Peter Nolette
Search engine optimization is a process of adjusting your website to rank higher in search engine results. When you optimize your site for the search engines, you are optimizing it for your customers. Search engines want to provide their searchers with the best and most relevant content, so they use a variety of factors to evaluate your site. One way to help improve these factors is by implementing a search engine optimization checklist. By following these tips, you can improve the ranking of your site in search engine results. Here are five mistakes that people often make when optimizing a website and how to fix them.
Mistake 1: Not Having a Clear Purpose
The first mistake people often make when optimizing a website is not having a clear purpose. Before you start building your site, you need to figure out who your target audience is and what they want to do with your site. This will help you build a site that will rank better in search engine results.
Mistake 2: Limited or No Content
Don’t make the mistake of thinking that Google only cares about your keyword density. Content is king! Providing content that is relevant to your site visitors is critical in the search engine optimization process. You need to have enough content on your site so that it appears as though you know what you’re talking about, and if you are trying to rank on a specific keyword, then that keyword needs to appear at least once every 200 words.
Mistake 3: You Are Whoring Out For Links
People often try to acquire links from other sites, or “ whore out for links.” The problem with this is that it can lead to penalties. If you see a link on your site and it doesn’t look like something you would have posted yourself, then it’s probably not from an search engine optimization standpoint. You should also be wary of linking out to irrelevant content like TV shows or sports scores. The best way to avoid this mistake is to only use natural anchor text, which means using the name of your business when linking out.
Mistake 4: Redirects Aren’t Set Up Correctly
Your site should have a set of redirects in place in order for search engines to understand which pages are the most important. A 404 error page is not enough to satisfy this requirement – you need an explicit redirect that tells the search engine “this page is no longer live, but the content has been moved here.” To set up this redirect, you will need to use either an .htaccess file or a meta refresh tag on your old page and then link to it from the new one.
Mistake 5: You Are Missing Out on Important Social Media Optimization
Social media optimization plays an important role in SEO. It’s also important to have a social media presence for your business, as it can provide you with an opportunity to connect with customers and develop brand awareness.
These mistakes can have a negative effect on your site’s rankings in the search engine results pages. Solve these five problems to increase your rank and get more visitors to your site.
