Here Are Some Of The Prominent Mistakes Made By SEO Experts

The first thing one can do as an internet marketer is to avoid making mistakes. Here are some of the prominent mistakes made by SEO experts: 

1. Not optimizing images with rest of the content

Optimizing images is sometimes not part of the SEO strategy and can be over looked. Adding target keywords to images relevant to the rest of the content helps search engines understand them. 

A link to the image with just numbers and alphabets in odd positions does not convey anything but some relevant words and numbers would matter. 

One should incorporate descriptive keywords for every image. Including relevant alt text helps search engines to find images in relevant searches and even the accessibility of the site. 

2. Keyword stuffing Nowadays websites contain varied types of content in terms of text. 

One needs keywords for SEO and use of right keywords is important for getting the right audience. Optimize them carefully to gain popularity in search engines. 

But keyword stuffing will only ruin your website ranking since cramming a keyword multiple times makes content worthless. Only keywords do not get customers to a website. 

Also, Google algorithms will get the site blacklisted and also issue a bad ranking. Relying on large amounts of mediocre content can affect sites. 

Using specific keywords with strategic placement and relevant content is effective. Creating insightful info about a topic can can attract attention through different channels.

3. Not Setting Up Canonicalization

When implementing an SEO strategy, one should make sure that you do not have duplicate content on the site. 

If there is identical content for online access using different URLs, you need to identify the right page for visitors and implement a canonical to help search engines know that it is not a duplicate version. 

4. Disregarding Pages by Not Indexing Them

One should not forget indexing pages. Pages that are broken or missing are going to avoid search engine results altogether because pages indicating 404 error are excluded. 

A high number of 404s leads to an increase in bounce rate and visitors will feel cheated of any information. Search engines crawl websites and rank them and 404 pages interrupt their process. 

It is important not to have broken links on your site and keep the website active. 

5. No updates on site

After spending months to create an interactive and attractive website, one should try to keep it dynamic with consistent blog posts or some other content. 

Companies fail to optimize the site with keywords and just sit back to watch the traffic decrease. Let in some updates that will help your prospects with relevant information and they might convert to leads. 

One needs to make a schedule for posting different posts related to your field on a regular basis, and consistency will get you the attention of search engines too.

6. Neglecting social media

Neglecting social media is a crime in this day and age. Social media is no longer an optional marketing ploy but a necessity for businesses. 

By being conversant and relevant on popular social sites like Facebook and Twitter, one can enhance a company’s image and credibility. 

Sharing your content will lead the search engines and drive potential visitors to your site. Social media following can also boost brand awareness amongst loyalists. 

7. Lack of internal links

One might think that it is erroneous to link to one’s own content and even think that search engines might read into it and even blacklist the pages. 

Despite what you may think, internal links to website is great for SEO and helps search engines to crawl to your website. One should focus on the most important pages of any site and strategize posts to link back to those pages. 

One should find a real connection between pages to do the linking task. 

8. Failure to measure progress

Improving SEO is like losing weight. One needs to check and measure your progress on a consistant basis. 

One should know the current standing when you start, and then track the changes. With solid metrics in place, one will know that the SEO practices have been working or not. 

If you do not think that there has been any progress, then it is preferable to drop it.

Following “SEO Best Practices” can be difficult for online marketers. With search engines changing algorithms on a periodic basis, every SEO strategy needs to adapt and adjust with the latest techniques while giving up on age-old practices.

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Here are my top 3 ways to send your traffic counter spinning without the headaches

1. Trading Links With Other Webmasters: 

By mutually agreeing with another webmaster to trade link exposure on each others site, you're expanding your market reach significantly. Not only does this generate instant traffic from the link partner, but you'll also boost your Google PR and link ranking with other search engines as a bonus.

This helps you rank better in the listings, generating even more free traffic, without doing any complicated SEO. 

There are some great tools to help you get started trading links. Some of them are even free. I don't recommend them personally because annoying banners or other types of ads compete for the same space, doesn't look very professional.

2. Writing Articles to Publish Online: 

This technique is a very close second to my favourite one which I'll share in just a moment. The amount of exposure you can get from writing a simple article is astounding. 

After you've written it up, you submit to the major article directories, then just sit back and watch the traffic stream in. 

As an added bonus you start to gain more respect within your industry. Articles have this uncanny knack to create an aura of expertise around the writer.

You also benefit yet again with search engine ranking, as other webmasters with mailing lists publish your article on their site. Creating yet another link back to you.

Articles are a very effective pre-selling technique too. 

How much more targeted would a prospect be arriving at your website after reading one of your articles in an email or on another site?

Not only did you get the recommendation from the publisher, but if they enjoy reading your article and get some value from it, you've already broken down one of the main barriers of selling...

3. Viral Marketing: 

Viral Marketing is defined as “Any advertising that propagates itself the way viruses do”; E.g. When Hotmail users send e-mails, they “infect” the recipients with the tagline at the bottom of their messages. 

If you unleash a 'Viral Marketing' campaign, it will just keep on multiplying, spreading your message around the web like wildfire. I absolutely love this method of sending quality traffic to my website for free. 

Generating free traffic with 'Viral Marketing' is easily the most rewarding use of your time. Taking good steps to craft the right offer and layout of your 'Viral Marketing' message is essential. But get it right, and not only will a truck-load of qualified visitors come to your website, but an air of respect and expertise is generated around you and your business.

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This list might also help you with your traffic and how you can grow it

Traffic brings in the leads and the sales. Quality traffic is what produces your online revenue, whether from advertising or from sales on your site. Now, I have sites which get less than 50 visitors a day, I have a few sites which get around 200 visitors and I have one site which gets around 2,000 visitors a day. 

The more traffíc you have, usually, the more you will make; at least this has been my experience. Since traffic is very important to me, I keep a lot of records and stats on where my traffic is coming from on the web. I have to know what produces the quality traffic and how to get it.

So below I have listed down my 5 most important traffic sources and/or the marketing techniques I use to get that traffic. This list might also help you with your traffic and how you can grow it. Here are my 5 main traffic sources...

1. SEO and the Search Engines

The majority of the traffic to my sites comes from the search engines, mainly Google. It is my high rankings for my targeted keyword phrases which brings in the most and the best quality traffic to my sites. 

Get the SEO right and build a lot of quality one-way links from related sites and you will get the traffic. Another tactic, don't just create a website with only 10 or 20 pages - create one with 1000 to 5000 pages. I know this takes time but consider your site like a long-term business which you will keep building for years. Produce plenty of quality content and you will get plenty of quality visitors in return. Works for me.

2. Article Marketing

Another very effective way to bring in quality traffic to your site or sites is article marketing. Just write short articles related to your site's keywords and place your keyworded links in the resource box. 

Distribute these articles all over the web. Right now, what is working for me, is writing unique articles which I only place on one important site. Article marketing is still one of the most effective ways to get quality traffic, just try it. 

3. PPC - Pay Per Clíck Advertising

I know, I know, this can be very expensive, but PPC can be the quickest way to get quality traffic to your sites. Just be careful and approach it with kid's gloves until you find campaigns which work for you - then scale them up. 

Microsoft Adcenter and Yahoo Marketing have now joined forces and I find this is producing good traffic for me. Google Adwords is probably better, but they are a real pain to work with and have become too expensive, at least for my keywords. But if you have the resources, don't rule out Adwords or any of the PPC programs.

4. Social Media Sites

From Facebook to Twitter to LinkedIn, social media sites can provide a lot of traffic and word of mouth advertising for your site. For me, even though I haven't worked these sites to their fullest potential, I still get traffic from them. 

Getting your pages bookmarked in some of these sites can bring in a flood of traffic overnight, while most of this traffic will be temporary, you can get a lot of sign-ups to your newsletter and different follow-up lists. 

While not exactly in the same group, I have had some success with YouTube videos which also bring in targeted traffic. Don't ignore these social media and video sites in your traffic strategies.

5. Emaíl Marketing and Follow-up Lists

This is another one of my major sources of "repeat visitors" to my sites. You must be constantly building up your different contact lists for further follow-up. This will bring in more visitors than you would expect, especially if you put some simple viral messages in your emails. 

If you supply valuable information, people will recommend your content to friends and co-workers; again word of mouth can bring in a lot of traffic especially in this age of Facebook and Twitter.

Of course, there are other traffic sources such as Press Releases, Banner Ads, RSS Feeds, Off-line Advertising... and if you have your products to promote, affiliates and joint ventures will be your most valuable source of traffic.

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Following are some of the best ways we have found to grow website traffic

Pay-per-click ( PPC ) may be a good business model for your website, there’s nothing like free traffic to lay the foundation. My site used to get 100 unique visitors per day before it started fetching in 200, and now 300 on an average basis. The personal goal here is 1,000 unique daily visitors—but 10,000 would also be welcomed!

People are paying pretty significant dollars for website traffic. Pay-per-click charges of $1-10 are not uncommon for top search terms. Multiply that by the 300 unique visitors per day that my log furniture website gets, and you are talking at least $300 per day, or $9,000 per month—depending on how many days are in the month.

Following are some of the best ways we have found to grow website traffic:

1. Website Optimization

A local business magazine recently ran an article calling SEO (search engine optimization) the equivalent of “hocus-pocus”. The author of the article, who apparently worked for an SEO firm, described optimization as a somewhat “shady” activity that’s impossible to get a handle on. I say “Baloney!” 

SEO is not pseudo-science. It is a very tangible and real way to increase website traffic. If you haven’t taken care of the basics—e.g. making sure your website has a relevant title, focuses on the right keywords, avoids practices that are disdained by the search engines, etc., 

You can be sure that, once found, your website will not rank as highly (or get as much traffic) as it otherwise would. 

Begin your traffic-garnering efforts by making sure your website is up-to-snuff.

2. Publish Helpful, Relevant Content

Publishing helpful articles on the Net with a link back to my log furniture website seems to result in traffic spikes nearly every time. Notice the emphasis is on “helpful” articles. 

There is plenty of useless drivel out there by people who are being paid $5 to write an article. Not to insult anyone, but I spend 2-8 hours on the articles I write—depending on how much research is required and how technical the article is—and that costs more than $5. 

It doesn’t seem to matter what you write about. My topics so far have included SEO, the simplicity of Amish life, improving your bottom line, and understanding Google operators. The key is to make them relevant, short and helpful.

3. Add more products to your website

Our experience has been that adding more products to the website helps us to come up in the search engines more often. 

A person who finds a rustic night stand at our site might notice that we have log bunk beds. Somebody who is shopping for an unfinished pine dresser might not be thinking of rustic furniture at all, stumble across one our products, like the whole site, and end up furnishing their cabin. 

Each product is like a fishing line cast in the sea. The more well-described bait you have out there—the more “fish” will bite.

4. Improve your website conversion rate

Five years ago, we used to get one log furniture order for every 100 website visitors. Now it seems like closer to one order for every 300 unique visitors. Part of the reason for this, we believe, is that the web has become more competitive. But we also pay attention to our conversion rate. 

We are in the process of making a change right now that might really help. 

Someone pointed out that when you click on an item to buy it within standard interface, there is no confirmation that the item has been added to your shopping basket. 

This might lead some customers to believe that the website isn’t working properly. They might not be savvy enough to check the shopping basket. They might even leave the site without ordering (perish the thought!)

Obviously, there are a lot of other ways to increase website traffic. The four listed above are a great place to start. If you’re not into SEO, find somebody who is. If you are paying hundreds or even thousands of dollars of month for pay-per-click traffic, it may be wise to divert enough of those dollars to ensure that your website is the traffic-snagging, profit-generating machine you intend it to be.

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SEO Mistakes That Can Kill Your Search Engine Traffic

Mistakes. We all make them, and ideally we learn from them. But even the smallest of mistakes on your website can sometimes cause big problems. And big problems with a website can cause lost traffic, money, and jobs.

There are probably 100 more SEO mistakes that are made every day, but I hope that these can help find and fix them -- provide you with a good start toward keeping your website mistake 

Here are 5 mistakes I've seen often enough to warrant a mention. I hope that you can learn from others who weren't so lucky:

1. Telling the search engines you don't want them to add your website to their database or follow its links.

If the pages of your website are not in Google's database, then there's no way you'll ever receive any search engine traffic -- targeted or otherwise. 

If you literally can't find any page of your site in Google, even for a search on the name of the site or the URL, view the source code to see if you have told Google that you don't want them to index your site.

2. Relying on SEO software to "optimize" your website.

There is no specific number of times a keyword phrase should be used in my content. There is no magic number of words that my pages should have written on them. And there is no best number of words or phrases that belong in a Title tag. 

Use your common sense to optimize your site! Learn how your target audience searches for products, services and information such as yours, and write about it accordingly on your website. Then write to make an emotional connection with your visitors so that they'll convert into happy customers.

3. Improper redirecting of old pages (or sites) to new ones via a 302-redirect instead of a 301-redirect.

Whether you've changed your domain name to something different or you've redeveloped your website and all or most of your new URLs are different from the old ones, it's critical to redirect the old to the new via 301-redirects and not 302s. 

A 301-redirect causes Google to remóve the old URL and also to pass the link popularity of the old URL to the new one. But a 302, while redirecting visitors to the correct new URL, will often still be indexed by Google.

This causes duplicate content issues and PageRank splitting problems. That is, any links to the old URL will not pass "link juice" to the new one as long as it's redirected erroneously via a 302.

4. Writing to your CEO instead of your customer.

When you're entrenched in the day-to-day activities of your business, you might forget that the words you use to describe what you do aren't necessarily the ones that will be used by those unfamiliar with what you do. 

The people who come to your site shouldn't need a translator to understand exactly what you do. And you know who the worst offenders are? Marketers! 

I fundamentally understand marketing at a commonsense level, because it's a fairly simple concept. Yet when I check out some marketing companies' websites, they might as well be speaking Martian. 

In addition to the gobbledygook that many companies write, they also don't always speak to their potential customer at all. Instead, they try to impress those customers with how great they are.

To fix these copywriting mistakes, find out the words people use to find products and services such as yours through keyword research, and then tell your potential customers what's in it for them, rather than how totally awesome you are.

5. Creating a new site on a new domain and leaving the old site up as well.

I know that it's scary to develop a brand-new site -- especially if (for whatever reason) you must change domain names. But having 2 websites up at the same time is a recipe for disaster when it comes to the search engines. 

Every time I've seen this done (either on purpose or by mistake), the new website rarely gains any traction in the search engines as long as the old site is still alive and kicking. 

If you've spent time and money creating a kick-ass new website, don't kill its chances of people finding it through search engines by keeping your old cruddy (but highly ranking) site lurking in the background.

Be sure you follow best SEO redesign practices, 301-redirect all your old URLs to the new, and -- if you are changing domain names -- perform a "change of address" using your Google Webmaster Tools account. 

After you do these things, your new site should do at least as well as your old site did in the search engines. More likely than not, it will do even better!

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