Some common themes develop amongst incorrectly optimized sites. Could YOU be making the same errors with your site? To find out, let’s look at the five most common search engine optimization mistakes:
1) Non Utilization of the Title Tag
How many times have you looked at a web site where the browser title reads “Welcome to [company name]’s web site†or simply “[Company Name]� Nothing wrong with that, I hear you say? Well if you want to achieve high search engine rankings, there’s PLENTY wrong with it.
2) Use of Untargeted Keywords and Phrases
Another common mistake made by webmasters and SEO learners is their choice of keywords placed in the META keyword tag. Sure it might seem logical to target the word “printers†if you run a printer repair business in Ohio, but think about it – even if you succeeded in ranking well for such a competitive term (you won’t), how many of the people visiting your site as a result of this search would leave as soon as they saw your home page? That’s right, most of them. All the people who wanted to buy printers, all the people looking for businesses outside Ohio, all the people not looking specifically for printer repairers.
3) A Lack of Optimized Body Text
This one is very common. How often do you visit a home page that is made up entirely of graphics? You know the ones – they consist of an enormous Flash file or maybe a large logo or a montage of images, but the thing they have in common is a distinct lack of text. Think they look professional? Think again. No matter what you read or hear, if a site has no text on the home page, it hasn’t been correctly optimized and has little chance of ranking well in the search engines. Now that’s unprofessional in my opinion.
4) Submitting to 1,000 Search Engines
I love this one. I’ve lost count of how many banner ads or web sites I’ve seen boasting “We’ll submit your site to 1,000 search engines!†I can’t believe the hype is still prevalent that you need to submit a web site to thousands of search engines in order to receive traffic. This is just NOT TRUE.
5) Resubmitting Too Soon and Too Often
So you’ve optimized your site and submitted it to the most important search engines. But it’s been three weeks and you haven’t received any traffic. Time to resubmit, right? WRONG. Depending on the search engine, they can take up to twelve weeks to include your site in their index. Each search engine and directory work to their own time frame. You need to check their average submission times (a chart is here) and be patient.
So those are the five most common SEO mistakes. Any sound familiar? Don’t worry, you’re in good company. Now that you’ve recognised the problem areas and are better equipped with the correct information, you’ll be able to reverse the damage.