site, especially if on a splash page. Splash pages are rarely useful to visitors, and often just the designer looking to show off. This is not what the website is for.

UNDER THINKING OR OVER THINKING SEO – You do not want to design the website purely for SEO purposes. Doing this means it won’t be built for the benefit of your visitors, but for the benefits of the search engines. Text needs to make sense to the visitor not just be written for SEO. It doesn’t matter how high you appear in the search engines, if your visitors never stay on the site and it never gets you any business. However, it doesn’t matter how impressive or useful the site is if people can’t find it, so SEO does need to be considered.

TOO MANY ADVERTS – You may want adverts to generate some extra income, but remember this isn’t the main purpose of the site. For business sites it would be recommended that there are no adverts, but if you do choose to have them make sure they do not take over. If they feel the website has been taken over by adverts, visitors will look to your competitors instead. They will be visiting the site looking for your products, services or information, not to be taken elsewhere via adverts.

LACK OF CONSITANCY – Some web designers do not think about consistency and design each page with an individual feel. Although the content of your site should differ throughout, the look and design should be consistent all the way through.

Andrew Marshall ©

Find More SEO Flash Articles

5 Search Engine Optimization Mistakes You Should Avoid

admin    SEO Flash     Avoid, Engine, Mistakes, Optimization, Search, Should

5 Search Engine Optimization Mistakes You Should Avoid

Since more and more businesses show interests in search engine optimization there’s a growing necessity for quality SEO advice. There are a number of things one should be aware of when hiring an SEO company or opting for a DIY optimization campaign. SEO is not rocket science but still you need to be equipped with at least a basic understanding of what it’s all about and be aware of the common mistakes you should by all means avoid to succeed online. Here’s a short list of Search Engine Optimization Don’ts that will prevent you from heading the wrong way with your SEO.

5 Don’ts of Search Engine Optimization

1. Don’t fall for SEO Scams

You don’t need to submit your website to thousands of search engines or ‘quality’ directories to perform well in the search results. In fact you don’t need to submit your website to search engines at all. One quality incoming link will do the job and your website will be indexed by the search engine spiders pretty fast.

Keep in mind that anything that looks too good to be true is most likely to be just your money down the drain. Don’t fall for top ranking guarantees of any kind. There are just too many out of control factors in the SEO game for SEO companies to be able to deliver their promise all the time. Whether you do SEO yourself or outsource it to a company make sure that only ethical techniques and SEO tools are used.

2. Don’t Expect Quick Results

SEO is an ongoing process. There are no set-and-forget options. In order to gain high rankings for your targeted keywords and maintain them over the long term you need to be ready to invest your time or money or both and have patience because success in the organic search engine listings doesn’t come overnight.

3. Don’t Over Optimize

In the quest for search engine rankings webmasters and SEOs very often tend to shift the focus of their efforts from the visitors experience to the search engines. As a result there appear websites entirely designed and created for search engine spiders. The content (which is not necessarily poor or bad) is stuffed with keywords there are typos spilled here and there in an attempt to optimize for common misspellings and the overall appeal of the website to the visitors is hindered by excessive optimization.

4. Don’t Target Overly Broad Keywords

Although the traffic stats for general terms like, “cars” of “mobile phones” can be overwhelming that doesn’t mean that these are the best keywords to target. It’s not just that these search strings are too competitive, thought this is also a thing to consider. Broad keywords are usually the worst converting ones. You can never guess what exactly the searcher has on his mind when Googling for ‘windows’. He may be interested in the Microsoft’s operating system, window replacement services or whatever. Try to focus on more specific keywords that best reflect the searchers interest in your business offer.

5. Don’t Overuse Flash and Rich Graphics

Flash is cool and all but you need to keep in mind that search engine spiders cannot read or understand objects build with Flash or images. Whenever you put important information in a graphic form make sure to have it a text version of it for the search engines to index.

These are the basic no-go principles of SEO. If you follow these simple guidelines you’ll save yourself from a lot of trouble and unnecessary expenses.

Related SEO Flash Articles

Don’t Hurt Your Rankings: Common Mistakes Made by Companies

admin    SEO Flash     Common, Companies, Don’t, Hurt, Made, Mistakes, Rankings

Don’t Hurt Your Rankings: Common Mistakes Made by Companies

Search engine optimization and even pay per click campaigns will surely be around for quite a while. Perhaps this is because they still remain two of the best strategies to obtain the most ideal search engine position for your website. However, because the results may take some time, there are a number of companies that unknowingly or deliberately “sabotage” their own SEO and PPC campaign. In the end, they have to suffer the consequences of their actions, which may be a decrease in their ranking and traffic or, worse, getting banned from search engines.

Where You Can Go Wrong

There are two types of mistakes a company may make in relation to SEO or PPC. First, there are a number of business website owners who actually don’t have much idea about the technique that their demands are contrary to the best practices of SEO. On the other hand, there are also others who pretend they already know SEO and perform some tricks and changes that will only damage what they’ve started.

So watch out for the following errors:

1. You make some updates on your site. You may ask yourself, “What’s the harm of doing this? Wouldn’t it be a very clever thing to do, knowing that you’re saving your SEO company some time and energy?” You may have a point, but your actions may compromise whatever plans the SEO company may have for your site. Worse, your actions may spell a destructive process for you. Here are some possible scenarios:

You decided that you want to add another content in your website, perhaps some news or press release about your newest product or service. Hence, because you thought that it doesn’t hurt if you’ll do this by yourself, you went on with your plan without consulting your SEO company. Unknown to you, however, you already have altered the tricks and codes that may have been used by the SEO firm so you can rank highly. You may have modified the right keyword density for your site. The bottom line is you could lower down your search engine ranking.

There could also be a time when you wanted to create a new link for your site. However, you’ve forgotten to make proper redirection for the URL. Thus, what you have is a broken link, which makes it very difficult for search engine spiders to crawl and index the pages of your website.

In the end, SEO companies would take the blame for the client’s wrongdoings. To avoid getting misjudged, though, they would often monitor the performance of the site of their client, take note of the changes, and contact the webmaster right away. This is to prevent any bad consequences or to make the necessary repairs before the website suffers tremendous loss.

2. You want some change, but you don’t want to make any modifications. This can be one of the most difficult aspects for SEO companies. There are a lot who want to make sure that they can rank highly in search engines and send traffic into their webpages. However, they don’t want to make any type of modification for them to achieve these objectives.

Here are examples:

Keywords and keyword density are two important elements in a website. You want to drive targeted customers into your website. These are people that would likely buy your product or avail of your service. However, you don’t want to make any changes in your articles and content. You don’t like to identify the most effective keywords, and you don’t maintain the most ideal keyword density.

There are also a number of website owners who still believe that Flash and other forms of animation can drive traffic into their website. This could be true; however, what make these Flash sites searchable in search engines are their contents. You cannot simply depend on your animation. As a matter of fact, they make it very difficult for search engine spiders to index your Flash page. After all, they can only read text files. Moreover, they make the site very difficult to download. Flash files are known to be really heavy.

Ethical SEO companies are usually very blunt about the right way to do things. And they wouldn’t mind letting go of a client who will not likely listen to what the firm has to say about their website.

3. You apply your own techniques. Unless you’re a certified SEO guru, you should avoid performing your own SEO tricks. First of all, it becomes an extremely difficult job for an SEO company to make the necessary repairs. Second, by the time they try to change what has been done, your website may already be suffering from a loss of ranking.

If you don’t like to get yourself hurt, allow the professionals to do their job and take care of these aspects.

Related SEO Flash Articles

10 Business Website Mistakes

admin    SEO Flash     Business, Mistakes, Website

10 Business Website Mistakes

If you have a website for your company, by now you already know that just having it is not enough. The web is a massive popularity contest and your site needs to be visible through the rest of the sites out there. It is quickly becoming apparent that site design is a cornerstone to making a site successful or not. Correct structure and use of web services will attain greater results. Here are 10 mistakes that companies make when erecting a website for their company.

1. Inadequate Design and Function: Correct design and function are integral to keeping people on your website. Content is important but when the user cannot access it, this creates a massive problem for the user and ultimately you as a company. Items such as navigation should stay constant the pages should conform to WC3 compliance (this will maintain integrity in all major browsers). Keeping your web pages consistent in colour, design and layout is vitally important. Also note that keeping your logo and tag lines clearly visible at all times will increase brand awareness for the user as well.

2. Too much Glitz and Glam: Many business’ make the mistake with adding too much to their sites. Flash is one example of something that is perhaps too much. Although flash looks great it may be too complex for the average user. Look and feel is important but you do not want to slow down the user experience. Flash also takes longer to load and it is possible that some users do not have flash installed and this would render the flash application completely useless. Flash used in small applications is recommended but an entire site would be overkill. Flash also causes problems for the marketing of your website as well. If you are looking for maximum effect for your marketing efforts online steer clear of Flash.

3. Staying Fresh with Content: Adding new content on a regular basis is highly advised. Letting a site sit and do nothing and not adding new technologies to make the site better is a common mistake. This is not the way sites work anymore. A site now needs to be maintained on a regular basis to attain maximum performance and to stay in the search engine results at a high level.

4. Choosing a Domain Name: When choosing a domain name be sure to pick one that is appropriate to the business. In many cases using multiple domain names that vary from the business name to using the business’ genre in the domain is something to take into account. For instance if you run a Real-Estate company or an Electronics Shop you would not want a domain called lucythellama.com, that is completely inappropriate for the company type. This is a simple example to make the point, be careful in choosing a domain, it can affect your ranking and where you show up in the search engines.

5. 404 Errors and Dead Links: Make sure all the links and pages on the site work. The users that visit your site will more than likely leave if they come to a page that shows “404 Page Not Found”. Using custom 404 pages that help the user and your webmaster know about the page problem is a highly suggested method of finding and fixing these issues. Be sure to include a form on the custom 404 pages so the user can submit the broken or missing page.

6. Site Statistics: Using detailed site statistics to measure the amount of traffic to your site is vital to leveraging more traffic. Many businesses are not even aware that these services exist. If you own a business and do not know this, contact your host and inquire about this service. The statistics give you vital details such as unique visitors per day/month, what terms they are finding you by in the search engines, what times of day is your site the busiest and what countries people are finding you in. This information gives you something you are able to measure. What we like to say is “You cannot manage what you can’t measure”.

7. Contact Details: Many sites simply do not have a way to contact anyone or their contact measures are so poor that it turns people away from the site entirely. Your site needs to have a form of some sort where people can request information, ask questions or file a complaint and suggestions. This form should be reachable from every part of the site. Also, an important item to keep in mind is to have a speedy response to all inquiries, either by auto response with links to FAQ sections on the site or giving a response time. If you do not want to do it this way be sure to respond quickly to inquiries.

8. Your Web Host: Steer clear from FREE or Cheap hosting. Often times these hosts have multiple down times per month due to having so many clients on one server. Check for a low downtime, that they offer features such as statistics, spam protection, anti-virus protection on emails and above all quick customer service response. Note that problems do arise and that some form of downtime can occur, but this should not happen very often. Remember that you get what you pay for. This is a great motto to follow when getting web hosting.

9. Search Engines, Crawlers and Spiders: Spiders or sometimes referred to as Crawlers are scripts or robots that scour the internet for websites, content, links and traffic. These little “bugs” are crucial to search engines; these are responsible for every result you find on the popular search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing. In most cases these “creepy crawlies” you want to avoid, but on the web you actually want to attract these to your site. You can do this through Search Engine Optimization (SEO) practices. There are certain ethics and strategies to SEO. Some practices (such as hidden text, redirects, etc) will result in you being banned from search engines. These “dark side” techniques are called Black Hat. When looking for someone to do SEO for your company look for someone who only does White Hat techniques.

10. Doing SEO Yourself: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is complex. In order to make top ranks in your genre you may want to hire a professional to do your online marketing and site placements, especially if your business relies on the web for the majority of its business.

http://www.numantis.com