Common SEO Mistakes To Avoid (Part One)

Effective Search Engine Optimization is really not that difficult but it does take a bit of knowledge and a keen attention to detail.

Here are three common SEO mistakes to avoid:

1. Choosing the wrong keywords

Each page of your website should be optimized for a handful of keyword phrases. This helps your page to get found whenever someone uses a search engine to search for a keyword phrase you've optimized for.

If you optimize for intelligent keywords, you'll likely get an increase in website traffic from those looking for the types of products and services you offer. However, if you optimize for the "wrong" keywords, you may not get an increase in traffic or may be found by the wrong audience altogether.

Using a keyword research tool, you can determine how many times per month a particular keyword phrase is searched for. This is important because it won't benefit you to optimize your web page for a term that no one cares about.

Also, you should type each keyword phrase into Google (or your search engine of choice) to see what results you find. If the results show you pages that are related to your own, you are on the right track.

If the results are completely unrelated, you should avoid optimizing for the keyword phrase and look for more targeted terms.

2. Forgetting to include a page title

Each page of your website should have an intelligent page title... also called the "meta page title." This information is added to the html code itself and can be found at the top of the page.

The page title serves a few different purposes. First, it is displayed at the top of the browser window to let the visitor know what kind of information to expect on the page. It also helps the search engines know what kind of content to expect.

This is why it is crucial that your page title include the keyword phrases you are optimizing for.

The page title also appears whenever someone finds your page through the use of the search engine. The page title information is used for the blue, clickable link that will take the searcher to your page.

Forgetting to include a page title may cause the search engines to add the term, "Untitled Document," to your page. This looks quite unprofessional and can hamper your ability to be found for important keyword phrases as well.

3. Using the same page title on all pages

While effective SEO needn't be difficult, it does take work. All too often, I see webmasters using the exact same page title on every page of a site and this is cause for concern.

Remember that the search engines index pages of your site, not your website as a whole. Your "meta page title" should include the keyword phrases you want to optimize a particular page for, and each page should be optimized for a unique set of terms.

While there is more to effective search engine optimization, avoiding these three common mistakes will help you outrank the many sites that employ them.

If you are careful to do thorough keyword research, you should find a set of keyword phrases likely to bring you targeted traffic and new business.