Hopefully you have engaged a website developer who knows more about building a website than just designing fancy graphics.

If a website is going to be of any business value then it needs to be found, and that’s where Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) comes in. But even an experienced web developer can get out of date or fall into bad habits with regards to SEO.

SEO is so important because it is the prime technique to getting your website high up in the natural rankings of query results pages. A high presence here can be a make or break situation for your business. High ranking and you will get a large proportion of the potential visitors, too low and your website becomes a waste of time and money.

Here are 7 common serious mistakes to avoid:-

1. Serious error  -  Poor use of the “Title Tag”

   The title tag has several roles, it tells the search engine about your webpage, it appears in the search results representing your website, and when people are on your website it appears in the top of their browser.  
   So the Title Tag is the prime position to put your carefully chosen keywords and get you relevant traffic.
   But we often see websites where some fairly basic Title Tag errors have been made. The result is that good rankings have been lost.  So avoid these Title Tag errors:-

   • Not having a title tag. – Visitors will see “untitled document” at the top of the browser and in the search results. This comes across as unprofessional and careless. It is also ineffective, because they could be searching for what you have to offer. You are missing out on opportunities and sales
   • Using a friendly greeting instead of a Keyword Title – nowadays this would be regarded as dated and insincere. Anyway it’s a wasted opportunity again to attract the search engines with meaningful keywords, and nobody searches for welcome pages.
   • Just using your company name or website name as the Title Tag – The problem with this is that unless the business name is keyword rich, then you are wasting opportunities to attract visitors. For instance a business name “John Brown Associates” does not have any obvious keyword associations unless it is a big brand name which people are searching on. An example of a good Title Tag is    “Pure Cotton Nightdresses | Luxury Hand Embroidered Cotton Nightwear - Nightie Night” because it has the keywords and a company name which people are searching for.
   • Over-filling the title tag with keywords -  Use only a few relevant keywords which represent what your business offers. Just one or two keyword phrases. Too many and you dilute your profile.
      
2. Serious error - Abusing your “Keyword” Meta Tag

   In the past Keyword meta tags were really important to search engines in their determination of your website’s relevance and ranking.  Nowadays a lot of other things are taken into consideration so the Keyword Meta Tag is not so important in a positive sense. However a poorly written one can have a detrimental effect on your rankings. So what needs to be done?

   The Keyword Meta Tag needs to be populated with all of the keywords that that webpage has been optimised for. That includes applicable synonyms and misspellings, all under 170 characters.

3. Serious error -  Cramming your web pages with Keywords

   This mistake is not so common now, but in the old days was an accepted technique (accepted by developers that is, not necessarily by the search engine companies – that’s why they now penalise it!) The approach used was to fill the webpage content with lots of keywords and so fool the search engines into giving a high ranking for that webpage.

   Well obviously Google has learnt its lesson and has updated its algorithms to deal with people who try to fudge the results.

   So do not even think of doing any of the following because the outcome will be disastrous for your website.

   • Writing lots of invisible words, i.e. white text on a white background
   • Putting lots of keywords in small font at the bottom or top of the page
   • In your copy having a keyword density of over about 10%, because not only will the English not make sense to your readers, but keyword density is monitored.
      
4. Serious mistake -  Using False keywords to attract visitors.

   Ok, you can understand some big event attracting lots of attention on the web.  Wouldn’t it be nice if some of that traffic came to your website? Take for instance the recent UK MP’s expenses scandals, there was a massive upsurge on the web of people looking for details.  What about putting an article about that on your website?

   Yes you would get more visitors, but if the article had nothing to do with your business, then the people would just leave again. Some of them would be annoyed enough to put them off doing business with you, and some may even make formal complaints. It is not worth the risk.

5. Serious mistake   - Useless and poor quality content.

   There is a lot of talk at the moment about creating lots of blogs and submitting articles to be published on the web. All to either boost traffic levels to your website or increase your ranking from having backward links. Now this may well work if the content is good and the links are from high quality websites, but as with most things it is quality which really matters.

   The same goes for what you put on your website. You have two audiences, real visitors and search engines. If your content is weak prose built around a few keywords, you may fool the search engines, but people will not be impressed. At the end of the day, if you want to do business with people you have to be credible.

6. Serious mistake - Using doorway pages

   You will notice that some websites like to have almost blank welcome pages. Sometimes they have great dynamic graphics, but to really discover anything interesting then you need to click again to get through to a real home page.

   Often these doorway pages have a just a few keywords, so there is a high keyword density to attract the search results. I do not know about you, but I find these pages boring and irritating  because they are hindering me getting to the real content. Often I’ll not bother clicking further. Many other people feel the same, so what is the point in putting in place a process which losses you potential visitors?

   The search engines are not positive about them either, the last thing they want is the web cluttered up with lots of shallow web pages to be analysed.

   So have second thoughts about having a doorway page, only have one if it’s going to provide useful information.

7. Serious mistake  -  “Magic and Illusionary pages”

   This is not a dig at Magicians! I’m referring to web pages that are designed to look different for search engines and humans. What some web developers do is build two version of a webpage. One designed to appeal to the search engines, highly optimised to get high rankings, another designed for visitors consisting of flashy graphical effects but without the keyword rich content that attracted them.

   Customers can feel let down and the search engines are not happy. If there are complaints  the search engines may delist the web pages.  The long term risk is not worth the short term rise in traffic.

   These are just some of the many search engine techniques that will have a harmful effect on your website and business. The best approach is to avoid any techniques (and any company) which attempts to fool the search engines.

   We include good search engine optimisation within our websites and our business ethos is to avoid any dodgy practises.