Web_Hosting

10 Costly Search Engine Mistakes

If you have a website then you already know the importance of traffic. Traffic is to Internet marketing as
location is to real estate. It's the only thing that really matters. If you cannot generate targeted visitors to
your site chances are your sales will lower than you want.

Usually the owner or designer of the website is the person designated to drive traffic to the site. The
chief ingredient in generating traffic is the search engine. Of coarse, you can use advertising, but it's going
to cost you. Using the search engines to generate targeted (interested in your product) traffic is the least
expensive method known.

Unfortunately, many website owners do not understand the importance of search engine visibility, which
leads to traffic. They place more importance on producing a "pretty" website. Not that this is bad, but it
is really secondary to search engine placement.

Hopefully, the following list of common mistakes, made by many website owners, will help you generate
more targeted traffic to your site - after all, isn't that what you want.

1. Not using keywords effectively.
This is probably one of the most critical area of site design. Choose the right keywords and potential
customers will find your site. Use the wrong ones and your site will see little, if any, traffic.

2. Repeating the same keywords.
When you use the same keywords over and over again (called keyword stacking) the search engines
may downgrade (or skip) the page or site.

3. Robbing pages from other websites.
How many times have you heard or read that "this is the Internet and it's ok" to steal icons and text from
websites to use on your site. Don't do it. Its one thing to learn from others who have been there and
another to outright copy their work. The search engines are very smart and usually detect page
duplication. They may even prevent you from ever being listed by them.

4. Using keywords that are not related to your website.
Many unethical website owners try to gain search engine visibility by using keywords that have nothing
at all to do with their website. They place unrelated keywords in a page (such as "sex", the name of a
known celebrity, the hot search topic of the day, etc.) inside a meta tag for a page. The keyword
doesn't have anything to do with the page topic. However, since the keyword is popular, they think this
will boost their visibility. This technique is considered spam by the search engines and may cause the
page (or sometimes the whole site) to be removed from the
search engine listing.

5. Keyword stuffing.
Somewhat like keyword stacking listed above, this means to assign multiple keywords to the description
of a graphic or layer that appears on your website by using the "alt=" HTML parameter. If the search
engines find that this text does not really describe the graphic or layer it will be considered spam.

6. Relying on hidden text.
You might be inclined to think that if you cannot see it, it doesn't hurt. Wrong.... Do not try to hide your
keywords or keyword phrases by making them invisible. For example, some unethical designers my set
the keywords to the same color as the background of the web page; thereby, making it invisible. Might
be invisible to the human eye but not the search engine eye.

7. Relying on tiny text.
This is another version of the item above (relying on hidden text). Do not try to hide your keywords or
keyword phrases by making them tiny. Setting the text size of the keywords so small that it can barely
be seen does this.

8. Assuming all search engines are the same.
Many people assume that each search engine plays by the same rules. This is not so. Each has their own
rule base and is subject to change anytime they so desire. Make it a point to learn what each major
search engine requires for high visibility.

9. Using free web hosting.
Do not use free web hosting if you are really serious about increasing site traffic via search engine
visibility. Many times the search engines will eliminate content from these free hosts.

10. Forgetting to check for missing web page elements.
Make sure to check every page in your website for completeness, like missing links, graphics, etc.
There are sites on the web that will do this for free.

This is a few of the methods and techniques that you should avoid. Do not give in to the temptation that
these methods will work for you. They will do more harm than good for your website.

Not only will you spend weeks of wasted effort, you may have your site banned from the search engines
forever. Invest a little time to learn the proper techniques for increasing search engine visibility and your
net traffic will increase.