Top 5 UNUSUAL Search Engine Optimisation mistakes

 I assume we all know about usual SEO mistakes – lack of original content,  not having sitemap and robots.txt,  wrong alt image text attributes,  accidentally keyword stuffing, etc. But there are many mistakes which are less known and not considered by many of website owners, even SEO companies.

  



Putting Important Text As An Image

There are so many beautifully designed websites on the Internet. But, there is something strange with them. How many times it happens to you, when you want to copy part of text from some page, and put your cursor over it, you can’t select it? That is because some ‘smart’ web designer rendered whole page into gif or jpg image!!! Maybe website looks awesome, but search engine robot will not find any searchable text on page. Therefore , rankings will be catastrophic! Don’t do that, at least don’t let the designer to render whole page into image. Avoid changing your most important headlines into images.
 
Flash websites and JavaScript 

Similar thing. It might be attractive for users, but not to search engines. If you really want that your site is Flash based, you should provide an HTML version as well  for search engine. Google spider can’t read flash, therefore can’t index it. If you want to find out more about flash tips, read this article about optimizing flash sites.  


JavaScript: Search engines do not read it. In case you have JavaScript menu, then you should necessarily  build a sitemap. Also, consider to put the links in a “noscript” tag  because of “Crawling”.




 Same Title And Meta Description On Every Page Of The Website

Let users and  search engines know about every page on your website. Each page is unique. Each page has its own special function.  So, change the title and meta descriptions  to match the content on that particular page. It is possible to optimize each page  of website for couple of a important search phrases. You can take huge  advantage with this method  and rank well for several search terms  at the same time, targeting few longtail phrases for each page.

Neglecting the Old URLs while redesigning your website

People used to find  pages o your website based on the information that search engine robots compiled. You will trow away all the traffic you built up before, if you get rid of old URLs. Robots  will send people to pages that no longer exist. You should avoid it.
If you have to make redesign, just stick to the same structure that your old site has. Keep the same url addresses for the new page. In case you don’t want to keep old structure of your website, then use so called  "permanent redirects": Make a .htaccess file which  will tell search engines to permanently redirect traffic from an old url to a new url. Doing that, you will send a "signal" for search engines, which will soon change their listings from the old urls to the new urls.
 
Dynamic URL’s without keywords in it.

Many  people have  CMS such as Joomla or Drupal. CMS use dynamic urls with all kinds of random letters  and random numbers in the url. The words in your URL are very important signals to search engines what that page is about. Wordpress, for example,  allows you to control your urls. Search engines read words like humans so your URLs should be readable to both humans and spiders.
 
"Splash Page"

Splash pages can have amazing design, but they are disaster when it comes to SEO, because  spiders are looking for text, but there is no text on a "splash page." Home page of website is the most important page. That page has the best chance of being optimized.Don’t  use it to place some nice picture. I am sure you know that search engines don't like splash pages very much.Also, huge majority of people are annoyed by clicking and clicking to finally view the content. Splash pages – one of the things you must avoid, except if you are making them just on affiliate purpose.

I Can't Get No (onsite) SEOtisfaction

Google has complex algorithms for  websites ranking.  Most Internet marketers simply don't know enough about search engine optimisation which is the most important process for better ranking of your site.  If your website doesn’t make it to the first page of Google, you won't receive enough of website traffic from visitors who use search engines. Of course, the easiest way to optimise your website would be  to hire a professional SEO guy (or a girl :) ) to do all what is needed. But, what to do if you are just starting your Internet business and can't afford that? What to do if your budget isn't enough for hiring some SEO specialist? 

SEO is infinite struggle. It is much easier to get on top (although it is not so easy), then to stay on the top. Many business owners have difficulty keeping up with competitors and stay on first position(s). This article will help you to do a proper onsite SEO so you won't need to hire SEO specialist and waste your money on that. However, you will need to spend money on link building, which is inevitable, but at least you will save some money by doing onsite SEO all by yourself.
Now, I assume we all know about basics of onsite SEO. I will give you a few tips, assuming you know the basic part such as importance of title, meta description, keyword density, permalink structure etc. So, here we go.

Web Analytics - very important part!

Monitor your visitor paths and exit pages. It is very important. Keep monitoring and improving by making all  necessary changes . OmnitureSiteCatalyst  has very nice dashboard and it is also  very 'data intensive'. With this tool, you can compare different groups and campaigns   to see how they are doing against each other. Compare the data with Google analytics, pay attention for details, and you will always be one step ahead your competitors. 

Don' t forget to include Google Sitemaps. 

Sitemap is something like compressed version of the file which  can be created for all pages on your website. It is very useful especially if you have hundreds of pages. Before you upload your sitemap.xml (you must have Google account to do that, but I assume that everyone has a Google account. If you don't have it, just sign in for Gmail), you have to verify that your robots.txt allows Google to crawl the site . When you have your sitemap validated Google will crawl your site more frequently and Google's crawler will verify changes in the sitemap file.See Google sitemap here.

Internal linking structure.

Avoid absolute links to Privacy Policy”, or “About Us”, “ etc, because you want PageRank to be passed to your traffic pages. Don't use absolute links in your navigation. Use it  within your content areas, because PageRank score is directly affected by this. Be  sure you have a relative link from every page to your home page . You should link to portals or event to  directories  that are authoritative as far as your external links are. You must use your targeted keyword phrase for the anchor text. But keep in mind  to vary your anchor text when linking to your internal pages. For those who don't know what internal linking structure is, you can check it on SEOMoz. 

Carefully select  your CMS (Content Management Software)

Most of the people agree that using web-based Content Management Software for constructing  web sites- makes things easier. I must admit, it is a easy to use this software. However, CMS doesn't allow users to create differentTitle and Meta tags for different web pages. CMS also has limited characters. They are "resource-hungry", they don't index properly on search engines, and also CMS always need to be upgraded to changes in software. Obviously, it is  not so good solution for optimising websites. Every web page must have specific Title and Meta tags. Keep that in mind.Also, many webmasters are spending  a lot of time to optimise just their homepages, but they should also need to spend time optimising the inner pages as well.  In most of the proper (fully) optimised websites,  an optimised inner page gets more search engine traffic than the homepage.

Hey hey hey, that's what I say ...

PPC as a paid alternative to SEO

SEO vs. PPC is infinite struggle. One of main dilemmas  was,  is and always will be: Should you spend your time and money to improve your  organic search  or invest money in good PPC campaign?


One of the biggest  illusions is that SEO costs absolutely nothing. That is so not true. It is true if you believe Google's words. Even Google employees know the truth and don't believe in that fairy tales: write original content, optimise your website using Google advices..then sit and do nothing, because if you have excellent and unique content, visitors will come. Yeah, right!


What about guest posting? What about creating infographics and viral campaigns? What about directory submissions, writing and submitting press releases? I mean, if I have all those skills, and know how to write killer press release, make an catchy infographic and enough time to participate in large number of social networks...why would I bother with site? I could earn a lot of money just by doing all that stuff for others, right?
So, there is need to invest money in your SEO campaign, at least for outsorcing. One day has only 24 hours, you can't do everything what is needed for link building. 
One thing I agree: with organic optimisation, you are actually developing a longer term  strategy. SEO has results that last for years as opposed to PPC. Pay Per Click marketing  lasts only as long as your money on your bank account does. 

PPC is a great way to see immediate results. Your listing appears instantly.For example,  if you find some  keyword is not good, all you need to do is just to make a few minor tweaks. That's it, your new target phrase has changed. Write your  ad straightforward and creatively. Include important details , price for example. You can target searchers by age or gender, or you can target searchers by geographic location. You can even make campaign targeting searches by the time of day, week or month, target sites based on ethnicity  or even whether or not households have children.  One of the best strategies is so called "demographic targeting ". Advanced  PPC guys are actually applying a combination of targets.

SEO similar methods are not so effective. Changes could take a weeks even months to take effect with organic search tactics. You have to select at least ten "very specific" keywords that would give you the best traffic in the search. 

Also, you can set you own fixed budget. You set your own daily budget so you know exactly how much you’re going to spend.  Do not go overbidding. In that way,  you will only lose your money.  Do not go so low, too. Your ads will never get the chance to show up. One of the great things with PPC is that you can instantly track your conversion, even track success rates through Google Analytics or other PPC management software.


One of big PPC cons is that you pay for each click received. Some visitors are just competitors. That is the risk: This hassle wastes your money . PPC campaigns are also short terms, because it is difficult to handle in the long run.
SEO vs. PPC? As I mentioned at the beginning of this article, that's an infinite struggle. The fact is that SEO  is the better solution for a long term. PPC has its place as a secondary option, just to complementing SEO strategy. 

Top 10 FREE Search Engine Optimisation Tools

SEO tools are vital for your search optimisation. Doing most of the things manually is just time consuming. There are bunch of  free and paid SEO tools you can use it for analysis. Also, approximately 80% of website traffic comes through search engines. If you’re not on the first 2 pages, most people won’t bother to  find you. 

I assume that basics are known to almost everyone: Choose the right keyword phrase, register exact keyword domain if it's possible, optimise tour page, watch out for keyword density, submit your site to the major search engines,  then get a lot of other relevant sites link to your site. That would be all for the start.Here is a list of free SEO online tools:

We mentioned Keyword density. I recommend a  free tool for  measuring keyword density 

1) Free tool for  measuring keyword density

Go to gorank.com and type in the keyword phrase and domain you want to analyse.  This tool  will give you all information needed about all the important parts of your page, including title, meta description, etc. The higher the density the better. 

You can also try  this keyword density tool . It is useful for helping SEO's or webmasters to  achieve their optimum keyword density for a set of keywords or key terms. This tool will analyse your  URL and return a table of keyword density values for 1, 2 or three word key terms.

After that, you need to 

2)  Check How Many of Your Pages are Indexed 

It is also for free, and it is easy. Just go to Google or  any search engine (such as Bing or Yahoo, etc) . Type  “site:www.yourdomain.com”. The search engine will then tell you how many of your pages it has indexed. 

You need to see how search engines are friendly for your site, right? There is few free tools to do that.

3) Examine  How" Search Engine Friendly" Your Site Is 

These tools bellow allow you to see your site from the 'search engine's' spider’s point of view:

*-Just enter your URL here and it will give you a summary of the things you  need to improve. 

* Enter your a keyword phrase and URL -It also gives you a great summary of the things you could improve.

When you finished it, you can use another free tool. It will show you how important sites are

4) Google Toolbar

Google toolbar is very handy and very powerful tool. One of the most important things Google toolbar do, is that can 'tell' you is the “importance” of every site you visit. OF course, that is just for Google, but since Google is the strongest and most influenced search engine, that should be enough. Other important thing is Page Rank. Page Rank is Google’s measure of the importance of a site.Of course, the higher your PR, the higher your ranking. Google toolbar can even give you a snapshot of the PR of every site you visit.

Also, there are another awesome Google tools:  Google News Alerts and Google Web Alerts. You will need this tools to  monitor what websites are linking to your.

5) Google News Alerts and Google Web Alerts

For Google News Alerts  go here.  For  Google Web Alerts  click here.  These tools will tell you who’s linking to your site. Just simply set up an alert to be notified when Google finds tour site.

You don't want to spend your time  clicking through hundreds of Google search results looking for your site.  Use this free tool:

5) Monitor Your Position in Google with Cleverstat:

This tool allows you to enter a domain name and keyword, and it searches Google to see where your domain is positioned. Go here to download the setup file. Then just install.

See what information you can have just  entering the domain name:

6) Domain stats free tool: Enter the domain and get: number of pages indexed, domain age,  and number of backlinks. This statistics include Age of the domains, Alexa Taffic Rank, Dmoz listings, Yahoo WebRank,  count of backlinks and number of pages indexed in Search Engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo,  etc.

For more statistics and data, you can use this very handy free tool:

7) Compare Search Engines. It shows top results from 3 main search engines. Also helps you a lot to  get all kind of statistics of your competitor's domains.

Last, but not the least, don't forget 

8) Alexa ranking. It displays multiple domains instead of one. It is easiest way for you to have instant traffic results from Alexa Rankings. Much better than typing and search each time separately.

Remember, effective SEO strategies require a lot of effort and time. These kind of tools can help you to get better organised and short your time doing search engine's optimisation for your site. This list is made just to give you a brief look of wide range of free tools. There is more of them on Internet. Go, and find it for yourself.

Important Things every Search Engine Want To See - White hat tactique

Search engine companies such as Google or Bing are  often changing  algorithms in order to keep results up-to-date. Primary factor search engines used  for a website’s ranking is proper optimization (SEO). There is on-site and off-site SEO. Off-site SEO is also called link building.

Link building is the process of connecting to other websites. Those websites need to be highly ranked and of course relevant to your target market  that.  Google is the biggest player in Search Engines. Bing and Yahoo tend to follow Google’s lead. That market is moves really fast.

Some smart tips for onsite SEO.

Always keep in mind what Search engines likes to see:

1. One way links! That is what search engines looking for. Reciprocal links are so old method, you can even get penalised because of exchanging links. Their algorithms improved. Focus yourself on one way links.  Mutually increasing   link counts among different webistes is not good. One way link is much, much more worth than reciprocal link.

2. So, logical conclusion would be that Google, Yahoo and Bing  are looking for consistent results. Your link building progress must be consistent and slowly progressed. Avoid  so called link farms, although you will have more links, that doesn't necessarily means that is better method.  Google don't like link farms, you will only get penalised. Quality must be over quantity, remember it.

3. All search engines are always  looking  first for organic results. If it’s not natural, it’s going to be a problem. Write your posts for humans, not for the search engines. Write useful texts. Share it on social networks. Remember - patience looks natural. Although you will not see results in the beginning,  Google will crawl your website and index it. Gaining thousands of  links first month and just a couple  links second month will just decrease your rankings. Why? Because it not looks natural. You will find yourself in the sandbox i.e. dropping in the rankings. 

4. Carefully choose your keywords. You should have your main keyword in domain, title and meta description. Keyword density is also important, and it is around 3-7% in article. Don't overdo it, it is called "keyword stuffing". If you attempt to trick the search engines, that maybe can work for a short time, but they will soon discover you. Give them what they are looking for: relevant links and fresh content. Play by the rules. 

5. Make sure that your web design is search engine friendly. Use xml.sitemap and text link navigation on your pages. Also, don't forget robots.txt. 

Summary - optimise your page with everything search engines want. Write high value content. Avoid link farms and focus on one way links.