Tuesday, September 11, 2007

What To Avoid in SEO

If you’re planning on using search engine optimization techniques for your business, you’d better know what you need to avoid along the way.

While there are many useful and legitimate ways to increase the SEO of your site, there are just as many ways to create problems for your web site’s credibility and searchability. By learning what you avoid, you can boost your businesse's reputation as well as the traffic flow.

While it might seem like a good idea to add as many of your desired keyword as possible to your web site, that’s actually not the best search engine optimization technique. When you do this, several things happen that can damage your site’s credibility.

Your articles won’t read well – When you’re ‘stuffing’ the website with keywords, the reader will be put off by this. Seeing the same word over and over only looks bad for your business. Are you trying to give your reader useful information? or are you just trying to trick the search engines?

The search engines may realize what you’re doing – If you’re only trying to help your SEO by adding more keywords, the search engine may rank you lower. Because search engines know that more businesses are aware of the use of SEO, they are looking for those that abuse this idea.

You won’t look like an expert – When you create articles and information only so that you can include your keyword, it can begin to look like you are not a genuine company.

Another no-no in search engine optimization is to hide your keywords in pages that a customer can’t read. Most of the web sites that used to do this are now banned, as search engines began to crack down on sites that tried this trick.

When you use hidden pages to increase your SEO, the reader will be drawn to your web site because of this, but it may not be what they were searching for in the first place. Many of the hidden keywords are only there to increase traffic, but when the customer arrives on your site and sees that nothing is related to their search, they will not continue to respect your site’s contents.

Constantly leaving old SEO content on your site, is another way to decrease your search engine rankings. When your reader comes to your site, they want to see things that are exciting and new, or else they will go elsewhere to find these fresh ideas. Though you might see initial rises in your traffic flow from new articles, these high traffic numbers eventually decrease as those returning to your site see that nothing has changed and begin to stop coming back.

When you’re trying to increase your search engine placement, you need to realize that while you might read a lot of advice on what TO do, there’s little advice on what NOT to do. But by avoiding these common mistakes, you will increase your web site’s popularity, and start bringing in the sales you deserve.

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