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The No’s of SEO
Few business owners can also claim to be a SEO or SEM expert. They aren’t expected to know everything there is to know about optimizing a website. It can be a confusing process for someone on the outside looking in, and can oftentimes be very intimidating for the uniformed. Like any other branch of marketing, SEO comes with its own lingo, its own best practices and its own pitfalls. It is better for a website owner to ere on the side of caution and hire a real SEO professional, whether in-house or use an outside firm, then deal with the ramifications of a mishandled SEO campaign. Serious Internet marketing mistakes can hurt a website’s reputation, search engine ranking and ultimately, its business.
The easiest trap to fall into is the over-stuffing of keywords. If an appropriate keyword happens to match a word in the website address, that’s fantastic. It’s a great boon to the site. But over-zealous website owners who throw sentences of keywords into the company name, description or content without a real reason find they have created something that doesn’t read well for visitors.
Content should always be written for the user, not used to stuff the search engine ballot box. A website’s content is what is going to force the visitor to act, not SEO. Content should always be fresh and relevant and easy to follow. Regardless of where one is trying to use a keyword: a Meta tag, H1 tag, social media profile, etc, the content should never feel forced or meaningless.
URL structures are often overlooked when it comes to SEO efforts, but they can help or hinder a website very quickly. URL addresses that are exceptionally long and look like gibberish are unappealing to users. It looks sloppy and a little intimidating. The URL tags should tell a visitor what the page is about in a succinct manner. That way it is easier to remember and share later. A shortened URL also helps with search results, as it is one more place for a search spider to match keywords from a user’s query.
It can be very tempting to throw a lot of content on to the Web at once and wait for the results. This shotgun approach isn’t effective in the long run, and rarely in the short run. Mass submissions don’t earn a website the same attention as it did when the Internet was young. Websites are competing with billions of others for search rankings and visitors. Everyday new content is being pumped out. Throwing a lot against the wall and hoping something sticks isn’t time or cost effective. And it certainly doesn’t help build a website’s credibility. Internet marketing requires strategic planning and well-guided efforts, just like offline marketing.
There are a lot of little things when it comes to SEO that can trip up an inexperienced website owner. Probably the most dangerous thing is over-confidence coupled with a lack of respect for how much work it actually takes to run a successful Internet marketing campaign. Jumping in head first without knowing how to swim isn’t a good idea in real life, so why consider doing it when the success of a business is on the line?
About the Author-
Nick Stamoulis is the President and Founder of Brick Marketing (http://www.brickmarketing.com), a full-service Internet marketing and SEO services firm based in Boston, MA. With 12 years of industry experience, Nick Stamoulis shares his SEO knowledge by daily updating his blog, the Search Engine Optimization Journal (or SEO Journal) and publishing the Brick Marketing SEO Newsletter.
Contact Nick Stamoulis at 781-350-4365 or nick@brickmarketing.com
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