When it comes to search engine optimization, there are certain common mistakes that I

see people making over and over again.

Here’s a list of the 11 most common mistakes that I see people making. By avoiding

these mistakes, you can avoid a lot of anguish and frustration in the long run.

1) Optimizing for the wrong keywords

The first step in any search engine optimization campaign is to choose the keywords

you should optimize your site with. If you initially choose the wrong keywords, all the

time and effort that you devote in trying to get your site a high ranking will go down the

drain.

If you choose keywords which no one search for, or if you choose keywords which won’t

bring in targeted traffic to your site, what good will the top rankings do?

2) Putting too many keywords in the Meta Keywords tag

I often see sites that have hundreds of keywords listed in the Meta Keywords tag, in the

hope that by listing the keywords in the Meta Keywords tag, they will be able to get a

high ranking for those keywords. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Contrary to popular opinion, the Meta Keywords tag has almost completely lost its

importance as far as search engine positioning is concerned. Hence, just by listing

keywords in the Meta Keywords tag, you will never be able to get a high ranking.

To get a high ranking for those keywords, you need to put the keywords in the actual

body content of your site.

3) Repeating the same keyword too many times

Another common mistake that people make is to endlessly repeat their target keywords

in the body of their pages and in their Meta Keywords tags.

Because so many people have used this tactic in the past (and continue to use it), the

search engines keep a sharp lookout for this, and may penalize a site which repeats

keywords in this fashion.

Sure, you do need to repeat the keywords a number of times. But, the way you place

the keywords in your pages needs to make grammatical sense. Simply repeating the

keywords endlessly no longer works. Furthermore, a particular keyword should ideally

not be present more than thrice in your Meta Keywords tag.

4) Creating lots of similar doorway pages

Another myth prevalent among people is that since the algorithm of each search engine

is different, they need to create different pages for different search engines.

While this is great in theory, it is counter-productive in practice.

If you use this tactic, you will soon end up with hundreds of pages, which can quickly

become an administrative nightmare. Also, just imagine the amount of time you will

need to spend constantly updating the pages in response to the changes that the

search engines make to their algorithms. Furthermore, although the pages are meant

for different engines, they will actually end up being pretty similar to each other.

The search engines are often able to detect when a site has created such similar pages,

and may penalize or even ban this site from their index. Hence, instead of creating

different pages for different search engines, create one page which is optimized for one

keyword for all the search engines.

5) Using Hidden Text

Hidden text is text with the same color as the background color of your page. For

example, if the background color of your page is white and you have added some white

text to that page, that is considered as hidden text.

Many webmasters, in order to get high rankings in the search engines, try to make their

pages as keyword rich as possible.

However, there is a limit to the number of keywords you can repeat in a page without

making it sound odd to your human visitors. Thus, in order to ensure that the human

visitors to a page don’t perceive the text to be odd, but that the page is still keyword rich,

many webmasters add text (containing the keywords) with the same color as the background color. This ensures that while the search engines can see the keywords,

the human visitors cannot.

The search engines have long since caught up with this technique, and ignore or

penalize the pages which contain such text. They may also penalize the entire site if

even one of the pages in that site contain such hidden text.

However, the problem with this is that the search engines may often end up penalizing

sites which did not intend to use hidden text.

For instance, suppose you have a page with a white background and a table in that

page with a black background.

Further suppose that you have added some white text in that table. This text will, in fact,

be visible to your human visitors, i.e. this shouldn’t be called hidden text. However, the

search engines can interpret this to be hidden text because they may often ignore the

fact that the background of the table is black.

Hence, in order to ensure that your site is not penalized because of this, you should go

through all the pages in your site and see whether you have inadvertently made any

such mistake.

6) Creating Pages Containing Only Graphics

The search engines only understand text - they don’t understand graphics. Hence, if

your site contains lots of graphics but little text, it is unlikely to get a high ranking in the

search engines.

For improving your rankings, you need to replace the graphics by keyword rich text for

the search engine spiders to feed on.

7) Not using the NOFRAMES tag in case your site uses frames

Many search engines don’t understand frames.

For sites which have used frames, these search engines only consider what is present

in the NOFRAMES tag. Yet, many webmasters make the mistake of adding something

like this to the NOFRAMES tag: "This site uses frames, but your browser doesn’t

support them".

For the search engines which don’t understand frames, this is all the text that they ever

get to see in this site, which means that the chances of this site getting a good ranking

in these search engines are non-existent. Hence, if your site uses frames, you need to

add a lot of keyword rich text to the NOFRAMES tag.

8) Using Page Cloaking

Page cloaking is a technique used to deliver different web pages under different

circumstances.

People generally use page cloaking for two reasons: i) in order to hide the source code

of their search engine optimized pages from their competitors and ii) in order to prevent

human visitors from having to see a page which looks good to the search engines but

does not necessarily look good to humans.

The problem with this is that when a site uses cloaking, it prevents the search engines

from being able to spider the same page that their users are going to see. And if the

search engines can’t do this, they can no longer be confident of providing relevant

results to their users. Thus, if a search engine discovers that a site has used cloaking, it

will probably ban the site forever from their index.

Hence, my advice is that you should not even think about using cloaking in your site.

9) Using Automatic Submission Tools

In order to save time, many people use an automatic submission software or service to

submit their sites to the major search engines.

It is true that submitting your site manually to the search engines takes a lot of time and

that an automatic submission tool can help you save a lot of time. However, the search

engines don’t like automatic submission tools and may ignore your pages if you use

them.

In my opinion, the major search engines are simply too important for you not to spend

the time to submit your site manually to them.

10) Submitting too many pages per day

People often make the mistake of submitting too many pages per day to the search

engines.

This often results in the search engines simply ignoring many of the pages which have

been submitted from that site. Ideally, you should submit no more than 1 page per day

to the search engines.

While many search engines accept more than 1 page per day from a particular domain,

there are some which only accept 1 page per day.

Hence, by limiting yourself to a maximum of one page per day, you ensure that you stay

within the limits of all the search engines.

11) Devoting too much time to search engine positioning

There’s another common mistake that people make when it comes to search engine

optimization - they spend too much time over it.

Sure, search engine placement is the most cost effective way of driving traffic to your

site and you do need to spend some time every day learning how the search engines

work and in optimizing your site for the search engines. However, you must remember

that search engine optimization is a means to an end for you - it’s not the end in itself.

The end is to increase the sales of your products and services. Hence, apart from trying

to improve your site’s position in the search engines, you also need to spend time on all

the other factors which determine the success or the failure of your web site - the quality

of the products and services that you are selling, the quality of your customer service,

and so on.

You may have excellent rankings in the search engines, but if the quality of your products and

services are poor, or if your customer service leaves a lot to be desired, those high rankings

aren’t going to do much good

By Dan Jeffreys, Creator of “90-Day Affiliate Millionaire”

http://www.90-dayaffiliatemillionaire.com/ebook_downloads/11_SEO_Mistakes.pdf