6 Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Mistakes you Should Avoid

Having completed your website and seeing it live might make you heave a sigh of relief. But don’t relax just yet; search engine optimization of your site is required to make your site more visible on the web. Putting up your site without SEO is like putting up ad billboards at a place with no visitors; it doesn’t bring the focus on your business or attract visitors. So, while gearing up for your search engine optimization campaign, you need to be aware of some major mistakes which should be avoided at all costs:

1. No Links
   Search engines give a lot of importance to the relevant links to your site; it shows that other sites trust your site. If you do not have quality links in place, your site’s ranking will be affected. Relevant link building should be done as part of search engine optimization which can help get your site a better ranking on search results. Check with your SEO expert if he/she provides link building services along with SEO services.
   
   
2. Keyword Stuffing or Keywords Cloud
   This is a big ‘no-no’ for search engine optimization. Many SEO experts with half-baked skills, in their eagerness to increase keyword density, stuff website content with keywords. This is a big mistake. Ask your SEO expert to optimize your content sensibly. Make sure that your site has meaningful and original content. A keyword-stuffed site might turn up good on the search results, but visitors leave the site the moment they notice the keyword stuffing; they realize that the site will not give them any useful information. Give your SEO expert the responsibility not only of getting your site on a good rank in search results but also of maintaining it with sensible content that attracts visitors to your site. You need to research for optimum keyword density or get advise from the right SEO consultant.
   
   
3. Black Hat SEO Techniques
   Search engine crawlers or robots, as they are called, are smart enough to recognize Black Hat search engine optimization techniques, which are unethical means to get ahead in the search rankings. If you try to deceive the search engines by putting up copied content, invisible text stuffed with keywords or page cloaking, they will ban your site. Organic SEO is the only safe and sure method of gaining good rankings on search results. No qualified SEO expert will advise you to go for such unethical SEO tricks. And if they do, run in the opposite direction!
   
   
4. Shabby Site Structure
   Your website’s structure is important for search engine crawlers to index the content and relevant pages. So if your site’s structure is in disarray, your search ranking can get affected. Make sure that your site’s structure is clear and understandable so that the crawlers can cache relevant content and rank your site higher. Also keep in mind that a few search engines prefer xml sitemaps to html ones. So make both available.
   
   
5. Images or Flash Instead of Interesting Content
   Putting important content in flash or images is a big mistake for search engine optimization, and should be avoided. Search engines cannot read content in images or flash, so if you put keyword-optimized content or product information in an image or flash presentation, crawlers will be unable to judge relevancy of information. Instead of flashy presentations, try to keep your site up to date on the latest information about your industry. Relevant and fresh content is good for search engine optimization and can boost rankings. If you are interested in putting up images, go for static ones and give them relevant image tags.
   
   
6. Omitting Important Keywords from Title, Description and Meta Tags
   Don’t ignore the importance of keywords in the title, description and Meta tags of the site. SEO experts will tell you that search engine optimization without keywords in the backend is useless. Search engines sort through description, title and Meta tags to decide the relevancy of the website; the tags tell search engines what the website is all about. Including keywords in the Meta tags is the most important aspect of search engine optimization, without which search ranking will not improve.
   

A lot of people believe that search engine optimization is a do-it-yourself exercise but the fact remains that a professionally trained and experienced SEO expert can drive results faster and better than you. Consider the SEO expert as your marketing partner and see for yourself how your website is turned into an effective marketing tool for your business. A professionally managed site will be much more effective than the trial and error methodology for SEO you will undertake on your own.