10 Costly Search Engine Mistakes to Avoid

If you have a web site then you already understand the importance of traffic. Traffic is to Internet marketing as location is to real estate. It’s the one thing that really matters. If you can’t generate targeted traffic to your site, you will not make any sales.

Usually the owner or designer of the site is the individual designated to drive traffic to the site. Of coarse, you can use advertising, but it’s going to cost you. Together with the search engines to generate targeted (interested in your product) traffic is the least expensive method known.

Unfortunately, many site owners don’t comprehend the value of search engine visibility, which leads to traffic. They place more importance on producing a”pretty” website. Not that this is bad, but it’s really secondary to search engine positioning. . .after all, isn’t that exactly what you desire.

1. Not using keywords effectively.

This is most likely one of the most critical area of site design. Select the proper keywords and potential customers will find your site. Use the incorrect ones and your site will see little, if any, traffic.

2. Repeating the exact keywords.

If you use the very same keywords over and over again (called keyword stacking) the search engines may downgrade (or skip) the page or website.

3. Robbing pages from other sites.

How often have you read or heard that”this is the Internet and it’s ok” to steal icons and text from websites to use on your site. Do not do it. Its one thing to learn from other people who’ve been there and another to outright copy their work. The search engines are extremely smart and usually detect page duplication. They might 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 whatsoever to do with their website. They place unrelated keywords in a page (such as”sex”, the title 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, because the keyword is popular, they think this will improve 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’ll be considered spam.

6. Relying on hidden text.

You might tend to consider that if you cannot see it, it doesn’t hurt. Wrong…. Do not attempt and 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 this web page; thereby, which makes it invisible.

7. Relying on tiny text

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

8. Assuming all search engines are exactly the same.

A lot of people assume that each search engine plays by the same rules. This is not so. Make it a point to learn what each significant search engine requires for high visibility.

9. Using free web hosting.

Don’t use free web hosting if you’re 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.

Be sure that you check every page in your website for completeness, like missing links, graphics, etc.. There are sites on the web that will do this at no cost.

This is simply a few of the methods and techniques which you need to avoid. Don’t give into 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 by the search engines forever. Invest a little time to learn the proper techniques for increasing search engine visibility and your net traffic will increase.

Here’s another article from Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2017/09/22/12-seo-mistakes-to-avoid-for-better-search-engine-rankings/