Top 10 Search Engine Positioning Mistakes
By Sumantra Roy
When it comes to web site search engine positioning, 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 here:
http://www.1stSearchRanking.com/t.cgi?2139&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 here:
http://www.1stSearchRanking.com/t.cgi?2139&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 here.
http://www.1stSearchRanking.com/t.cgi?2139&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 here.
http://www.1stSearchRanking.com/t.cgi?2139&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 here.
http://www.1stSearchRanking.com/t.cgi?2139&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 here.
For more advice on how you can take your web site to the top of
the search engines,
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