06 Jun 09 SEO SIMPLIFIED: 5 Mistakes to Avoid Part -I

In the last post of the series, we talked about Sitemap, and I believe the importance of sitemap in SEO must have made home by now. Before moving forward to a new concept, I thought to share some important tips on SEO because I believe many of you must have started optimization process for your web pages. Until now, I have talked about what a concept is, and how to use it, but in this as well as the next post I will talk about five disastrous SEO practices that should be avoided, or else your website will be blacklisted by major search engines. In this post we will discuss about the mistakes related to the keyword usage.

Disastrous SEO Practice 1: Instinctive Keyword Selection

Do not use the keyword that comes first to your mind. Many people believe that the instinct is the best guide in selecting keywords for their websites. Instinct and hunches are indeed very important, and many a time they give us more accurate information about the future course of action, but when it comes to the information related to others, we shouldn’t rely more on the individual instinct of one person. Keywords are one such thing. We need to do the research to find out what people at large are searching for.

Disastrous SEO Practice 2: Optimizing website for every possible keywords

Do not use more than 3 keywords. The main strength of anything that is digital lies in the fact that the space is unlimited and so are the resources. Many people make the wrong use of this freedom and attempt to over use the resources. Keyword is one such resource. After completing keyword research, the beginners get awestruck by finding a huge list of keywords searched at least 100 times a day, and they find themselves undecided on which to use for optimization and which one to leave out. Their instinct suggests that if they leave some keywords out they are leaving an opportunity on the table. Let me tell you, if you follow this gut feeling, which is either untrained or partly-trained in the matters of SEO, then your website is doomed. Do not fall prey to optimizing your web page for more than 3 keywords.

Disastrous SEO Practice 3: Playing hide & seek with keywords

Do not try to fool search engines by hiding excessive keywords behind the picture, by writing the keywords using the color used as background color, or by keeping the keywords offsite. An SEO newbie often comes with a clever plan to use more keywords then are legitimately permitted by the search engines. This guy will use keyword stuffing but in a different way. He will hide the extra keyword behind the images, or make the color of the text and the background same. This person may also attempt to keep the keyword offsite, away from the eyes of the visitors.

Let me prick the false-hope bubble. None of the act will bear positive results, on the contrary, your website will be banned as the search spiders can see every bit written in any page of the website opened for optimization. They are not blinded by the image, or by the color. They are way smarter than what you think them to be.

I want you to know the harmful effect of using these practices. Hence, I am finishing this article here. In the next article, I will through light on the other two dangerous SEO practices.

Tags: Attempt, Freedom, Gut Feeling, Huge List, Hunches, Instinct, Keyword Selection, Keyword Usage, Major Search Engines, Many A Time, New Thought, Optimization, SEO, Web Pages