Top Five Tips on How NOT to Optimize Your Website
Using proper search engine optimization (SEO) to optimize your website is one of the most important tools that webmasters use for a better online presence. Without a strong online presence, you probably won’t get picked up too well by the top three search engines, Google, MSN and Yahoo. Fail to do that, and you may as well close down your website.
Yet you also want to make sure that when it comes to optimizing your website you don’t overdo it, since this is another way to have the search engines ignore you. Hey, who said that SEO was easy? However, there are ways to make sure your site isn’t over-optimized and these are some of the most effective.
1. Keyword Stuffing
One of the biggest mistakes most websites make when it comes to SEO is misunderstanding keywords and their placement in the site. Keywords are the terms that people type into a search engine to find a certain product or service. If you have your keywords used effectively, this will enhance your chances of the search finding your site. The optimum target for keyword use is around 2-4% – any more and you’ll simply dilute their effect.
2. Duplicate Content
Another area where the search engines will either reward or punish you is via the content on your site. You will score more ranking points for unique custom content than you will by using PLR – private label rights – content. PLR is where you can either buy a bunch of articles or get them for free from places like EzineArticles.com.
Agreed, these will help fill your site with content – along with thousands more. Imagine how less effective a PLR article you share with 1,000 other websites will be compared to a unique one written either by yourself or a professional copywriting service?
3. Buying Backlinks
There’s no denying the benefits of backlinks when used properly. Basically, backlinks are links to your website from an external source – so it could be a blog of yours, or a website or blog posting from elsewhere (say a supplier of yours, or someone who has reviewed your site, for example). However, lately there has been an abundance of websites that offer “paid links”, where for a certain fee they promise you so many backlinks to your site.
The problem here is that the search engines only really take into account links that are relevant to your site – so if you’re an IT company, a link from a computer software firm will hold more sway than a link from a cuddly toy retailer. For quality and authority links, only accept or propose links to and from companies that are in your business field.
4. Social Media Saturation
With the growing popularity of Facebook, Twitter, Digg and similar, social networking/media is now being touted as the next evolution in SEO. Yet while it’s true that having an increased presence via more sites online will build an online presence, this is only true of these ones that actually have any real impact.
While Facebook is excellent for keeping up-to-date with old friends and MySpace is the ideal place to find new music, for effective SEO presence you’ll want to use sites like Technorati, Twitter, Stumbleupon and Digg. Although Digg can actually work against you if you don’t get many hits to your news, since the new Google will rank more on popularity and following than the amounts of online identities you have.
5. Blackhat SEO
For anyone unfamiliar with SEO techniques, there are two main methods – whitehat SEO and blackhat SEO. There is also an area known as greyhat SEO, which walks the thin line between whitehat and blackhat.
Basically, whitehat SEO is the method of optimizing your website using ethical search engine optimization methods. These include unique quality content, blogging, keyword rich articles, authority backlinks and utilizing the correct social networking sites.
Blackhat SEO, on the other hand, uses far less ethical methods and are usually only good for a short, sharp hit. These include spamming, buying links to falsify your site’s popularity, hidden pages on your site, keyword stuffing and more. Although it’s true that these methods can offer a modicum of success, it’s very much short term and will quickly have your website blacklisted by Google and the major search engines.
Although optimizing your website yourself is possible, it can be a hit and miss affair – therefore using the services of expert SEO copywriters will not only ensure your success now, but help you maintain the top rankings a properly optimized website will bring.
