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Top 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 at
http://www.1stSearchRanking.com/t.cgi?2797&keywords.htm
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 at
http://www.1stSearchRanking.com/t.cgi?2797&keyword-rich-pages.htm
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 at
http://www.1stSearchRanking.com/t.cgi?2797&frames.htm
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 at
http://www.1stSearchRanking.com/t.cgi?2797&page-cloaking.htm
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 at
http://www.1stSearchRanking.com/t.cgi?2797&submission.htm
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/ For more advice on how you can
take your web site to the top of the search engines, subscribe to his FREE
newsletter by going to
http://www.1stSearchRanking.com
