Common sense might tell you that if your site is about something like the weather or flowers, you want to search engine optimize your site around the keywords “weather” and “flowers.” This isn’t incorrect, but using SEO techniques on those words alone won’t get you nearly as far as you want, especially not with a new site or a site that’s being optimized for the first time.

Here are some other common mistakes people make when using SEO, as well as some great techniques that many people don’t usually think of, that can make your SEO campaign more successful.

Mistake: Optimizing for your name or your company’s name. Unless your company name includes a valuable keyword, you’re almost surely wasting your efforts. “Sue’s Boutiques” will only be typed into a search engine by someone trying to find your website specifically. Most people will search on things found at your website, like “engraved cufflinks” or “porcelain figurines.”

Solution: Choose keywords and phrases that people who will find your site useful probably search on. “Jerry’s Accounting Services,” for instance, might get some benefit out of the word accounting in the title, but most people will come to the site by searching on specific things within that field, like “taxes,” “income taxes,” and even “audit.” Picking the right keywords is one of the most important SEO decisions you’ll make.

Mistake: Not optimizing for misspelled words. Not everyone can spell. So it makes sense to target common misspellings of your keywords. If you do some research and discover that many people searching for online coupons, like your site offers, often search on the term “coopons,” for instance, write an article or two optimized for that keywords, spelled exactly that way.

Solution: You don’t want obvious misspellings on your site because you don’t like how it looks? Then write the articles with the misspellings for placement elsewhere, but link them to the appropriate parts of your site.

Mistake: Assuming that people search on complete and perfect sentences and phrases. Someone who thinks her boyfriend is having an illicit affair might not always search on the sentence, “How do I know if my boyfriend is cheating?” More likely, the search will be something like “boyfriend cheating,” “cheating boyfriend” or “signs of cheating boyfriend,” with or without the “of.”

Solution: These awkward phrases can make SEO a challenge, but you shouldn’t neglect to optimize for commonly searched phrases and popular clusters of words like those.

The most basic tool of search engine optimization is the SEO keyword or key phrase. Figuring out the best keywords and key phrases for your website or blog is the very first step in getting the search engines to list your site high among their rankings so more people will see the link to your site and click on it.

Finding the right keywords and key phrases for your site’s SEO sounds very simple at its core—pick the words and phrases that represent your site and that people will search on. If your site is about butterflies, then “butterfly” and “butterflies” are two very obvious keywords, for instance. And your website will surely include these words, probably enough to make the search engines take note.

Knowing all this, however, isn’t going to help your website rankings.  This is where SEO gets a little more complicated, and it’s a good idea to have an expert SEO service on your side to get the most out of your website.

Go Beyond the Obvious

“Butterfly” is a pretty common word, and it’s a pretty broad category, too. It’s probably a very commonly searched word.  And there are probably tons of websites all optimized for that word, whether they intended to be or not. For the best SEO, you would want that word included in your website text in certain strategic locations and frequencies, of course. But if you’re hoping to get scores of visitors based on that word and the closely related “butterflies” alone, you’re probably going to be disappointed.

Other sites optimized for that word with more links and other more advanced SEO techniques at work are going to rank higher than yours. Also, you’re not search engine optimized for phrases that people search on, related to your subject, so you’re missing out on a whole category of potential visitors.

Do you have a lot of information about butterfly food?  Then “butterfly food” might be a good choice. What about “feeding butterflies” or something similar? Think of what the people who would enjoy your website are looking for.

Might some of them search for things like “what do butterflies eat?” Then “butterflies eat” could be a good choice key phrase. Much depends on how often it’s queried and how many sites are optimized for it. SEO experts know how to judge the value of keywords, and can pick the best ones for your site.

You’ve seen mention of them if you’ve looked into SEO, or search engine optimization, with even the most passing glance: SEO articles. And if you’ve ever read a poorly written one, you probably recognized it for what it was (a chunk of text designed to get the search engine’s attention) and decided you wouldn’t even want those on your website.

Poorly written SEO articles stand out like warts on your carefully created website, with its color-coordinated backgrounds and buttons, and can read like something a child might have written. You wonder why anyone would want that embarrassingly awful “article” on their site, making them look less than knowledgeable about their subject matter.

Poorly written SEO articles happen for a couple of different reasons: Someone with only a basic understanding of SEO writes them, or an expert or company writes them without an eye on quality.

Both of these are preventable search engine optimized article calamities!

Problem #1 - Someone with only a basic understanding of SEO wrote them. This is the easiest problem to fix. That someone should simply hire a marketing company that provides quality articles. Those companies might not be the easiest to find, but there are a number of them out there.

But why does the person’s SEO articles read like a broken record without giving any real information?

Because they focused on the keyword(s) or key phrase(s), thinking that was all that was necessary for good search engine optimization. Sometimes articles like this have a keyword stuffed into the text 8 times in a single short four- or five-sentence paragraph. Even if the search engine doesn’t block the site for having the keyword too many times, then visitors will come and read the article, and immediately be put off by the obvious tactic that drew them there.

They didn’t understand that good SEO is needed to get the visitor, but that most visitors are looking for information. So the actual article itself is just as important as how often a keyword appears.

Problem #2 - An SEO company provides articles without an eye on quality. The articles ramble on paragraph after pointless paragraph, their sole purpose clearly to contain the keywords. Sometimes the articles don’t even make coherent sense from one sentence to the next.

The Solution:

Find a content company that provides quality SEO articles, or your visitors will go elsewhere for it, no matter how well search engine optimized your site might be.

If you have been applying yourself diligently to your site’s SEO, and coming up empty on results, there are three main trouble areas that may be to blame. While results will always vary, there are some specific reasons that SEO efforts fail, despite the amount of effort that you put it into it. Let’s look at each one of these reasons and figure out how to overcome them.

1. Choosing the wrong keywords. This is absolutely vital if you want to succeed with SEO. It is all about finding the right niche and then exploiting it for all that it is worth. If you are trying to break into a keyword that already has a few million listings, chances are you won’t make it, unless you know some advanced techniques. Target keywords and phrases creatively and test out different configurations until you find the ones that perform well for you.

2. Not publishing enough content. This is truly the one problem area that many sites face. One optimized article is not going to get you the kind of results you need to rocket to the top of search engine listings. You need to publish new optimized content on a regular basis, daily if possible. The more content you have, the greater your chances are of getting that higher ranking and having search engines index your site more frequently.

3. Lagging behind trends. This is a tough one, especially for those that do not have a lot of time to devote to creating new site content. Keyword popularity changes, news events effect searching and there are millions of missed opportunities out there. It is very important to stay on top of the trends that affect your site’s niche and take advantage of them at every opportunity. While evergreen content is very important, you should devote at least some of your time to publishing content that is popular right now.

The main way to fix all of these problems is through proper keyword research and testing. Once you’ve got that down, you can tackle the issues of adding more content to your site. The more you publish, the better your SEO results will be.

One of the most common SEO mistakes that new site owners make is targeting just one search engine. Google is by far the biggest search engine and since they have the most traffic, most site owners work on optimizing only for this engine. While they may be the biggest, millions of people still use Yahoo and MSN search as well as the other smaller engines. If you’re focusing only on the algorithms for one, you could be missing out on significant traffic.

In fact, by widening your SEO efforts to include more search engine algorithms you can actually end up with more traffic than you can by targeting only one. For example, although Google is popular with searcher’s it is also popular with site owners. This means that keyword competition is stiff, and you may be battling it out with millions of other sites.

Since most people are focusing on Google, if you turn that same level of attention to other search engines, you can usually score a top slot in search results with a lot less effort. It will take time, but it is smart to spread your SEO efforts out and avoid the mistake of targeting only one engine.

While the exact algorithms for each search engine are a mystery, there are some basic guidelines that you can follow to optimize for all search engines. Keywords are of course important, as are meta tags. While Google tends to ignore these, Yahoo relies heavily on meta tags for their results. With MSN, the importance isn’t so much as the amount of links you have as how fresh they are.

Your SEO campaign should be rooted in basic SEO principles that will appeal to all search engines. These principles include using the right keywords, giving your pages keyword rich titles, utilizing meta tags, relying on anchor text and building links. When you do this, you’ll be able to attract the attention of all search engines, and you’ll have a better shot at getting some results from them all.

When it comes to understanding SEO, there is a lot of room for error and there are thousands of misconceptions. For some, it is a process that comes naturally, for others it is nearly impossible. You can spend months of your time and thousands of dollars, and still never get any results. There is a reason that some sites succeed while others fail, and it all boils down to one point, the most important SEO tip you could ever get:

Choose your keywords wisely.

That’s it – pretty simple, huh?

Once you choose the right keywords for your site, and optimize it properly, you will be successful in your SEO efforts.

Should you go with the most popular keywords? Should you spend your time stuffing your content with words in vain hope that it will pay off?

In most cases, the answer to these questions is no. In many cases, the most popular keywords are so used that it is nearly impossible to break in. While there are cases of beating out millions of results for a popular keyword, they are few and far between.

Keyword research is the most important step in SEO. If you don’t take the time to really find your niche, and use the right words, there really isn’t much point in wasting your time.

So, how do you know which keywords are the right ones for your site? It is a process of trial and error at first, and it is vital that you install some form of analytics software on your site to help you with this process.

For smaller sites, the right keywords are typically the long tail keywords, the ones that are not overly used. For others, it is a matter of putting together the right phrases.

Above all, you’ve got to be creative. You’ve got to take advantage of the right SEO tools that will help you find the right keywords. It is an ongoing process that never really stops, at least if you want to keep up your site’s momentum.

Every site is going to have different needs, but at the end of the day, it all boils down to the choice of the right keywords.

While there are some advanced SEO techniques that can take a lot of time to learn, basic SEO principles can be used and employed by anyone. If you need to increase your traffic, get a better search engine ranking or you need more conversions, here are some great and simple SEO tactics you can use.

1. Find the right keywords for your site. The right keywords may not be the most popular keywords. In fact, for smaller sites, it is usually best to focus on related keywords and long tail keywords. These are the keywords that can ensure you a top ranking on Google. You can focus on popular words that will rank you in the low hundreds, or you can find alternative keywords that will put you in the top ten.

2. Optimization made easy. You don’t need to be a genius to start optimizing your own website. Start with page titles since these can be a huge factor in your search engine ranking. Incorporate your keywords into your page titles and configure your blog so that these titles will display both on the page and in the URL for that page. This can result in much higher rankings and it is very easy to do.

3. Put yourself in your customer’s shoes. Perhaps the best way to optimize your site is to try to get into your customer’s heads. What will they be searching for and how can you fine-tune your site to meet their needs? The best way to find this out is by installing an analytics program, such as Google Analytics, that will provide you with the keywords and entry methods that your customers are using. Pay attention to these results and use them as your springboard for figuring out what you need to do to reach out to your customers as individuals.

While there are other SEO techniques that can have a big impact on your traffic and your sales results, these three tips are the cornerstone that any site can use.

One of the biggest areas of contention in the SEO world is whether or not organic search results are better than paid search results. There really is no set answer to this question, but there are specific benefits and drawbacks to each. Let’s take a look at both organic and paid search options and see how different variables can affect their success rates.

If you’re not familiar with the term organic results, it basically means search engine traffic that occurs as a result of SEO efforts, and not through paid means.

Organic Results – Pros and Cons

Organic results are popular, mainly because this is one of the best ways to advertise your site for free. Once you’ve put in the actual work of optimizing your site, organic results will continue to pay off over the long term. 

The main problem with this is that it is not an effective means of getting a lot of traffic in a hurry, and it may be months before you start seeing results. Relying on organic means for traffic will not be useful if you are launching a new product or trying to drive up your site’s traffic.

Paid Results – Pros and Cons

Of course, since you are paying for these results, there is a harsher light cast on them. You expect more from paid search, but it may not always pay off. Unless you have targeted the right niche and done your SEO homework, your overall ROI may be quite low.

However, if you are trying to announce a new product, paid search will produce results much quicker than organic search will. With the right keywords, you can easily rank well on search results and your ad will get noticed. 

The bottom line? For the best results, it is important to rely on both forms. When combined, the overall results are much better. 

The key to success with both organic and paid results is targeting the correct keywords, working hard to optimize your site and having a flair for knowing how to reach out to potential customers.

Our next post will cover how to accomplish this, regardless of your site’s topic or your SEO experience.

If you are ready to start optimizing your site, you need to use the same tools that professionals rely on every day. These tools will give you the leg-up that you need to ensure that your SEO efforts will be successful. Here are the absolute three best SEO tools that you can use. 

1. Google Website Optimizer – By far, this tool is one of the most powerful and it is free to use. You will need to set up a Google account to access it, but it is well worth it. You can use this tool to test out various configurations, layouts and page content to determine how effective they will be. Set up a test page, run the optimizer and it will provide you with the tips you need to perfect that page. With multiple test pages, you can easily see which one will have the best projected ROI.

2. WordTracker/Google Keyword Selector Tools – These two tied for second due to the fact that using them in conjunction gives you a definite SEO edge. Type in a keyword into either tool and you will get not only its popularity, but also suggestions and related key phrases. This is very useful and will help you develop the right kind of content for your site’s success.

3. Backlink Checker from iWebTool – Ever wonder how many sites are linking to yours? Use this tool to determine how effective your link building campaigns have been. In addition, you can use the same tool to how your competitors are doing. This is definitely a favorite tool that has a variety of different uses.

There are literally thousands of different SEO tools that are on the market. Most are free to use and can provide you with the information and suggestions you need to perfect your SEO.

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