: by Dante Monteverde :
10 critical mistakes when optimizing a website and how to correct them
Effective SEO does not happen overnight — it’s a long, arduous task that often takes
months, even years before reaping the rewards for your overall SEM campaign.
Implementing the correct strategy from the very beginning is crucial for overall SEO
success. In order to help you get off on the right foot, I have listed 10 critical errors
many website owners make and how to correct or avoid them.
1. Don’t assume you will be able to optimize your
site entirely on your own or believe you can just hire
an SEO company down the road. Do an analysis of
your business and its major keywords. Are you going
to be able to rank for highly competitive keywords
on your own? Should you hire an SEO company?
This decision needs to be made early in the process,
not later.
2. Don’t begin your website design and development
without considering an SEO plan. Docomplete
a keyword analysis first and determine what kind of
keyword-rich content you will need to develop in
order to rank highly. Make sure your graphic designers
know which keywords are going to be targeted
on each of the pages they will design — it makes it
easier for them to match the overall theme of the
content and keywords to the site’s design, broadening
the SEO impact.
3. Don’t forget about your secondary pages. In
many cases, these pages can rank just as well as your
main index.html page. Do spend ample time developing
these pages.
tag on your secondary pages’
tags. Do spend time developing separate keyword-
rich
tags that match the content to the
keywords you are targeting on your secondary pages.
4. Don’t repeat the keywords you have on your
index.html.
tags. Most likely, you are already ranking
well for your own company or domain name.
Do place your company or domain name at the end
of the
tag if you absolutely need it to appear
in the headline within the search engine results
pages (SERPs).
5. Don’t list your company or domain name first
in the
Tag. List your keyword first Brand/Domain Name last.</p>
<p><b>6.</b> Don’t target general, highly competitive keywords.
Do target keyword derivatives that get traffic
and are not as competitive. It’s better to rank #3 for
“blue soft widgets” than #30 for “widgets” even if
the main keywords get more traffic. In the end, landing
in the top 10 or top 5, even for less competitive
keywords will generate more traffic overall.</p>
<p><b>7.</b> Don’t forget about a sitemap and making your
website search engine friendly and crawlable. Do
submit your website to Google Webmaster Tools and
Yahoo Site Explorer and take advantage of their
resources.</p>
<p><b>8.</b> Don’t make the mistake of driving all your
incoming links to your main index.html page. Do
create a balanced link program that not only generates
incoming links to your main index.html pages
but also to your secondary pages. If you have useful
content or tools on your secondary pages, websites
will link to them.</p>
<p><b>9.</b> Don’t request the same anchor text on all of
your incoming links, as this looks very unnatural to
the search engines. Do offer anyone who wants to
link back to you with a variety of anchor texts. And,
of course, match the anchor text with those keywords
you are targeting for that specific page. If at all possible,
try to stay away from getting incoming links displaying
your domain name. Instead, try to get people
to link to you with keywords and keyword phrases.</p>
<p><b>10.</b> Don’t assume you can complete an initial SEO
campaign and think you are done. Do perform regular
and ongoing keyword research to make sure you
are still targeting the correct keywords; perhaps there
are new keywords to target? Do follow up on your
link requests and maintain an ongoing link campaign.
Do implement an analytics program and track
the amount of traffic you are generating from the
organic search engine listings. Are these visits leading
to sales or conversions? If so, it’s in your best interest
to up your SEO efforts and ride the momentum.<br /><br />
There are many mistakes that webmasters and
website owners make when implementing a new or
ongoing SEO strategy. That’s why it is difficult
garnering and maintaining organic listings on the
major search engines. While this is only a sample of
some of the more common mistakes, this list should
provide you with a starting point of how to begin
and what to avoid.</p>
<p>Happy SEOing.</p>
<hr />
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<p><b><a title="SEO Corner" href="/seocorner/"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 10.5pt;">SEO Corner</span></span></a><span style="font-size: 10.5pt;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i><a target="_self" title="SEO Corner" href="/seocorner/"><br /></a></i><br />About the Author:</span></span></b></p>
<p><b><span style="font-size: 10.5pt;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Dante A. Monteverde is a Search Strategist specializing in Search Engine
Optimization.<br />He founded <a target="_blank" title="Spider Bait SEO" href="http://www.spiderbait.com/seo-expert/">
Spider Bait SEO</a> in 1996 and has over 10 years of SEO experience.</span>
</span></b></p>
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