Thursday, March 17, 2011

Five Common SEO Mistakes on Websites By Sarasota Web Design

Sarasota Web Design

Search Engine Optimization is an essential tool for getting your website noticed. Without at least a nod in the direction of SEO, you stand little chance of getting to the top of your niche, unless it’s an ultra-rare one that is.

Professional-level SEO is a specialist subject, and not something we can cover in a single post, or even a series of them. However, there are some basic measures a website owner can take to give themselves a little boost while we work our magic on the bigger picture.

Website design is only half the battle when dealing with commercial entities. We work hard to make sure the end result is attractive, navigable and useful to the audience. That work is all for naught if nobody knows it’s there, which is where SEO comes in. This post is all about the common mistakes website owners make when managing their sites.

Not having a page title. Search engines use the title tag to display the page in the search results. If there isn’t one, or it doesn’t make sense, it makes it harder to rank the page. Spiders won’t be able to easily identify your page, and its contents. That will work against any SEO efforts for the site.

Having a page title that is too long. Page titles that are over the top, or even too short will also work against the page. Google allows 70 characters in a title, so website owners should use every single one of them. Don’t stuff it full of keywords though as you’ll dilute their effect. Target one or two at most to gain maximum benefit. Fort Myers web design company is the perfect place to start your search for the ultimate in web design needs.

Words that appear first in a title are given more significance by the search engine. That means putting the page keywords at the beginning and supporting words after it. It takes a little tweaking, but it’s usually possible.

Keyword stuffing. As mentioned above, putting too many keywords into a title will dilute their effect. Websites that have this may rank highly but only briefly, and will soon fade. Using targeted keywords, and only one or two per page is the best way to extract maximum SEO juice from them.

Not only does Google not like it, but if you’re selling something keyword stuffed pages often have very high bounce rates. You need conversions to make money, not just visitors.

Overusing the site name. While it may seem logical, it doesn’t make much sense in SEO terms to have the company or website name in the title. You have 70 characters with which to make an impact, why waste it on your company name? Searches using that term will come up anyway, you want keyword terms to get new visitors.

Remember, keywords are supposed to be terms real people use to find what you’re selling. Putting your name in the title isn’t what they want. They want your product or service.

Duplicating titles. You want search engines and visitors to be able to quickly identify what page is what. By keeping them all the same, you’re just confusing everyone. Every site page should be unique. Duplication of anything should be kept to the absolute minimum, whatever your website is about.

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