If you have a website then you already know the importance of traffic.
Traffic is to Internet marketing as location is to real estate. It's the
only thing that really matters. If you cannot generate targeted visitors to
your site, you will not make any sales.
Usually the owner or designer of the website is the person designated to
drive traffic to the site. The chief ingredient in generating traffic is the
search engine. Of course, you can use advertising, 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 do not understand the importance of
search engine visibility, which leads to traffic. They place more importance
on producing a "pretty" website. Not that this is bad, but it is really
secondary to search engine placement. Hopefully, the following list of
common mistakes, made by many website owners, will help you generate more
targeted traffic to your site...after all, isn't that what you want.
1. Not using keywords effectively.
This is probably one of the most critical area of site design. Choose the
right keywords and potential customers will find your site. Use the wrong
ones and your site will see little, if any, traffic.
2. Repeating the same keywords.
When you use the same keywords over and over again (called keyword stacking)
the search engines may downgrade (or skip) the page or site.
3. Robbing pages from other websites.
How many times have you heard or read that "this is the Internet and it's
ok" to steal icons and text from websites to use on your site. Don't do it.
Its one thing to learn from others who have been there and another to
outright copy their work. The search engines are very smart and usually
detect page duplication. They may even prevent you from ever being listed by
them.
4. Using keywords that are not related to your website.
Many unethical website owners try to gain 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 known celebrity,
the hot search topic of the day, etc.) inside a meta tag for a page. The
keyword doesn't have anything to do with the page topic. However, since the
keyword is popular, they think this will boost their visibility. This
technique is considered spam by the search engines and may cause the page
(or sometimes the whole site) to be removed from the search engine listing.
5. Keyword stuffing.
Somewhat like keyword stacking listed above, this means to assign multiple
keywords to the description of a graphic or layer that appears on your
website by using the "alt=" HTML parameter. If the search engines find that
this text does not really describe the graphic or layer it will be
considered spam.
6. Relying on hidden text.
You might be inclined to think that if you cannot see it, it doesn't hurt.
Wrong.... Do not try to hide your keywords or keyword phrases by making them
invisible. For example, some unethical designers my set the keywords to the
same color as the background of the web page; thereby, making it invisible.
7. Relying on tiny text.
This is another version of the item above (relying on hidden text). Do not
try to hide your keywords or keyword phrases by making them tiny. Setting
the text size of the keywords so small that it can barely be seen does this.
8. Assuming all search engines are the same.
Many people assume that each search engine plays by the same rules. This is
not so. Each has their own rule base and is subject to change anytime they
so desire. Make it a point to learn what each major search engine requires
for high visibility.
9. Using free web hosting.
Do not use free web hosting if you are really serious about increasing site
traffic via search engine visibility. Many times the search engines will
eliminate content from these free hosts.
10. Forgetting to check for missing web page elements.
Make sure to check every page in your website for completeness, like missing
links, graphics, etc. There are sites on the web that will do this for free.
This is just a few of the methods and techniques that you should avoid. Do
not give in to the temptation that these methods will work for you. 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 forever. Invest a little time to learn the
proper techniques for increasing search engine visibility and your net
traffic will increase.
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E-mail: gerald@webcraft.ws
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