SEO, Top 5 Search Engine Mistakes

As you probably already know (if not, listen up), most surfers will ONLY look at search results on the first two pages. Some won't even click past page one. If they don't see what they want in the top ten results, they'll move on. What does that mean for you? Your site must get on the first page to survive on the web.

Most sites show up in the bottom hundred thousand results because of several mistakes that could have been avoided along the way.

So how do you know what mistakes you've made? Well, when it comes to search engines, there are five major mistakes that can spell your success or failure as a new site on the web (and if you're doing these, we suggest you get your act together).

5 Mistakes to Avoid When It Comes To Search Engines

1. Insufficient / Unrelated Content

Each page of your website needs to have about 200 words of keyword dense (about 8% is dense) text to rank well. That's like one paragraph. If you sell leather jackets, write a paragraph (you can do it) on the quality of the leather and the hand-sewn lining that makes your jackets so special. Why else would someone buy from you? If they don't understand your product, the search engines won't either.

2. Insufficient Link Popularity

We've all noticed that Google (among other search engine giants) ranks pages based on what other sites think of your site. In the Google world, this is called Page Rank, and it's hard to figure out and properly fix. Actually, of all the mistakes, this is the hardest one to do anything about because it takes some serious effort on your part.

So what do you do? Go to sites that are related to yours, or that would complement yours in some way and offer to do a link exchange. Spend the time and sign up on every (reputable) search directory that relates to you.

Also, update your site often with cool content, games, articles, or a blog. The more often your site is updated with content (good, quality stuff--not gibberish) the more often people will come to you. And if they see what they like, they might link to you. Poof! Problem solved. Ok, it's not that easy. But you can see why this is a hard one.

3. Flash Movies and Images

Oh, those flash movies are great, aren't they? And how great is it to have that HUGE logo that you hand-crafted yourself, and the pic of your cat when he caught a bird...

Unfortunately, web bots cannot read images or flash movies because they contain no actual text. Images, luckily, can be fixed with a little insertion of Alt tags, but flash movies, sadly, have no hope.

If you must have that flash movie that details the entire inception of the Ford Mustang on your site (because you sell Mustangs, of course), put the movie anywhere else than on the homepage. And make sure that you get those 200 words of text to describe the thing.

4. Dynamic Content

Ok, there are about a thousand websites out there that will create a "cookie-cutter" site for you to get you going with their inventory (but we won't name names here). It sounds great, yes. Who would turn down a fantastic little site that only cost $39?

The problem is that those "cookie-cutter" sites are dubbed so for a reason. They were dynamically created. What is dynamically created, you ask? It means that the site was copied from an exact original, and only your name and information has been changed. That's why it's only $39.

But the site looks so great? Here's something else. You can always tell a dynamically created site because it has a ? in the address bar. And a site that has that little ? will get completely ignored by the search engines because the web bots cannot read the ?, let alone get to your "cookie-cutter" content.

5. Using Frames

Frames used to be cool because you could get all the content you wanted to float around your site, and the visitor could see everything all at once. Some webmasters still use frames to ensure a uniform appearance to the site.

Unfortunately, the web bots get lost when going through a site with frames. They just get tired of having to work so hard that they'll leave before any of your content has been crawled. And, if they do happen to crawl some of your content, and you do get listed, that content, when clicked upon, will not include your frames. Because web bots only crawl content. Your visitor will come to you with no frames to help navigate them along the way.

So, what do you do? Don't frame your pages.

About the Author

Pam Mosbrucker is part of the two-person professional copywriting and search engine optimization team, Word Partners Ink. Join the monthly newsletter at http://www.wordpartnersink.com for hints, tips, and search engine strategies.