Common problems when doing SEO
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Search engine optimization shouldn’t drive you crazy, but it can be a challenging process for many people. This is especially true for those who are not understanding with at least some of the basic search engine strategies. In fact, many people continually make the same optimization mistakes over and over again with their websites. This makes it even more difficult for their sites to get the necessary page rankings they desire.
As luck would have it, one of the best ways to deal with this is to determine what areas and mistakes are being made and trying to avoid them. It doesn’t matter whether you’re beginning the process of SEO or already have experience. The important thing is learning where the errors or mistakes are and moving forward to correct them. In either case, correcting these mistakes can go a long way with improving your sites optimization.
One of the most common mistakes made by people is simply choosing popular keywords in the hopes of driving more traffic. Some people even use popular keywords that have no bearing or relevance to their actual pages. This tactic may seem useful in getting visitors, but in reality, any visitors you receive would immediately leave because the content being offered is not relevant towards their search.
The smart thing to do is research any relevant keywords and phrases the can increase organic search traffic for your website.
Another area or mistake that people generally make is overstuffing their content with keywords. Continually stuffing keywords in the body of your content, repeating them in every sentence and in the tag section will only make things more difficult when trying to optimize. However, many people believe that over stuffing content with keywords will improve their web page rankings. Unfortunately, this type of tactic will not fool the search engines.
The search engines have consistently been working on algorithms that detect these types of methods being used. Have you heard of the term spamming? Well, over stuffing content with keywords is considered spamming by the search engines, and if your website is labeled as spamming, it could be removed from the search index.
People will visit your site based on keywords and phrases. However, it’s the content they are searching for, and if the content does not match up with the keywords you have chosen, you could lose their interest and your authority. The wisest thing you can do is to keep your keyword choices relevant to the content on you site.
I can’t stress this enough, you are not the only one using those keywords. Other sites have the same keywords and even similar content. That’s why it’s important to use original content and update your site frequently, which will eventually help you to compete with those other sites.
While this represents only a few of the common SEO mistakes that are made, the reality is, your responsible for learning, researching, and understanding the many rules set down by the search engines so your time and effort is not wasted.
There are different strategies that can help in optimizing your site. If you spend a little time learning some of the methods available with SEO, you could easily avoid any future problems and actually improve your sites rankings.
Black hat or white hat SEO strategies
Since there are so many SEO strategies available for search engine optimization, many experts have simply put them into two categories, black hat and white hat SEO. Just so you’re aware, some SEO methods are completely acceptable to the search engines, but some are not. This is an important factor when it involves the optimization and ranking of your website and in getting organic search traffic.
To clarify even further, white hat SEO generally refers to strategies that stay within the rules and guideline of the search engines. However, many of the techniques used in black hat SEO will almost always go against specific guidelines.
One thing you have to realize when it comes to search optimization, some people will do almost anything to get their sites noticed. It doesn’t matter if it’s white hat or black hat strategies. Realistically, every website wants to get noticed by making their pages more relevant and getting ranked higher. But it’s evident that some individuals will go outside the stated rules in order to achieve their goals. And sometimes it seems that the search engines will allow these bad methods to work. The question is, are you willing to risk your hard work and effort?
My dad introduced me to an old school SEO tactic that was used by black hatters years ago and while it’s tricky, you shouldn’t use this on your web pages. It’s referred to as invisible text. It’s definitely a black hat concept that involves text color which matches the background color of your web page. In other words, if the background color of your page is yellow, then the color of your hidden text would be yellow as well. The idea was to simply stuff additional keywords and phrases within the page without visitors noticing. Unfortunately, while visitors might not have noticed the additional keywords and phrases, the search engines did.
Here are just some of the black hat methods that people use to get their pages ranked.
- Using popular keywords that are totally unrelated to the particular page content or site
- Using small unreadable text within a web page
- Using doorway pages which are basically useless pages of content
- Using hidden links within the page content
- Using keyword stuffing practices within content
While there are many more unacceptable and black hat SEO practices out there, the decision of what hat you will wear for the optimization of your website is basically up to you. Will you follow the white hat SEO strategies and drive organic traffic to your site or will you go with the black hat methods and risk everything?
Understanding what you should and should not do with SEO
Many people who have websites or blogs have a general idea of what and how SEO works, but they still lack an understanding of the overall process. And not having an understanding of the basics, especially when it involves many of the things you should and should not do with search engine optimization could easily create problems down the road. So, it’s crucial that you take the time to learn as many of the basic principles as possible.
The basic principle of search engine optimization is that your website can improve its ranking with search engines simply by utilizing a number of proven techniques and strategies that work to get your site indexed and ranked. If you follow some of the simple methods of what you should and should not do, it’s possible to achieve many of the desired results from your SEO efforts.
That being the case, the best place to begin is with the choice of your domain name. Having a good domain name and one that is relevant to your website content can easily help with web page rankings. So, when registering your domain name, spend a little time in thinking of something relevant.
It’s no coincidence that domain names can offer a level of trust with people, especially those that have the dot com extension. Other domain extensions such as dot net, dot info, dot biz, dot xyz, or any other extension can often have lower levels of trust with certain people, and many believe that dot com should be the only choice.
Unfortunately, I tend to disagree with this thinking. Years ago, the dot com extension was the only popular choice and it was the acceptable path for a domain name. However, times have changed, the internet has grown and expanded, and a variety of domain extensions are now available. On top of that, Google has welcomed the new extensions. In fact, the corporate entity of Google, Alphabet, uses the xyz extension [abc.xyz].
You’ve probably heard many times how important keywords are to the success of ranking. So, learning the basics of good SEO practices is important for associating the right keywords and tags for your website.
When you have a better understanding of the keywords you need for your website, the results can help in driving targeted traffic and make discovering your site easier for those individuals looking online.
When you’ve decided on the necessary keywords you’ll use, it’s wise to spread them evenly throughout the body of your content and title tags.
You should also remember to try and avoid the use of general keywords, which basically makes it more difficult to reach higher levels in search engine rankings.
Another important issue to remember is not to overuse or stuff keywords within your content. Doing this can easily jeopardize your website rankings.
Much of the content placed on your site should be considered important, so take the necessary time to create valuable and relevant content that will help give you an edge over competition. Try to remember, there are many other websites that will provide similar content, so whichever site can offer more relevant and quality content will have better results with visitors.
These are just some of the things that should and should not be done with search engine optimization. The key to your website being properly optimized is learning the basic principles and doing continued research, especially if your site is going to achieve higher rankings.