SEO Basics: 5 Things to Avoid When Optimizing Your Website Pages

While it is important to know the positive SEO basics which assist you in optimizing your website pages, there are some negative SEO tactics that you also need to be aware of and avoid.

Search engine optimization can bring many positive rewards to your site in the way of page and keyword ranking, increased visitor traffic, website authority and sales. However, there are some negative SEO practices that you may have fallen into along the way.

Here are five for you to look for.

1. Insufficient Optimization

Optimizing your website includes every component of that site including the meta tags, header, menus, sidebars, main content and footer areas. Most of you are aware of the need to keyword optimize the content on a blog or website. However, SEO content is just one piece of the puzzle.

Use the title tag and description to include keywords and entice visitors. Include keywords in headers, menus, picture captions, categories and anywhere else that they might appear in a natural manner.

2. Keyword Stuffing

There was a time when stuffing keywords into your content regardless of how readable it made that content was a fairly standard practice. For those using this type of content, it was a rude awakening to find that as the technology on the Internet matured, search engine bots and spiders learned to recognize these tactics and sharply penalized sites of this nature.

Another keyword stuffing tactic that bots and spider are now wise to is that of adding text so that it does not appear on the visible portion of the page and using text that is the same color as the background so that it is seen only by the bots and spiders.

If your site is found to be using any of these negative SEO tactics, it may not only lose ranking, it may be banned completely from search engine indexing making your site virtually invisible.

3. Keyword Density

Just as keyword stuffing is detrimental to your website, so too is the use of too few or even no keywords. “Key”words are the “KEY” to being found on the Internet. Search engines use keywords for indexing, which in turn, helps the search engines to meet the needs of those searching for information on the Internet.

The greatest content in the world will be as of much use as a textbook locked away where no one can read it if it is not indexed for its content keywords and if those keywords do not appear enough times in the material. Pay particular attention to this area and use keyword tools to help ensure you are meeting your keyword density goals of 2% – 5%.

Here is a great, free tool that you may want to check out: Submit Express

4. Boringgggggggggggg

Lack of variety in keywords is as much a turn off to spiders and bots as repeating the same information on every page would be to your readers. These little critters know that in order to give value to your readers, you will need to use more than one keyword throughout your site and content.

If your site is about “candles,” it may also be about wax candles, red candles, scented candles, candle making, candle traditions, myths and superstitions. A friend of mine believes that every candle wick in a room must have been lit, if only for a few seconds, or its occupants will have bad luck. I was a little flabbergasted when she walked around lighting and blowing out any candle she could find.

Use a variety of keywords and keyword combinations to reach a variety of people interested in your niche. Focusing solely on one keyword is like putting all your eggs in one basket and then dropping it off a cliff.

5. Reciprocal Link Follow-up

Website backlinks come in basically two flavors, organic and reciprocal. Of the two, organic backlinks are considered to be of a higher value in the eyes of the search engines as they are created naturally when someone links back and shares the content you provide on your website.

Reciprocal links are created when two sites agree to list each other’s links. Because they are planned links, their value is significantly less than their organic counterparts. Overtime, they may even prove detrimental to your website’s ranking if you fail to do regular follow-up checks. Here are some areas to check for:

a) Does the other site still have a link to yours? Some sites will post your link for a short period of time and then remove it. This gives them an artificially created organic link and provides your website with no value whatsoever.

b) Is the link still valid? Broken links listed on your website are frowned upon by the search engine bots and spiders.

c) Has the site you are linking to been penalized or had its ranking slashed? Links to penalized or blacklisted sites can seriously degrade your own site.

Keep your website or blog on a solid footing with the search engines. Use the SEO basics when optimizing your website and avoid negative SEO practices and habits that can hinder the visibility of your website.

To Your Success,

SherryD
http://www.wbobr.com