Search engine optimisation (SEO) is a highly valuable tool to any online business. It’s a relatively process improve your search engine position and grow your business. Yet optimising your website to improve its ranking in search engine result lists is not a quick fool-proof task. You’ll need to understand search engine guidelines and how to optimise your website so it falls within these regulations. Apart from working within ethical SEO guidelines, it helps to know the most common SEO mistakes made, and how to avoid them.

Spelling mistakes

Sometimes unethical SEO methods include purposely misspelling words, like for example ‘airfairs’ instead of ‘air fares’. Search engines discourage this in SEO strategy. Poor grammar and spelling mistakes give an impression that your website’s not trustworthy.

URLs without keywords

Have an accurate description of the page content within your URL, these are picked up by search engines and also give online users a more specific description of the webpage.

Non-standard title format

Include a couple of your website’s keywords within the title, try to avoid using your business name as search engines pick up the titles but gives little consideration to business names. Avoid adding too many keywords into your title as this will be recognised by search engines.

Keyword stuffing

The use of keywords is vital in SEO, but you shouldn’t have more than five to eight sets of keywords that are relevant to your business. Thread these keywords around 15 to 20 times in the content of each webpage. Avoid placing a keyword on every link in every webpage; it won’t produce the results you’re aiming to achieve.

Inaccurate image descriptions

Overloading your images descriptions with keywords may harm your rankings. Try to avoid this and provide a relevant image description.

Irrelevant keywords

What phrases or keywords can you think of that are specific to your website? Try to vary keywords on each of your pages, and drill down to the essence of what each page offers. The more specific your keywords are, the easier it will be for an online user to find you. Regularly check your keywords and update them to reflect your products, services or information.

Static content

Regular content updates are important to main high ranks in search engine results. Instead of making vast changes to your website, gradually update areas of content to maintain the website’s appeal and relevance to users. Consider refreshing content at least once a week (or month at a stretch), by adding further engaging nuggets of information.

Using only Google

While Google’s the lead player in search engines, it’s not the only route for attracting online traffic. Don’t forget MSN, Yahoo and other search engines can also drive significant traffic to your website.

Forgetting about internal links

Creating a list of incoming links to your website is highly valuable for SEO, but don’t forget to include internal links within your website. Internal links can improve your page ranking, and they don’t have to be outweighed by incoming links (your links placed on external websites).

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