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, you will not make any sales. 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. 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 just 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. I hope this has been helpful Cheers
Interesting, but pretty obvious. Now how about the 10 tips of finding info regarding search engine tips (for better ratings)...But I agree a pretty website with no visitors is like a great Idea never put into practice.
The only obvious valid points are only 5/6/7. That is a copy/pasted/rewritten list from at least 2005, internet-advertising-online.com/Articles/Internet_Marketing/Ten-Costly-Search-Engine-Mistakes-to-Avoid.htm That's a mistake that most of the beginners make. Choosing the wrong keywords won't harm your site, and you still can get traffic if you optimize for those wrong keywords that you choose. Learn from your mistakes. And choosing the right keywords has nothing to do with site design. To optimize your page you actually have to repeat your keywords at least twice, In title and in content. And I am sure that my 1000 words article, in which I repeat more than 10 times my keywords and gets a lot of comments from my readers, won't be downgraded by search engines. Yeah... Haven't you heard that you are not allowed to steal text from other sites? But you still posted. And you got "the duplicate content part" all wrong. There are many online stores that sell the same products using the same description and the same specifications. They are listed in search engines and they are doing fine. All you need to do is to add some value to that non authentic content. My site will not be removed from search engines' index if I insert unrelated metakeywords in my pages. It won't help me but it won't make me harm also. If I assume that all search engines acts like Google (as ONE), I'll be on yahoo's 1'st page way before I reach 1'st page in Google. How is that a mistake? How is that that a lot of users still use free hosting and still have their site indexed. How is that that a lot of marketeers use free hosting services to build their links on different class C ips in order to get search engines rankings and traffic? How is that a mistake to avoid? How is that a mistake? How is that a "SEO specialist" agrees with all this s#!t?.... that don't apply!
thx for you reply mr gadget, I never claimed that this list was mine, and even if it's an old one, It doesnt make it any less true. 1- Target your website for the wrong keywords, you will get untargeted and useless traffic, if you're site is monetized, you won't get any penny from them. 2- of course you must repeat the keyword, just dont over do it, 10/1000 might be good, 50/1000 might be harmful 3- this article is not stolen, it comes from a PLR article, meaning that the guy who wrote has no problem with using it again, and even modifying it and claiming ownership of it, LEGALLY. + my purpose here is not to drive traffic to anywhere, but just to share info. 4- same idea as point 1, unrelated keywords are useless, to avoid 8- if your website gets listed on yahoo way before google, this an argument for the diversity of search engins, not against it. Otherwise all the search engin will list it at the same time. also, you can get listed on yahoo, but not on some other SE's. 9- If you want to go serious about your website, free hosting will never do it, any experienced guy will tell you this. 10- well if having missing elements is not a mistake for you, and you're proud of it, then you're just an idiot. But thanks for sharing your ideas anyway
Wrong. Some points don't apply anymore. The article as it is miss inform people who are new in all this SEO journey. Back to point 1. Choosing wrong/bad keywords it's not really something that you can avoid if you're new to this SEO journey. How would you know which keyword will bring you traffic, without testing? Just because you use some software to select some good keywords won't bring you traffic. You still have to optimize for them! Sharing how to pick some good keywords would be more useful than just saying "Don't pick the wrong ones! it's a mistake..." It's a mistake not to pick at all and not to test! Point 2 as I was saying is different from: Point 3 Copyright infringement is wrong. Don't do it! I agree with this part. Google refer to page duplication/duplicate content as multiple urls pointing exact to the same page. Example: forums.digitalpoint.com/ and forums.digitalpoint.com/index.php both lead to the main page. In this case google will index only one variant and dump the other. Multiple versions of the same article (copied from other places, eg PLR) will still be indexed, but if you want to rank them you have to add value to them! The proven fact is the multitude of autoblogs that still get indexed. Back to point 4 If I optimize my site for sex, and all my content is related to sex, but I make a child page using "Michael Jackson with childrens" as a tag for the page where I'll post a video with Michael singing for childrens ... Do you guarantee that the site will be deindexed for unrelated content? Or for spamming maybe? Keyword research is important and using the right ones makes a difference. Back in 2005 when this article was out, this was a valid point. Back then, search engines shared a more equally user ratio. I don't deny the fact that search engines use their own algorithm for ranking pages. But now, when google has more than 80% of search traffic it's a mistake not to optimize for google. If you get 1'st position in google you can then go and loose some time optimizing for the rest. Totally agree with you. But once you start having traffic for your site, the host will force you to pay for higher bandwith in order to maintain your site. This is not a mistake to avoid for better rankings in search engines! It's actually a good way to start with a domain name and free hosting to see if your good at this SEO stuff! You still didn't answered my question, but you took the liberty to make me an idiot! Why don't you try to explain how missing page elements have a big influence in your serps rather than post some outdated and misleading PLR under the pretext that you only share the info? The thread is all yours...
I didn't explain, because if you have pages missing elements like title, keyword headlines, meta description, clearly there is something missing. Don't you think so?
http://ezinearticles.com/?SEO-Common-Mistakes---How-to-Avoid-Them-and-Solutions&id=4591721Please check these out
Those are some great tips. One other mistake also you see is getting too many low quality backlinks or getting too many at one time.
Hackimos, when copying information from the internet into your own post, it is customary and expected that you give credit to the source, lest others read it and believe (erroneously) that it is your personal information that you have posted.
You mentioned using the right keywords. To expand on that I would say use "buying keywords" if you don't your traffic you get will not convert because they are doing research or just want information. How do you find buying keywords? some of them are obvious with the words, buy or sale in them. Others contain phrases like cures, solutions, remedies, best or review, which most people use when they wish to buy. Traffic is the life blood of your sales!
Buying keywords. you mean like google adwords? I would expect Facebook targeted adverts more useful in getting targeted visitors to your site.
No, you do not purchase with adwords. You select keywords that people type in the search engine when they want to buy something, not when they want info. That way traffic that comes to your site wants to buy and not just get information. Therefore called buying keywords. The whole idea is to paying traffic not just reading traffic. Now go re-read my first post and it will make sense.