subject: Tips to improve search engine results for the long term and won't get you banned [print this page] Tips to improve search engine results for the long term and won't get you banned
If you have a website, or maybe you're running some other kind of business on the web, you're going to want traffic that's actually searching for what you're offering. To go about this, you must get your site ranked high in the search engines. When you go about SEO the right way, you will get that target audience and that audience will usually be ready to act. But, if you have never done SEO before, it's important that you read a few mistakes that can really hurt you if you're not careful.
Your site should be appealing to the search engines, not pushed out completely. This is why it's always important to keep in mind what you shouldn't do, so that you don't end up in a soup. It's important to read on for some common mistakes that people often make that kill their chances of getting the traffic they want.
On-page SEO is the most common mistake that webmasters and new internet marketers make. For something that people have complete control over; it's shocking that so many neglect it. The definition of on-site SEO can be simplified to the way you layout your site's elements and content. The main components of on-site SEO are your heading tags, ALT tags, navigation, and file names. All of these should have your targeted keywords mentioned in them. Don't skip over this part of SEO. Your competition will be using these basic techniques so you should take it a step further.
Keyword research is an integral step in any type of search engine marketing. If your keywords aren't targeting people who can't be converted into buyers then you will waste your time. Without targeted traffic you won't make any sales. Basing your site around words that aren't being searched is a fast way to not see any results. Understanding how to do keyword research correctly will greatly increase your chance of success with SEO. Your keywords have to be words people are using to search, and they have to have less competition. Free keyword tools that can be accessed online are available to put together a list of keywords.
When adding content to your site you must please both the readers and the search engine. Webmasters put in the effort to create a masterpiece out of their site but in this process they forget to add relevant content to their site. Always ask yourself before posting any content to your site, will the search engine find this acceptable? Try not to add any individual posts to your site that are less than 300-400 words and your keywords should number between 3-5 inside every 100 words of content. It is common SEO practice to include the main keyword of your content inside of the page/post title, also. Be careful not to include a large amount of keywords in anything you publish.
Overall, successful SEO methods can be boiled down to several small elements and tactics designed to work well together to provide you with results. Don't fall for the promises made by 'blackhat' SEO tactics that say you'll see instant search engine results, especially since none of those techniques will benefit you in the long term. Work with the more reliable Whitehat methods that can still offer the same results, but will last for the long term and continue bringing in targeted traffic for years to come.
