Web Site Design and SEO Services by Rainbo Design

Search Engine Optimization Common Mistakes

I learned how to do search engine optimization through a combination of reading and experimenting with the three websites my wife and I operate. You don't have to be a computer genius to get better search engine rankings for your website. Now that I'm doing search engine optimization on a professional basis, I can tell you that you can give your website enough basic search engine optimization to do reasonably well just by following the simple advice I present here. There are more complicated methods available to the professional web site design engineer which do require a high level of design and programming skills, but the techniques I show you here will give your website high search engine ranking results that can put you ahead of most of your competition.

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When Your Car Is Broken,
You Call A Mechanic

If your website is "broken" in the search engine results, and you can't tell how to fix it yourself, you should call in a specialist because he's trained for the job. He knows what's wrong and how to fix it. Doing it yourself is not always the wisest choice. You can end up wasting time and losing sales by taking weeks or months trying to learn what I already know about search engines. Be smart and start getting more targeted traffic now by ordering my Search Engine Optimization Service today! You can also request my FREE Search Engine Evaluation. I'll tell you what you're doing right, what you're doing wrong, and how I can help your site get its fair share of search engine traffic.

SEO Tips Menu

Preparing Your Website for Search Engine Spiders

Optimization Common Mistakes

Get Higher Google Ranking

Search Engine Ranking Factors

Getting Links for Your Site

Redesign Your Web Pages For Higher Ranking

Finding Keywords for Search Engines

Search Engines and Frames

The Dreaded Missing WWWs Syndrome

Multiple Domain Names Problems

Search Engine Optimization Myths

Google's PageRank Explained

Site Redirect Without .htaccess

Why Did My Site's Google Ranking Drop?

Tracking Codes in Your Links/URLs

HTTP Server Response Header Checker

How To Tell If A Site is Banned

How To Set Your Website's Geo-location

Search Engine Optimization Errors

When I visit other websites now, I'm usually comparing them with my own websites in terms of their search engine ranking and optimization techniques. I examine high-ranking websites to learn why they have good search engine positioning. There are several common mistakes that new webmasters make that keep their websites from ranking high in search engines. You will be miles ahead of the webmasters of new and smaller websites simply by avoiding these common search engine optimization mistakes.

  1. Lack of good quality links - Google ranks webpages in large part using their formula called PageRank, which is based on the number and quality of incoming links pointing to a page. This principle of rating websites by the number of other sites that link to it is often called Link Popularity, and all of the major search engines rely on this measure when they rank websites in search results in one way or another. If you have no links from other websites pointing to pages on your website, you will never achieve high rankings in Google, Yahoo! or the other search engines. The most common way of obtaining links is by inviting the webmasters of other websites to exchange links. Naturally, you will have to have created a page on your site to fulfill your part of the link exchange agreement. Other methods include registering your website with one of the many directory websites. Links from blogs, guestbooks, forums, websites' automated link directory pages, and other low-ranked webpages are of little or no help in this regard. This is the reason I created my Preferred Links system - to create a way to exchange high-quality links. Its simple and free. All you have to do is to comply with 7 simple rules in exchanging links with me that insures you'll be giving a quality link to all of your link partners. You probably already comply with these rules, so sign up today and you'll get a link from me with some real search engine punch.

  2. Poor choice of <title> - Search engine ranking systems give the <title> tag a great deal of weight in ranking. Don't waste the <title> by just using your just website name, URL, or some silly phrase that amuses you. Your two or three most important keywords should be in the <title> of your main page. The <title> tags on your interior pages should similarly focus on the keywords for each page. By the same token, don't overstuff the <title> with every conceivable keyword for the page. Moderation in all things, as the saying goes.

  3. Little or no presence of keywords on the site's main page - Search engine ranking software is completely dependent on the text it finds on your webpages. How is a search engine supposed to know the topic of your site if you don't set it out in plain text? A search engine will only find the keywords you feed to it on your webpages. Add emphasis to your keywords by enclosing them in <h>eadline and <strong> tags. I've exaggerated the technique on this page to demonstrate what I mean. A page that is comprised solely of graphics or Flash animation is crippling its search engine potential. Feed those spiders some juicy text! Even a single keyword-rich sentence at the bottom of the page is better than no text at all!

  4. <META> tag abuse - A few years ago, search engine ranking systems gave a good deal of weight to the <META> tag, and so every computer book author told his readers this was the secret of search engine optimization. Well, that ship has sailed, and all but one of the major search engine ranking systems now ignore the <META> keywords tag... unless you overstuff it, in which case you could get penalized for SPAMming. Google still ignores all <META> tags for ranking purposes. Yahoo! has retained many of the tendencies of its Inktomi search technology and does give some weight to the keywords and description <META> tag, but again, its not a major factor. Overall, keep your <META> tags short and sweet.

  5. Invalid HTML - Writing code that is in compliance with the World Wide Web Consortium's standards means your site is easily read by search engine spiders, easier to maintain, and cross-browser compatible. This is especially important for websites that receive government funding, because the federal government requires compliance with the Americans With Disabilities Act, which in turn means your site has to be compatible with devices that allow the visually impaired to browse the Internet. Using code that is proprietary to Microsoft Internet Explorer is not acceptable for such sites, so you need to know what is and isn't in the current W3C standards. You can check your webpages' compliance with the W3C's HTML standards using the W3C's newly-improved HTML Validator. Not only will your pages get ranked properly, but you won't have to worry that some users won't see your pages the way you intended just because they don't use the same browser that you do. Don't forget that not everyone surfs the Web with a computer. Cell phones, PDAs, and other devices are Web-enabled now and they don't rely on Microsoft Internet Explorer to display webpages.

  6. Dead links/Bad Links - Be sure all of the links on your pages are valid. Do not link to link farms, web rings, or other schemes designed to fool the search engines. Also watch for server problems. Inaccessible pages are liable to be removed from the search engine index. Avoid redirects that rely on JavaScript or <META> tags. These can be considered as "doorway" pages, which violate nearly all search engine guidelines. There are several automated link-checking tools available online. The W3C offers a good FREE link checker. Links that include User ID numbers, session ID numbers, and long query strings (ie. the text following the "?") in the URL are ignored by Google and may cause problems in all search engines.

  7. Poor spelling and grammar - Misspell your keywords and you're negating your search engine optimization efforts. But if you misspell common words, people may lose respect for you and your company. For example, the contraction for the two words "you" and "are" is "you're," not "your." And there is no such word as "alot." You can allot blame for this between parents and schools, but it takes a lot of hubris not to thoroughly proofread your writing. I went to Catholic grade school and the nuns had us diagramming sentences for 5 of those 8 long years. I hated it then, but I'm very grateful now because reasonably good grammar comes to me naturally as I write. The sole exception is to include some common variations of your keywords, if not outright misspellings, in the <body> text of your interior pages in order to snare the search engine traffic from user errors. If you employ this strategy, its a good idea to make it clear that your usage of the alternate spelling is intentional.

If you want your site to rank higher in the search engines, my Search Engine Optimization Services can give your website what it needs to get your fair share of search engine traffic quickly, without disturbing your design, and without breaking your budget.

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Call Richard L. Trethewey today at 612-408-4057 from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM Central time to get started on your new website design package or search engine optimization program today!


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Sunday, 18-May-2008 11:39:27 MST