Web business owners commit some SEO & ranking gaffes,
sometimes without even knowing what they've done. In the
manner of a Letterman top ten list, I'd like to offer the
worst in the hope that I can prevent you making the same
mistakes. The laughtrack is provided by SEO's who understand
the humor in these mistakes and see slapstick silliness in
similar client mistakes every day.
Silly SEO Mistake #10) Removing a page from your site which
gets 20,000 search engine referred visitors a day because,
"It's time to change focus and concentrate on our core
specialty." (laughtrack)
Capture those visitors with a "301 permanently moved"
redirect and SEND them to your core specialty pages. Answer
their questions about that missing page and sell them on a
better solution. Removing any, even moderately trafficked
page, is bad practice. You do KNOW that page gets 20,000
visitors a day because you saw it in your WebTrends report,
right?
Silly SEO Mistake #9) Not paying attention to web traffic
analytics data because, "I forgot my login and password"
(laughtrack)
Worse, you don't have an analytics program or service because
traffic data takes too long to analyze or isn't easy to
understand. If you are a one man band - LEARN and USE a web
traffic analytics program, as it is essential to web business
success. If you have employees, make it the job of one person
to study that data and understand where traffic is coming
from and how it converts to business. Analytics software
price is not an issue - Google Analytics is free and it
integrates and tracks all PPC conversion and ROI data.
Silly SEO Mistake #8) Never searching for your own stuff in
search engines for the most important generic keyword phrases
representing your product or services because "We're number
one in the pay-per-click-ads." (laughtrack)
We have the top position in PPC - so there's no reason to
rank in organic listings. Your searches are intended to find
out how you are ranking against your competitors in organic
listings - which are FREE after you've paid an SEO to gain
top positions. The PPC ads stop sending traffic as soon as
you stop paying. Once the SEO specialist has gained top
ranking for your site, you needn't pay them ongoing high fees
- you are done and the traffic is now FREE. PPC can continue
in areas you can't gain organic listings in or to supplement
those top ranking phrases.
Silly SEO Mistake #7) Using embedded text links that read,
"Click Here" and link to your most important products
information or sales pages because you think people won't
understand that those underlined product names are links to
the products. (laughtrack)
If your site commits this silly mistake, invest the time to
correct it immediately site-wide because that internal
linking structure can have a significant impact on ranking
for your most profitable products or services. Keywords in
embedded hyperlinks are a crucial factor for ranking for your
targeted keyword phrases. The same is true of external links
from partners, press releases, articles and shared content
linking to your site. Get those hyperlinks fixed. You aren't
trying to rank well for "Click Here." Resist the temptation
to use cutesy trademarked names like "x-pense trakker"
instead of proper spellings unless you've committed millions
to major media branding campaigns.
Silly SEO Mistake #6) Using gorgeous stylized text on image
gif links as your site navigation. Heck, even ugly stylized
image based text as site navigation. (laughtrack)
Gif images, especially javascript image swap navigation or
flash navigation is one of the worst things you can do for
your site ranking over the long term. Taking a hint from SEO
stumble #7 above, use text based hyperlinks for your site
navigation. The words appear on every page of your site and
the embedded links lead to your most important pages, telling
the search engines precisely what is on those pages you link
to. Try to be more creative with text descriptions than
"Products" or "Solutions" and use product descriptions or
service names.
Silly SEO Mistake #5) Tweaking your site to rank well on MSN
search (between 1% to 15% of referred search traffic) or
Yahoo search (between 5% & 20% of referred search traffic)
without regard to Google referred traffic numbers (between
50% & 80% of referred search traffic) because "MSN is my
favorite search engine." (laughtrack)
If you are in business to make money, you shouldn't be making
business decisions based on your preferences over what your
largest customer base chooses. Right now Google gets about
60% of all searches performed and if you are checking that
web traffic analytics software from SEO blunder #9 above, you
are very likely to see the pie chart for referral traffic at
about 50% (most sites see 70% or higher) from Google
searches.
Silly SEO Mistake #4) Having the secretary (who hates her
job) provide headlines through the content management system
because, "That's why I paid so much for the CMS software - so
it would be dimwit-secretary-easy to manage the content."
(laughtrack)
You are the dimwit if you don't have an important employee,
trained in SEO basics, input new articles, white papers and
product descriptions. That task will determine your search
engine ranking for the life of your web site on every topic
that Sally (I-hate-this-company) Secretary adds to the site.
Train your content manager in SEO basics of keyword density,
position on page, headline writing, internal linking
structure and word order issues.
Silly SEO Mistake #3) Not having a sitemap because, "it's too
much trouble to add every new page manually" or because Sally
(I-Hate-My-Job) Secretary fails to tick the little "Sitemap"
box in the CMS software as she adds the page with a bad title
to the site. (laughtrack)
Sitemaps are not often used by visitors to most web sites,
but are critical to indexing crawlers and search engine
ranking of new pages. Is it possible to make a sitemap
visitor friendly? Take a look at:
http://www.google.com/sitemap.html
Silly SEO Mistake #2) Using the same title and description
meta tags for every one of your 50,000 pages, because your
company name and tag line "ACME Products are the Best of the
Rest" is snazzy and you like seeing that across the top of
the browser window from every page. (laughtrack)
Title and description meta tags are the most valuable real
estate on any web page and should address the content of
specifically what is on THAT single page. Web sites are NOT
about branding, but about selling or gathering leads after
someone has come to your site. Your tag line will not bring
search engine traffic looking for product or service details.
Silly SEO Mistake #1) The number one SEO stumble and blunder
is ... Having your website redesigned by a top web
development company for a "fresh new professional look,"
(that slick web development sales person), changing all the
filenames and site directory structure! (uproarious
laughtrack) (wild applause)
Either keep old filenames and site directory folder structure
in place or use "301 permanently moved" redirects to new
pages from all previous pages. I did this for a small client
who quickly went from reasonably well placed in the search
results - to the very top of the charts for all his important
search phrases. Of course, we consulted on file and directory
naming conventions and SEO friendly page design options
during the redesign process. One smart client.
Copyright © June 29, 2006 Mike Banks Valentine
Mike Banks Valentine operates SEOptimism, Offering SEO training of in-house content managers http://seoptimism.com/SEO_Staff_Training.htm as well as contract SEO for advertising agencies, web development companies and marketing firms. http://seoptimism.com/Ad_Agency_SEO_Contracting.htm
Content aggregation, article and press release optimization & distribution for linking campaigns. http://seoptimism.com/Linking_SEO.htm
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