subject: Common Website Optimization Mistakes To Avoid [print this page] Website optimization also called SEO is the science and art of making websites/Web Pages attractive to search engines. Sites that have been properly optimized get higher search engine ranking, this is critical since majority of internet users use search engines to locate what they want and many only look at the first few pages of search results, therefore, for a web page to get high traffic, it has to be ranked highly.
The basis of search engine optimizations is to ensure that each web page in a web site contains the appropriate title tags and Meta tags and that keywords are properly distributed in the web content in a way that a search engine will like.
Absence of Targeted Keywords and phrases
The absence of targeted keywords and keywords phrases can either make or break your site. When a searcher is performs a search in a search engine or directory by entering a keyword or a keyword phrase that you'd like to be found in your site and it happens that the said keyword or phrase is not present in your website, then it's highly likely that the searcher will not find you. And you don't want this happening.
Badly written web content
Web copy is the number one reason that search engines will index your site and users will find you through search engines results or directory. But if your content is poorly written and never updated, or is just not relevant to what searchers are looking for, then this means your site is not search engine friendly and users will not be able to find you. Web content is the key to high ranking and content must be well written with keywords and phrases to make sense.
Unethical SEO techniques a.k.a black-hat
If you haven't heard of blackhat, then this are techniques used by rogue webmasters to get high rankings, such techniques are considered unethical by the larger SEO community and search engine companies. Some of the techniques are hidden text, URL masking, keyword stuffing, doorway pages etcetera. Such techniques do raise site rankings and served the proponents very well in the past, modern search engines algorithms have greatly improved and are now able to locate sites using such techniques and often penalize them. as a site owner you're advised to stay away from blackhat techniques and learn proper ways of optimizing your site.
Improper Usage of Meta Tags or not using them
Meta tags include title tags, keyword tags, and description tags. While not the absolute most important component in Web site optimization (that spot is reserved for keywords and content), they do have an important part to play. Make sure to include all these tags in every page of your site, and target them for each individual page.
A Poorly Designed Web Site
Incompetent web design is typical of missing navigation, un-optimized graphics that load slowly, badly designed frames and more. Be informed that search engine spiders are usually not able to properly crawl and index a site that is not well designed, web design is thus a major part of web site optimization and also if users are not able to find what they're looking for in your site, thy can easily look somewhere else.
