subject: How to build a good reputation with the search engine and get traffic [print this page] How to build a good reputation with the search engine and get traffic
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. If you are good at your SEO, you will find that you not only get the traffic you want but your conversion rate will increase, too. On the other hand, if you're new to the SEO game, it's important that you learn a few blunders to stay away so that you don't harm your chances for success.
Your aim is to get liked by the search engines, not get banned. That is why it's necessary to understand what you shouldn't do so that you can succeed. It's important to read on for some common mistakes that people often make that kill their chances of getting the traffic they want.
The first SEO mistake is trying to make the website really flash heavy. Even though flash gives your website the "coolness" factor, it's not really recommended when you're doing SEO. While flash looks neat for those humans reading your site, it's invisible to search engines so your site isn't likely to get crawled.
The search engine bots only care about the text on your site and if it's not found, they'll go to another site. This is the only way to rank high. Flash makes your website look good, so if you don't want to avoid it completely, you should add some text and graphics to your page so that you can optimize it for the search engines. Remember, the more text you have, the better it is.
If you don't perform your keyword research correctly then your entire campaign will be worthless. If you don't research your keywords well enough and don't have a strong keyword list, it spoils your optimization efforts. The traffic you get isn't much targeted, which means it doesn't convert and give results. Apart from that, choosing keywords that people aren't searching for doesn't really make sense. Keywords are how people search and how the search engine determines which sites to show in the results, so they should be one of your main priorities. The key is to locate lower competition keywords and to build your content around them. To assist you with your keyword research, several companies have keyword tools that you can use online for free to compile a keyword list for free.
Not having search engine friendly content will simply kill your campaign, and yet it is a common mistake many make. You may have heard the saying "content is king," well, I don't know if it is true or not but having relevant and correctly formatted content on your site can make or break your SEO efforts. Always ask yourself before posting any content to your site, will the search engine find this acceptable? The norm is to include 3-5 keywords with every 100 words of content and each piece of content shouldn't be less than 300 words long. To get even better ranking you should include your keyword in the title of each post. Too many keywords in your content will get your site penalized.
Search engine optimization is the perfect solution for anybody who wants a long-term traffic source that will bring targeted visitors to your site for years to come. SEO is not a quick fix but when it works, it really works and for a long time too. It takes time to see results, which is perfectly fine. No matter what, don't fall for all of the gimmicks, they work temporarily and then blow up in your face; if you stick with the long-term methods then you will still be around when the smoke clears.
