Seven Common Search Engine Optimization Mistakes

Starters in Search Engine Optimization, in their zest to increase their site's SERP ranking, commit some mistakes, which drastically affect their Website's position on search engines. The following is a list of 7 common mistakes, which you can use as a checklist while optimizing your Web pages.
Ignoring the Title Tag

This is one of the gravest, but most common, mistakes that may spell doom for your site's SERP ranking. Most of the search engines consider the Title tag very important. Search engines generally display the content that you give in the Title tag. Therefore, have most important keywords in the Title tag. DO NOT leave the Title tag empty or have irrelevant words such as "Home page", "Welcome to our site", etc. in the Title tag.
Irrelevant Keywords

Some Webmasters use irrelevant, but much sought after, keywords to drive traffic to their site. Getting traffic in such a way will not help your business in anyway. After all, you optimize your Website to boost your business. Say for example, you have a Website where you sell Desktop Computers. To increase the traffic, you use the keyword "Britney Spears" throughout your content, META tags, and Title tag. People who search for "Britney Spears" reach your page. But, when they find that your Website has nothing to do with "Britney Spears", they will move away from your site quickly. You don't gain anything from that traffic. In fact, had you optimized your site for genuine keywords, you would have brought in possible customers.
Spamming

Spamming is an unethical practice of using the same keywords repeatedly in Title tag, META tags, and Body text. Some shrewd Webmasters use this technique to artificially increase their site's ranking. However, search engines are shrewder enough to find out Spamming and they lower the ranks of those sites that use Spamming. Sometimes, search engines may ban your site for Spamming. Therefore, never spam your site with repeated keywords.
Invisible Text & Links

This is one of those old tricks used by Webmasters to cheat search engines. Webmasters stuff the Web page with keywords and links, which will be invisible to readers but will be visible to search engines. Nowadays, search engines have intelligence to find out this. If you use this trick, search engines may send your site into oblivion -- into perpetual ban!
Links to and from Bad Sites

It is a known fact that links from external sites would increase the rank of the recipient Website. However, links from low ranking sites or banned sites will not add much value to your site. Therefore, ensure you link to and get links from top ranking sites. Linking to link farms or banned sites can be harmful to your pages SERP ranking.
Invalid HTML

Most new Webmasters commit the mistake of not checking their Website's HTML code. When your Website has HTML errors, it will fare poorly on search engines, even if it has optimized content. When your site's HTML code has errors, it will be slow to load, appear incorrectly on different browsers, and rank low on search engines. Therefore, validate the HTML code before submitting your site to search engines and directories.
Having too much Graphics in your page

Search engines view Websites much as a text browser would Large amount of graphics won't help you get a better ranking. In addition, lots of graphics will make your pages slow to download, which will drive search engines and visitors away. For better ranking on search engines, have keyword-rich content instead of graphics.


Darren Smith - 6th September 2005

Related Resources

* Common SEO Terminology
* Optimizing for Yahoo
* Optimizing for MSN
* Top Six "Donts" to Avoid Getting Banned by Google.
* 9 Simple Steps toward a Search Engine Optimized Website

Related Search Engine Optimization Tools

* Meta Tag Analyzer
* Keyword Density Analyzer
* HTML Validator
* Lynx Viewer