SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is one of the hottest buzzwords in website design and promotion. However, many webmasters don’t quite grasp what SEO is. Many see the prices SEO companies charge and flat out refuse to pay them. These webmasters believe they can simply do the SEO themselves. However, unless they read up on what exactly they need to do, they may make many SEO errors. These mistakes can actually cause search engines to overload the websites instead of ranking them higher.
One of the biggest mistakes is pushing away human customers because you want to get a certain number of keywords in your text. While keywords are important, they should never make your text sound like it was written for a computer. This means you have to be careful that you always present useful information. If you’re working on a webpage for a specific product such as children’s bedding, don’t repeat the name of the product over and over. Sentences like “If you’re looking for children’s bedding, purchasing this brand of children’s bedding is sure to meet your children’s bedding needs” are obviously written for search engines, and live customers aren’t going to waste time reading them.
So how do you get keywords into your website? Well, many webmasters overlook a lot of potential SEO locations. One is the title bar at the top of your website. Some webmasters completely forget to create a title for each webpage, but it’s very important to not only get a title on there but to also get at least one keyword in that title.
Don’t forget the metatags as well. These tags, which are only visible in the HTML coding of your website, are really only used by search engines. They tell search engine robots exactly what topics your webpage touches on. You should add as many descriptive metatags as you can that relate to your site. Don’t stuff your metatags with keywords that aren’t related to your website thinking you can get more traffic. If a search engine sees too many metatags that don’t seem to relate to the text on your site, it may penalize your ranking.
Another place many people forget to place keywords is in the alt text of an image. The alt, or alternative, text is what appears if the image doesn’t load on a person’s computer. You always want the image to load, of course, but whether it loads or not, a search engine robot will see the alt text.
Note that using java menus or Flash menus can actually hinder your SEO work. This is because search engine robots can’t crawl along these types of menus. They won’t see any of the keywords you place in either. Basically, robots can’t read scripts, nor can they “see” any keywords you put in images. This is one reason why many websites have both a fancy graphical menu and a text navigation menu as well (usually down at the bottom). This way, the search engine robot can see all of the keywords, plus users who may have issues with the fancy menu can always use the plain text links if they need to.