Obligatory List of Common SEO Mistakes

• There is little or no text on the page. This makes it very difficult for a search engine to decide what the page might be about.
• The page has enough text, but it isn’t using any keyword phrases within it that a user might be searching for.
• The page title either lacks a kicker keyword phrase, is the same as every other page title on the site, or both.
• The page content, or meta tags, or alt tags, or any other portion of the code is filled with keyword stuffing.
• Either hidden text or hidden links exist on the page.
• The page uses old-school framesets.
• The site uses javascript, flash or images for navigation making it difficult or impossible for spiders to follow the links.
• The site utilizes cloaking to fool search engines.
• The site links to bad neighborhoods.
• The site’s internal links use phrases such as ‘click here’ as anchor text.
• The site blocks robots from spidering in either the robots.txt file or in page meta robots tags.
• The site is one big flash site.
• The site’s backlinks are completely dependent upon nothing but reciprocal links with anyone and everyone.
• The webmaster or SEO thinks toolbar pagerank is the be all, end all goal, and does nothing but chase the dream of higher pr.

Now that we’ve gotten the obligatory list out of the way, let’s talk about what I’ve seen time and time again. I’m talking about the over-enthusiastic noob SEO. This person is so excited about his new profession that he inevitably crosses over the imaginary “gone too far” line – again and again and again.

“Oh look”, thinks the noob, “putting that keyword phrase in the first paragraph of text bumped my rankings up a little bit. Hey, I know! I’ll put that phrase in the text another 50 times! Yeah! That’ll work great!”

or…

“Oh look”, thinks the noob, “that link I paid for from that directory made my ranking go up from #493 to #487. If I just buy another 300 or so links, I’ll be golden!”

or…

“Wow, I”… [insert anything here] … “and my rankings went up a teeny tiny bit, so if I ” … [do whatever that was] … “another million times, I’ll be #1!”

Sure, in a perfect world, we would discover something that search engines appreciate, and we would apply the old “Rinse and Repeat” formula to further that appreciation. In the real world, however, it inevitably tends to lead to more of a “Gone Too Far” situation that search engines almost never appreciate.

Some key advice to anyone new to search engine optimization:

• Make sure you don’t intentionally or accidentally prevent spiders from reading your content and following your links.
• Make sure there is enough text on each page to keep a spider fully informed about the page. In doing so, make sure to actually use the words and phrases that a user might search for when researching the topic you’ve written about.
• Never use “tricks” designed to fool search engines such as cloaking or hidden (or nearly hidden) text.
• Be careful who you link to. If you think a site might not be on the best of terms with a search engine, either don’t link to it, or render the link neutralized by using rel=”nofollow” as a link attribute.
• Most of all, use common sense. If it might be “too good to be true, it probably is”. If it might look silly to a user, it will probably look silly to a search engine. If it isn’t useful to a user, it probably won’t be useful to a spider.
• Finally, don’t believe everything you read on the Internet. There are millions of wanna-be SEOs who’ll guide you down the wrong path. Use common sense in those situations as well.

Defined Goals
The first step in any plan is to know what the goal is. A search marketing campaign may be broad or narrow. It may encompass an entire web site consisting of thousands of potential keyword phrases, or it may focus upon just one subsection of a site. Whatever the focus, it should be clear from the beginning what the desired goals will be. Be specific when defining the goals. Determine the scope of the project. What is the core topic that is being addressed? What content is already established within this core topic? What content should be added to address missing subtopics? How does this area of the site compare to the competition’s coverage?

Keyword and Competitive Research
Once the goals have been defined, the blueprint needs to focus on details. Proper keyword research is vital at this stage. Understanding which phrases are the most likely to bring traffic is a good first step, but care should be taken to realistically address the competitiveness of each phrase. If it is not feasible to rank well for a highly competitive phrase when your business is a fledgling company that is pitted against long-established companies, you may need to work on ranking for the lower-hanging fruit for now. Identifying which phrases are less competitive, but still likely to bring significant qualified traffic is key to this part of the SEO blueprint. Analyzing the competition will also aid in determining which details to include here. With a bit of practice, you’ll find the phrases that the competition failed to address properly, and you can beat them with a detailed, focused plan.

Content Outline
Many times, a site may already have a significant amount of content that addresses the core topic. If so, that content should still be picked apart and evaluated. A fresh eye can often see what the original publishers could not. Content can be tightened, refocused, and expanded upon to create an outstanding resource for the subject matter. No matter how much content already exists, a new outline should be considered. Is there enough information? Is the information arranged logically? Do page titles and section headings represent the key concepts that are being targetted? For every question a user might have about the topic, is there content to answer the question? Does the topic include multimedia whenever multimedia would be useful? Are illustrations and diagrams included when possible? Have podcasts, video, and screencasts been considered as compelling content? Does the copy satisfy both the user’s needs as well as the marketing goals? The content outline should be the ultimate plan for each page of the topic section.

Evaluate and Address Technical Issues
The blueprint should include any technical issues that need to be addressed, such as server problems, coding issues that may hamper search engine bots from spidering content, and any other technical issues that need to be solved to ensure that nothing is preventing the search engines from indexing the site properly.

Offsite Marketing
Finally, the blueprint needs to outline the various ways that the site will be promoted, publicized, socialized, and marketed so that others will link to the site, talk about the site, and recommend the site. Because a large part of any SEO campaign is obtaining backlinks, this part of the blueprint should be carefully considered. Keeping the site’s content fresh, and providing users with that fresh content via such services as blog posts and RSS feeds should be considered. Participating in social networks and joining in the conversation about the topic is yet another way to have a measure of influence over the buzz and popularity of the site. Although you don’t have full control over the links others place on their own sites or the buzz they may generate, you can have an influence by being involved in related social networks and actively promoting the site. If your blueprint contains a detailed outline of each of those offsite avenues you intend to pursue, you have a good chance of being successful with this important part of your search marketing campaign.

Take Action
The final step is to have your team follow the plan, while making sure everyone is nimble enough to adjust it along the way as new information, situations, or problems are presented. While each search marketing blueprint will differ in the details, the basic outlines will all look very similar. Get the core elements right, remember to fill in the details that are specific to each situation, and you stand a very good chance of building a successful search marketing campaign.

Avinash Kaushik, Google’s Analytics Evangelist and author of “Web Analytics: An Hour A Day” hosted an invitation only event at Google’s Atlanta office in January, 2008. He told attendees that only 14% of Google clicks come from paid search (the sponsored listings on the right side of the search results page, also known as PPC ads) while 86% of clicks are organic. Clearly, just from this one statistic alone, we can see how important it is to allocate resources towards natural, organic ranking through search engine optimization.

But let’s not stop there. Now let’s look at a couple of other interesting stats. According to an iProspect survey, only 10% of users will go past the first page of search results, and 90% won’t go past the third page. Obviously, the first 10 results are where you want to be!

And two final stats for you to think about:

• In report after report, it’s been found that 70 – 80% of consumers research product information online before purchasing – either online or offline!
• In addition, consumers who researched products online via searches spent 20% more than non-searchers.

So to put that into perspective, 80% of consumers who might buy your product or service, research online first. Of that 80%, 86% will choose from the natural, organic listings, and almost all of those will choose one of the top 10 listings on the first page of results. Once they buy, they spend more than those who didn’t search online. Now, how important do you think it is to rank in the top 10 for your product or service, even if you only sell off-line?

Marketing experts have always understood the importance of using various marketing techniques such as print ads, direct mail, press releases, etc. to cement the brand in consumer’s minds. SEO should be a significant portion of that marketing mix if they hope to reach today’s tech-savvy consumers.

Statistics obtained via:
Marketing Charts, Beussery.com, Prospectiv, and iProspect.