Botching Your Search Engine Optimization

Written by: Gary Horsman

Botching Your Search Engine Optimization

Take some Search Engine Optimization Action Today!

You need to pay attention to your website’s SEO.

Your website enables people to conduct research on you and your business.

Your website enables you to present to potential customer when you are not around. Your website in theory can talk to as many potential customers that can find you, talk to them as long as they want to listen and at any time of the day or night.

That is IF they can find your website!

If you are the website owner then you can change how and how often people find your website. You have the power!

You can change it by cleaning up the mistakes yourself or by investing in SEO consulting services to help you do it quickly and efficiently.

Here are some common SEO mistakes that I see every day. If you make these then you are hurting your business. That’s the bad news. The good news is that you are reading this so that you become aware of these SEO mistakes and you can fix them.

Not Using a Unique Title Tag

Every page on your Web site should have a unique title tag. The title tag is one of the most important SEO elements. The title tag needs to be descriptive of the content on the page, engaging and a keyword phrase. This is a tall order for something that should be on 66 characters long but it can be done.

The title tag of a page is very significant. Your Title tag is what a user will see when they see your content in the search results. If they bookmark your page then it is displayed in their bookmarks and it will often be displayed when someone links to your site.

Finally, the search engines frown upon a title tag that is common for all the pages on the site. This may end up in the search engines thinking that you have many duplicate content pages (a big no-no). Also, do not use up too much of the 66 characters with your company’s name. Use your title tag intelligently by lacing in a page-specific phrase and a related keyword phase.

Also, if you blog then create a unique title tag for posts and articles you write. It’s a good way to tackle both the user and the search engines’ needs.

Allowing Ugly URLs

Ugly URLs look bad. For some they can be a big turn off when they see these ugly URLs in the search results. If you can use keyword phrases in you URLs then do so. Separate the words with dashes. Do not make them too long.

Requiring a PhD in Website Navigation

Make your navigation simple. Everyone will appreciate this.

Use text in the content of your website pages to help people to navigate. This is helpful to people and the search engines love this.

Do not use a Flash menu. Flash cannot be easily understood by the search engines. You are doing your site and the SEO a disservice by designing a Flash navigation menu. Also, for that matter, do not use a Flash website design as Flash content is almost invisible to the search engines.

Use some footer navigation for your most important pages. Footer links can be helpful for people and they enable you to make links to your other content at the bottom of a page and therefore help a search engine spider to find more of your content.

Optimizing for the Wrong Keywords

You need to do keyword research. There are no ifs ands or buts to this. If you are going to optimize your website then optimize it for the right set of keywords.

Your SEO activities will be a waste of time if you do your SEO without first doing the keyword research.

Use some free tools to get started such as the Google Adword Keyword Tool and Google Trends. There is also software and online services that you can pay for that can provide you with even more insights.

Messing Up Your Internal Links

All the internal links on your site that you make with text should use a keyword. This is so easy to do as you are making the link anyway why not make it with a keyword. The search engines are always looking for links and when they find a link they look to see what text is being used to make the link.

Text such as “click here” or “read more” or “learn more” could be crafted better to use your high-impact commercially valuable keyword phrases.

When you build you link network you put effort into this. It is not easy. We want the majority of the links to be done using our well-researched keyword phrases. The links on your site are 100% within your control. Build them with care.

Not Using Analytics

Your own analytics can provide you with very significant information. Moreover, performing search engine optimization without the insight of your analytics is like navigating an unfamiliar environment in the dark. An SEO professional will be able to talk with you about keyword research, traffic, on-site traffic patterns and conversion.

You need to understand the activity on your site, what terms actually convert for you and your traffic or page hubs. The more information you know about your site and user behavior, the better you can optimize it for searchers. And the more money you’ll make. But you can’t improve anything if you’re walking around in the dark. Let your analytics help you to understand what is going on when people visit your website.

If you want to learn more about SEO for your website then give us a call 802-457-9799. We are sure that you will learn from and enjoy the conversation.