Don't Hurt Your Rankings: Common Mistakes Made by Companies

Search engine optimization and even pay per click campaigns will surely be around for quite a while. Perhaps this is because they still remain two of the best strategies to obtain the most ideal search engine position for your website. However, because the results may take some time, there are a number of companies that unknowingly or deliberately "sabotage" their own SEO and PPC campaign. In the end, they have to suffer the consequences of their actions, which may be a decrease in their ranking and traffic or, worse, getting banned from search engines.

Where You Can Go Wrong There are two types of mistakes a company may make in relation to SEO or PPC. First, there are a number of business website owners who actually don't have much idea about the technique that their demands are contrary to the best practices of SEO. On the other hand, there are also others who pretend they already know SEO and perform some tricks and changes that will only damage what they've started. So watch out for the following errors:

1. You make some updates on your site. You may ask yourself, "What's the harm of doing this? Wouldn't it be a very clever thing to do, knowing that you're saving your SEO company some time and energy?" You may have a point, but your actions may compromise whatever plans the SEO company may have for your site. Worse, your actions may spell a destructive process for you. Here are some possible scenarios: You decided that you want to add another content in your website, perhaps some news or press release about your newest product or service. Hence, because you thought that it doesn't hurt if you'll do this by yourself, you went on with your plan without consulting your SEO company. Unknown to you, however, you already have altered the tricks and codes that may have been used by the SEO firm so you can rank highly. You may have modified the right keyword density for your site. The bottom line is you could lower down your search engine ranking.

There could also be a time when you wanted to create a new link for your site. However, you've forgotten to make proper redirection for the URL. Thus, what you have is a broken link, which makes it very difficult for search engine spiders to crawl and index the pages of your website.

In the end, SEO companies would take the blame for the client's wrongdoings. To avoid getting misjudged, though, they would often monitor the performance of the site of their client, take note of the changes, and contact the webmaster right away. This is to prevent any bad consequences or to make the necessary repairs before the website suffers tremendous loss.

2. You want some change, but you don't want to make any modifications. This can be one of the most difficult aspects for SEO companies. There are a lot who want to make sure that they can rank highly in search engines and send traffic into their webpages. However, they don't want to make any type of modification for them to achieve these objectives. Here are examples:

Keywords and keyword density are two important elements in a website. You want to drive targeted customers into your website. These are people that would likely buy your product or avail of your service. However, you don't want to make any changes in your articles and content. You don't like to identify the most effective keywords, and you don't maintain the most ideal keyword density. There are also a number of website owners who still believe that Flash and other forms of animation can drive traffic into their website. This could be true; however, what make these Flash sites searchable in search engines are their contents. You cannot simply depend on your animation. As a matter of fact, they make it very difficult for search engine spiders to index your Flash page. After all, they can only read text files. Moreover, they make the site very difficult to download. Flash files are known to be really heavy. Ethical SEO companies are usually very blunt about the right way to do things. And they wouldn't mind letting go of a client who will not likely listen to what the firm has to say about their website.

3. You apply your own techniques. Unless you're a certified SEO guru, you should avoid performing your own SEO tricks. First of all, it becomes an extremely difficult job for an SEO company to make the necessary repairs. Second, by the time they try to change what has been done, your website may already be suffering from a loss of ranking.

If you don't like to get yourself hurt, allow the professionals to do their job and take care of these aspects.

About the author
Moe Tamani is a Marketing expert with a leading Dallas SEO Company specializing in organic search engine optimization.
Source : http://seoarticles4u.com/Dont_Hurt_Your_Rankings_Common_Mistakes_Made_by_Companies_a3641.html

Things That can Hurt the Search Engine Rankings of Your Website

It's been five years since I have been practicing and providing consultancy on all matters related to SEO and internet marketing. And in all these years I have come across numerous website owners who do all type of things that hurt their site's rankings in the search engines.

Following is the list of some of the common SEO mistakes made by the site owners and some of the so called SEO experts:

1.Selection of Keywords - The first and probably the worst mistake the website owners usually make is the selection of keywords for their site. I have seen clients who will just look to target high traffic keywords without giving any thought to whether these keywords actually match with the website's theme. And some will choose keywords which are extremely competitive and then expect to rank on those keywords within a month's time.

2.Under Optimized and Over Optimized Titles - Title tag is probably the most important SEO technique that you can do on-page. It is always recommended to put your targeted keywords in the Title tag. But in trying to put keywords in the Title tag some website owners and SEO practitioners stuff this tag with more than one instances of the same or similar keyword, which is wrong. I have also seen cases wherein all the site pages have exactly the same Title tag, which is an absolute disaster talking from search engine's point of view.

3.Same Metas on Every Page - One other commonly made mistake is keeping all the Meta description and Meta keywords tag same for all the pages on the site. Each page should have page specific and keyword targeted Meta tags.

4.Search Engine Unfriendly Redirects - There are many times when a site's page URL changes due to change to dynamic platform or change in directory structure and there is a need to redirect the old URLs to new URLs. But the mistake website owners usually make is, they generally 302 redirect these URLs which is not a search engine friendly way of redirection. All old URLs should always be 301 permanently redirected to make the redirection search engine safe.

5.Insufficient Content - You must have heard the saying "Content is the King" and when it comes to SEO content is probably the God. And most website owners in trying to have an appealing and graphic rich website forget the importance of quality content.

6.Duplicate Content - One major issue most website owners are unaware of is the issue regarding duplicate content being present on several pages of the site. Each page of the site should have unique content.

7.Complete Flash Site - Flash is undoubtedly a great way of embedding images and graphics onto your site and sites made in Flash look pretty and appealing. But an all flash website is an absolute nightmare from search engine's point of view because at present there is no way search engine crawlers can read content inside a flash file. But that does not mean you can't use Flash on your site, rather than making the entire site as one big flash file, the best way is to break site pages in individual flash files and then embed these files in respective HTML pages. This will allow each page of your site to have it's own URL and then Flash optimization techniques can be used.

Olive Global is a search engine optimisation company and website promotion company offering ethical, innovative and result oriented Internet marketing services in UK.

Source : http://seoarticles4u.com/Things_That_can_Hurt_the_Search_Engine_Rankings_of_Your_Website_a3719.html

Top 10 Common SEO Mistakes

Webmasters spend a lot of time and efforts on optimizing a website. They try different strategies to get higher search engine rankings for their website, but some of them fail to get desired results just because of some mistakes. In this article I have listed some common mistakes which should be avoided while optimizing a website as they may have adverse effect on your Search engine rankings:

1. Keyword Stuffing: Putting the same keyword again and again or using hundred different spellings or tenses of the same keywords in your keyword meta tag is known as keyword stuffing and considered as spam by search engines. You must avoid it as it may harm your search engine rankings.

2. Duplicate Content: Make sure to have some unique and informative content for users on all web pages, it must be related to your business. Having the same content on your different pages of website must be avoided as it may have an adverse effect on your search engine rankings.

3. ALT Tags: Do not forget to add ALT tag while using images in your website. You can use your targeted keywords also in ALT tags. It makes your website accessible for search engine spiders.

4. Framesets: Avoid using framesets as frames-based pages behave differently from standard Web pages, affecting essential Web functions like printing and navigation. search engines cannot index framesets.

5. Navigation and internal linking: Proper navigation and internal linking is also matters a lot. Navigation menu should be easily accessible by users. Make sure that the anchor text linking to pages within your own website is relevant to the target page.

6. Anchor Text of Inbound links: Having a lot of inbound links is not enough but the anchor text pointing to these links is also very important. The anchor text should be targeted to your main keywords and the web page they point to should have those keywords.

7. Redirects: Redirect is used to re-route users from one URL to another and search engines consider it as you are trying to trick them. You must avoid it, if necessary then use only '301 redirect' which is the safest method to redirect.

8. Cloaking: Cloaking is a technique used by some webmasters to display different pages to the search engine spiders than the ones normal visitors see. You should always avoid any form of cloaking as it strongly forbidden by most major search engines now.

9. Over Optimisation: Over optimization shows that your site has been designed for search engines and not for users. It may drop your search engine rankings as search engines are now able to detect over optimized sites so you must avoid over optimization.

10. Impatience: Search engine optimization requires a lot of patience. You must wait for few months for results after optimizing your website. Have a little patience and you will get your desired results if you properly optimized your website using ethical SEO techniques

About the author
Webexcel Solutions (ISO 9001:2000 Certified) A Software Development Company and an SEO Company
Author involve in research and analysis of various search engine strategies and alogrithms. Visit http://coolslko.blogspot.com for more articles by author.

Source : http://seoarticles4u.com/Top_10_Common_SEO_Mistakes_a3575.html

Not Very Common SEO Mistakes Exposed

To succeed in search engine optimization you must do the right things, but do them right as well. So let us start with not so common mistake number one.

Bad Linking.

Not linking to your linkspage using a text link. Many webmasters link to their linkspage, resources page or whatever you want to call it within a drop down menu, or using an image that links to the page.

Spiders cannot read through images and will not use the drop down menu to see what links it has. They read html source code, so those links will be ignored. Means also they will not get indexed.

Creating several folders and webpages.

That is another mistake and it is confusing both for your visitors and search engines. Probably even for you. Create one folder called articles and put in all article pages, create one folder called images and put in all images inside. Everything organized is the key.

Internal linking mistakes.

You have to decide, and I give you the best option. Either you are going to link to your website pages using the www or never using it at all. The best option is to use the www so never use the other option.

Spiders treat them as two different domains, and you do not want that to happen ever. So even when getting backlinks make sure you use always the same prefix. Google sitemaps, which are tools for webmasters doing seo, has a feature regarding this thing. Use it.

Fixing problems.

The mistake results in waste of time. You read several forums, articles every day and you go fixing your mistakes. It is wrong, you cannot go fix every article you submitted to make the anchor text in the link something new.

Whatever you learn, you apply the next time. You cannot waste so much time. Assuming you are not doing something that can cause your website to get banned this applies to you. So please fix of course, if you are doing keyword stuffing or other really bad things.

Blak Hat.

If you never heard that term, you are lucky. Almost all new webmasters who want to start seo fall in this trap. Black hat are strategies, tactics, software and so forth that try to cheat the search engines, in order to get top rankings. You cannot do that. Bad things can happen if you try it. Not only you can waste time trying but also money. Black hat software are very expensive.

The salespage can be full of hype of course since the promise is great. It attracts lots of visitors. Do not fall victim to blak hat seo.

Creating an introduction for your website that you have to click on skip to proceed or wait some 5 minutes.

Ok, you like it probably, but search engines do not like to see a flash or video presentation of your website. First of all they cannot see what you see, because they only look at your html code. Spiders simple see nothing. So basically you have a problem, and to solve it you have to remove the presentation completely. They want your content, your images and your text links on your homepage.

Too many code.

If your website requires users to install plug ins, try to avoid that. If you have too many visitors counters, too many javascripts code, popups, popunders and other code on your website avoid it. Spiders want content, not code. Code confuses them. Use minimum required only.

If you notice, what converts your visitors into customers is also appreciated by search engine spiders. What your visitors hate even spiders hate. Your customers are the search engine customers as well. What you do to please spiders you are doing to please your visitors. In other words spiders are helping you create a website that your visitors will enjoy, because they will benefit from that.

So next time, think about these things, apply some of these and you start moving forward in the right direction.

About the author
Karl Sultanas ebook will pimp your seo up in no time. You can also download his search engine optimization software, to really get the ball rolling.

Source : http://seoarticles4u.com/Not_Very_Common_SEO_Mistakes_Exposed_a3593.html

SEO Blunders - Four mistakes to Avoid.

There are lots of articles giving you top tips about SEO. I've actually written a few myself.

However, what about the SEO pitfalls you should avoid?

I'm not talking about the various underhanded so called black hat SEO techniques but rather an innocent web development mistake that results in your website not getting indexed properly by the search engines.

Tale a look at many of the SEO forums and you will see many posts from frustrated website owners who can't understand why their site isn't being indexed.

It's easy to feel victimized and believe that the search engines have something against you and your site. Of course the truth is usually less sinister. They really want to index your site but they can't. It's usually something you've done that is stopping the spiders getting around your site and picking up all your pages. Chances are you don't realize that you've causes this problem.

The good news is that it's fixable. Your problem is most likely one of the ones listed below. So take heart and get ready to fix those SEO blunders.

SEO Blunder One: Using Frames

Frames were very popular at one time and they allowed different parts of your web page to be independently scrollable

Unfortunately the spiders really struggle to find there way around a website that is using frames. There are ways you can fix a frame website to allow them to crawl but my personal advice is to redesign your site without frames.

SEO Blunder Two: Using Flash

This is a very common question. Should I use Flash or not. Flash is popular because it looks really good. It gives a good impression to your visitors. It can look quite professional and can certainly have a "wow" factor.

However the problem with Flash is that the search engine spiders don't see it so none of your Flash content will get indexed. If you are using Flash for your menus then you have a real problem because the spiders can't follow the menus to the other pages.

I would suggest the following approach to Flash. Use it sparingly across your site where you really want to impress your visitors but make sure the pages you use it on are also rich in text content if you want them to get indexed and NEVER use Flash to build your menus.

SEO Blunder Three: Java Script

Java Script cannot be seen by the spiders so you have the same issues as you have with Flash. I actually use Java on my own site for the horizontal menu across the top of the page. That's for you, the human visitor. However to help the search engines crawl my site, I have a menu down the left of the page that is just plain hyperlink text.

So use Java if you want to but make sure you have a good text link structure that the search engine spiders can follow.

SEO Blunder Four: Broken Links

You would be amazed at how many sites have broken links and parts of the site are completely cut off from the spiders. It's important to check your site regularly for broken links. I have a few ways to check my site. One of my favorites is Xenu Link Sleuth. The software is free and does a great job at checking your site.

About the author
Mike Seddon is the founder of KKSmarts. Their site contains many free guides for Website Promotion.

Source : http://seoarticles4u.com/SEO_Blunders_-_Four_mistakes_to_Avoid_a3793.html

5 Link Popularity Exercises That Do Not Help Your Page Rank

After getting to know that link popularity is the most important factor that search engines consider when deciding your Pagerank, almost everyone has taken to posting their back links all over the internet. However, gaining credible link popularity that increases your page rank is really not as easy as it sounds and most people who do not know much about how Pagerank works keep creating text links that are either useless, or even harmful for their webpage. In order to make link popularity work for you, it is important to avoid the most common link building mistakes.

1. Creating Links On Unrelated Pages. Search engines nowadays are smart enough to decipher whether your link is relevant to the users of the webpage that they are placed on or not. So if you are putting the text links of your webpages which are related to cooking on websites that deal with high end electronic goods, wrestling or real estate, you can be sure that these links will be trashed by the search engine, doing zilch for your Pagerank. So create links on sites that have related content. For example, if you have a cooking related website, placing links on home improvement, restaurant, recipe and kitchen equipment sites will be helpful.

2. Creating Text Links That Proclaim," Click Here". Google search engine spiders use the text on your hyperlink to determine what your website is all about and this plays an important role in determining both your Pagerank as well as your search engine rankings. By putting hyperlinks that simply say " click here for more information" or "know more here", you are telling the search engines that your website is about clicking and knowing more and that is where you will be ranked high instead of getting high search engine rankings for your own domain. Make it a point to use relevant keywords in your text links.

3. Creating Links On High Pagerank Pages That Already Have Hundreds Of Links. Yes, it is true that the higher the PR of a page linking to you, the higher will be the value assigned to the link by the search engines and the greater will be your page rank. This is because the value or points that you get from a page that links back to you is determined by the formula--page rank of linking page / number of links on that page. But it is equally important to pay attention to the denominator of the formula, since a highly ranked page with lots of back links may end up giving you lower value than a page with lower rank but lesser links.

4. Placing Links On Dynamic Pages. Web pages that are generated dynamically take ages to get indexed, and in all probability, a text link on such a page will never help in increasing your page rank. Identify dynamic pages by URLs with special symbols in them (&,? etcetera) and save your time by not posting any text links to your site on such pages.

5. Creating Links On Pages That SE Spiders Cannot Crawl On. The whole point of building link popularity for increasing page rank is to make your site accessible to search engine spiders. However, search engine bots have not become smart enough to read pages generated by Flash or JavaScript. They are also unable to read text links placed within frames, so it is a complete waste of time creating back links on sites that are either Flash generated or framed, since these links would be totally ignored by search engine spiders.

About the author
Terry is the owner of one of the internet's most popular link building websites - www.iSellPagerank.com. To find out more, please visit www.iSellPagerank.com

Source : http://seoarticles4u.com/5_Link_Popularity_Exercises_That_Do_Not_Help_Your_Page_Rank_a4063.html

SE Mistakes That Shorts Your Ranking

Devious means of designing webpages to attract search engine traffic can easily backfire. These are just a few of the methods and techniques that you should keep away from. Don't give in to the temptation that they will work for you. Rather, they will do more harm than good for your website.

Not only will you spend weeks of wasted effort, you may have your site banned from the search engines permanently. Spend a little time learning the proper methods for improving search engine visibility and your web traffic will increase.

1. Free Web Hosting. Don't consider using free web hosting if you are serious about increasing traffic by means of search engine visibility. Many times the search engines will eliminate content from these free hosts. As well, visitors will often consider these sites to be amateurish.

2. Missing Web Page Elements. Be sure to check every page in your website for completeness, like faulty links, graphics, etc. There are sites on the web that will do this for free.

3. Stealing Material from Other Websites. How many times have you heard or read that "this is the Internet and it's reasonable" to take icons and text from websites to use on your site. Don't do it. It's one thing to learn from others who have been there and another to simply copy their work. The search engines are smart, and getting smarter, and more often than not notice page duplication. They may even prevent or delay your future listings.

4. Using Keywords That Are Not Related To Your Website. Many unprincipled website owners try to increase search engine visibility by using keywords that have nothing at all to do with their website. They place unrelated keywords in a page (such as "sex", the name of a recognized famous person, the hot search theme of the day, et cetera) in a Meta tag for a page. The keyword doesn't have anything to do with the page theme. Though, since the keyword is popular, they think this will increase their visibility. This method is considered spam by the search engines and may cause the page (or even the whole site) to be removed from the search engine listing.

5. Inappropriate Choice of Keywords. Used correctly, keyword selection is almost certainly one of the critical elements of site design. Choose the right keywords and customers will find your site. Use the wrong ones, your site will see little, if any traffic.

6. Repeating the Same Keywords. When you use the same keywords over and over again (called keyword stacking) the search engines may demote (or skip) the page or site .

7. Using Concealed Text. You might think that if you cannot see them, it doesn't matter. Incorrect. Don't try to hide your keywords or keyword phrases by making them invisible. For example, by making the keywords the same color as the background of the web page.

8. Using Tiny Text. This is a variation of the item above (relying on hidden text. Don't try to conceal your keywords or keyword phrases by making them tiny. Making the size of the keywords so small that they can hardly be seen causes an alert to be raised.

9. Keyword Stuffing. Rather like keyword stacking mentioned above, this means to add unrelated keywords to the description of a graphic or tag by using the "alt=" HTML descriptor. If the search engines find that this text does not actually describe the graphic or tag it will be considered spam.

10. Assuming All Search Engines Are The Same. Many people take for granted that each search engine adopts by the same rules. This is not so. Each has its own rule base and these are subject to change anytime they so wish. Make it a point to learn what each major search engine requires for gaining a high ranking.

If you have a website then you know the significance of traffic. Traffic is to Internet advertising what location is to real estate. It's crucial to your success. If you cannot attract targeted visitors to your site, you won't make any sales.

More often than not the proprietor or designer of the website is the person who drives traffic to the site. One major element in generating traffic is to be well regarded by the search engines. Of course, you can use paid publicity, but it's going to cost you. Using the search engines to generate targeted (interested in your product) traffic is the least expensive method known.

Unfortunately, many website owners don't appreciate the significance of search engine ranking, which leads to traffic. They place more significance on producing a "pretty" website. Not that this is bad, but it is actually of minor importance to the search engines when determining display ranking. Hopefully, being aware - VERY aware - of the list of common mistakes, made by many website owners, will help you attract more targeted free traffic to your site...after all, isn't that what you want? Devious means of designing webpages to attract search engine traffic can easily backfire. These are just a few of the methods and techniques that you should keep away from. Don't give in to the temptation that they will work for you.

About the author
For more useful tips & hints, please browse for more information at our website:- www.the20seotools.com www.seo.reprintarticlesite.com

Source : http://seoarticles4u.com/SE_Mistakes_That_Shorts_Your_Ranking_a4301.html

SEO you shouldn't be doing

SEO mistakes will affect your rankings. Many people have a website and forget about SEO. They think that search engines will magically pick up their site and be ranked well. However, this is most often not the case as you need to employ SEO to help the search engines pick up webpage. By using SEO techniques, including SEO Software, your website will rank well and by picked up and noticed by the search engines when they are returning searches.

Search engines love good SEO on pages as it makes their job a lot easier. Apart from sites not being SEO friendly, common SEO mistakes include having low keyword density, not having keywords in the page title and description, etc. However, all of your SEO has to adhere to certain search engine rules. If not, not only will your SEO work be of no use but your site will more than likely be unlisted.

Here are some bad SEO practices, often referred to as Black Hat SEO, which you must not do:

Keyword Stuffing - This happens when you put your keywords in your content too many times. The extreme is just having a page full of keywords and no content.

Hiding keywords - this is when the font colour of the texts is the same as the webpage. Invisible to the eye but visible to the search engines.

Link Farms - these are just webpages full of links and nothing else.

Too many links - sounds silly but your off page SEO such as link building should be gradual and over time. Search engines get suspicious if one day you have 1000 inbound links suddenly pointing to your page.

By ensuring that your SEO is correct and remembering not to do the above will ensure that your webpage remains listed. In addition, too many people only do SEO work on their home page. You should aim to ensure that all pages on your site are SEO friendly. Remember, SEO is not a search engine obstacle but rather the helping of the search engine to promote your website.

About the author
Chris uses SEO Software to assist with his work from home business concept promoted by The Rich Pom.

Source : http://seoarticles4u.com/SEO_you_shouldnt_be_doing_a4076.html

Website Design Classic Mistakes

Having been involved in the internet industry for a large part of my working life, I have spent a lot of time researching and browsing the internet and reading websites, mainly for client design research, but also for occasional personal use.

The one thing that I find most disappointing, is the apparent lack of thought going into website creation and it's purpose, which in turn creates a missed opportunity for many e-businesses to become successful.

My personal perspective on e-businesses and their websites, is that if they don't take pride in their websites and show to their customers a passion for what they do, chances are, they won't take pride in their products, and the passion for providing good customer service will also be missing.

What you must remember, is that your web site is a direct reflection of you and your business. The appearance of your site is the most important factor in determining your potential success rate. In short, if your site doesn't look professional or pleasing to the eyes at first glance, the majority of people will assume your products and/or services to be of similar poor standard.

At the other end of the scale, you could fall into the trap of going overboard with the design and over complicate things with incorporating high costing flashy graphics. You may end up with a great looking and highly aesthetic web site, but the danger with this is that your site may prove unreliable and at times may take too long to load. There is nothing worse for a customer than trying to visit a slow loading site, and most will close the browser window in complete frustration. As i'm sure you will be able to work out, this will ultimately cost you business.

The other major consideration (if not the most important) when designing a website is your content. Not just links, but content with passion, relativity, and understanding to the customer. When someone is searching for something in particular and they visit your web site, they're visiting for a reason. Your site has something they want, Whether this be your product, service, and/or information. If they are unable to obtain what they're looking for, they move on to the next site and so on. To be able to get your visitors to stay and look around your website, you must give them a reason to. Providing them with quality content will achieve this goal.

There have been countless other lists and articles on the subject of website designing mistakes, but I have compiled my own list, from a designer's perspective, of some pitfalls to look out for when considering either designing a website or purchasing a template. They are:

Poor/slow load time
Not very pleasing to the eye
Poor spelling/Grammar
No contact information - particularly an address
Poorly designed navigation
Text too bunched together/hard to read
Broken links
Poor cross-browser compatibility
Over-sized, slow loading graphics
Too many graphics
Horizontal scrollbars
Long, long, long pages/too much information on one page
Overuse of flash graphics
Poor choice of colour scheme
The use of frames
Too many pop up windows
Poor content organization
Advertising banners
Too many different colours
Under construction signs

Remember that the simple, clear, informative and well designed sites are the most successful. If you are a current e-business and your sales aren't what you had hoped, consider the above and take some time to look openly and honestly at your site. Spending money on improving your website is a much better investment than throwing money away on trying to advertise and market a site that just isn't good enough to sell your product or services.

If you are looking for a template or a custom designed website, be aware of the above and be prepared to ask your chosen designer or template provider questions to ensure that your hard earned money doesn't go to waste on an inferior design, which contains any of the above.

Asking questions won't cost you a penny, and in doing so could actually save you a lot of money over the long term.

Getting your website right first time is vital in terms of saving money and time. The earlier your website is up and running properly, the quicker you will be able to reap the rewards of a successful e-business.

Author:Joe Smith is the lead website designer for www.jss-design.com
Source: Free SEO Articles & Tips http://seo-articles.philsite.net

SEO Mistake Like First Time Golfers

Written by: Kenn Schroder

When you start getting into Search Engine Optimization (SEO), a website marketing strategy designed to increase your visibility in search engines, you'll learn that one of the best things that you can do is to put good key words into your content.

Because it is easy to do, however, you can easily do it wrong.

You may start jamming keywords into your pages wherever you can, thinking "the more the merrier." You want higher rankings, but what happens is the opposite - your rankings get worse.

It's like watching a first-time golfer at a driving range.

He wants to hit that ball like the pros - smack it hundreds of yards. He winds up and gives it all he's got. But because of sloppy form, he misses the ball or shanks it to the left or right.

He went gusto on the ball and made a mess.

Just the same, if you go gusto on your web pages - stuffing in too many keywords in a sloppy way, you will create a mess.

The mess is two-fold.

First, putting too many keywords in your web pages can hurt your search engine rankings - it can actually make them go down.

Search engines "know" that in well-written web pages, a keyword phrase can occur only so often, generally five percent of the page's content.

Search engines also know that any one web page usually covers a specific topic, so it can only realistically contain a few related keywords.

For example, if you create a web page on how to swing a golf club for beginners, it might contain some phrases like "golf swing", "golf swing instruction", "golf tips."

Imagine the same page had information about golf putting, getting out of sand traps, golf etiquette, the difference between clubs, teeing off, using wood, using irons, etc.

That would be way too much information on the page - an overload.

The second problem is that a page overloaded with keywords will scare away visitors.

You've probably seen this before - a website that is so loaded with keywords that it looks like someone spilled the dictionary on it.

Using our same scenario, imagine that you were learning to swing your golf club for the first time. You did a search on "golf swing tips" and hey, you saw a listing entitled "Golf Tips - How to Swing Like a Pro."

When you clicked to the page, you started reading this:

"Golf swing tips - Use these golf swing tips to help you swing your golf club like the pros. Begin your golf swing by placing your left hand on the golf club. Then, as shown in golf swing diagram 1, place your right hand over the golf club. This will stabilize your golf grip - a good golf swing tip for beginning golfers."

Yikes! You can't read that without going insane!

Don't jeopardize the readability of your pages in pursuit of high search engine rankings.

Here are some tips to help you in the swing of writing good keyword rich pages that search engines like:

* Use three to five keyword phrases on any one page. Do this for pages that have a decent amount of content, like articles and service descriptions.

* Put your keywords in your page headings, subheadings and bulleted points.

* Write a page summary at the top of the page which has important keywords in it.

* Replace generic terms with your specific keywords, but don't over do it.

As an example of the last point, if you had a sentence like:

"Classes begin at 1pm every day including Saturdays and Sundays."

You could write:

"Golf lessons begin at 1 PM every day including Saturday and Sunday.

This gets the phrase "golf lessons" into the page which is more likely to be searched on than "classes" or even "golf classes."

In conclusion, use finesse and good form when put-ting keywords into your web pages. Your readers will read more of your content and search engines will give you higher rankings.

About the Author
Kenn Schroder, helps you build a magnetic coaching web site to attract clients. Web site design, search engine optimization (SEO), FREE report and FREE newsletter to help you build a practice-growing coaching web site. http://www.CoachingSitesThatWork.com.

Do You Make These Mistakes As An Affiliate

by Karl Sultana

Affiliate marketing is one of the most effective and powerful ways of earning some money online. This program gives everybody a chance to make a profit through the Internet. Since these affiliate marketing programs are easy to join, implement and pays a commission on a regular basis, more an more people are now willing in this business.

However, like all businesses, there are lots of pitfalls in the affiliate marketing business. Committing some of the most common mistakes will cost the marketers a large portion taken from the profit they are making everyday. That is why it is better to avoid them than be regretful in the end.

Mistake number 1: Choosing the wrong affiliate.

Many people want to earn from affiliate marketing as fast as possible. In their rush to be part of one, they tend to choose a bandwagon product. This is the kind of products that the program thinks is "hot". They choose the product that is in demand without actually considering if the product appeals to them. This is not a very wise move obviously.

Instead of jumping on the bandwagon, try top choose a product in which you are truly interested in. For any endeavor to succeed, you should take some time to plan and figure out your actions.

Pick a product that appeals to you. Then do some research about that product to see if they are in demand. Promoting a product you are more passionate about is easier than promoting one for the sake of the earnings only.

Mistake number 2: Joining too many affiliate programs.

Since affiliate programs are very easy to join, you might be tempted to join multiples of affiliate programs to try and maximize the earnings you will be getting. Besides you may think that there is nothing wrong and nothing to lose by being part of many affiliate programs.

True, that is a great way to have multiple sources of income. However, joining multiple programs and attempting to promote them all at the same time will prevent you from concentrating on each one of them.

The result? The maximum potential of your affiliate program is not realized and the income generated will not exactly be as huge as you were thinking initially it would. The best way to get excellent result is by joining just one program that pays a 40% commission at least. Then give it your best effort by promoting your products enthusiastically. As soon as you see that it is already making a reasonable profit, then maybe you can now join another affiliate program.

The technique is to do it slowly but surely. There is really no need to rush into things, especially with affiliate marketing. With the way things are going, the future is looking real bright and it seems affiliate marketing will be staying for a long time too.

Mistake number 3: Not buying the product or using the service.

As an affiliate, you main purpose is to effectively and convincingly promote a product or service and to find customers. For you to achieve this purpose, you must be able to relay to the customers that certain product and service. It is therefore difficult for you to do this when you yourself have not tried these things out. Thus, you will fail to promote and recommend them convincingly. You will also fail to create a desire in your customers to avail any of what you are offering.

Try the product or service personally first before you sign up as an affiliate to see if it is really delivering what it promises. If you have done so, then you are one of the credible and living testaments aware of its advantages and disadvantages. Your customers will then feel the sincerity and truthfulness in you and this will trigger them to try them out for themselves.

Many affiliate marketers makes these mistakes and are paying dearly for their actions. To not fall into the same situation they have been in, try to do everything to avoid making the same mistakes.

Time is the key. Take the time to analyze your marketing strategy and check if youa re in the right track. If done properly, you will be able to maximize your affiliate marketing program and earn higher profits.

About the Author

SE optimization can be used by every affiliate to drive traffic towards his affiliate link. See Karl's software, OutRankSmart.

From : http://www.goarticles.com/cgi-bin/showa.cgi?C=906692