Keyword Research + Related Keywords = Qualified Convertible Traffic

Do you still remember the last time you have searched on Google and wandered past the third or even the second page of the results? I guess not. But that’s just normal because studies have shown that searchers don’t even get past the second page of the search engine results. This is the main reason why most people who put up a website wants it on the first page of search engines especially on Google. In this chaotic world of internet marketing, almost everyone is obsessed to get to the first page and only few people are sane enough to hold back and try to think outside the box. 

What’s the use of getting on the first page of search engines for targeted keywords that will never be converted into sales?  Of course it’s very satisfying to find your website on the first page of the SERPs because this means that all your efforts to optimize your site have paid off. This is particularly true for people whose only goal is to drive high amount of traffic on their site. But what about those whose main objective is to generate high revenues? For these individuals, especially those engaged in paid search, high volume of traffic is useless, if these are not the ones that they were aiming for.

This article stresses the importance of choosing the right keywords, keywords that will not only get you on the first page of the SERPs but will also give you qualified traffic, for your website. So, how do you go about finding those set of keywords? You have several options here, you may personally think of keywords that you think potential customers will be looking for; you may ask friends, colleagues, and family members for suggestions; you may also ask present and previous customers for the keywords that they are using when searching for products belonging to the same niche. Sounds like a good idea isn’t it? It may be a good one but being in the online marketing industry is not that easy. Always remember that even a slight mistake in choosing the targeted keywords for your website may put you in a very disadvantageous position or even worst, you might end up in the Google sandbox. 

You may have the best intentions in coming up with your own set of targeted keywords, but it won’t hurt to utilize other available resources like a good keyword research tool. A keyword research tool will help you in identifying the words and phrases that are profitable and have high search volumes that you can use on your website. Some available keyword research tools in the market will also give you suggestions such as list of related and similar keywords, and the profitable keywords being used by your competition.

KeywordSpy is an example of a keyword tool that you can use for your research. It can give you all the information that you need for your research such as PPC and Organic competitors utilizing a specific keyword in their PPC advertising and Organic data, as well as PPC Ads, Related Keywords and Misspelled Keywords in connection with your searched term or phrase. 

Once you have decided on the keywords that you want to target for your website, I suggest that you also look for the related keywords as you may also find them valuable and at times, they may be a distinct source of targeted and convertible traffic. KeywordSpy will give a huge contribution when it comes to identifying valuable related keywords for your website. By performing a keyword search on the KeywordSpy website, you will be given a list of related keywords with their corresponding search volume within a month’s period, Cost per Click (CPC), number of profitable general PPC ads, number of profitable affiliate ads, and the time and date of the latest keyword scan performed. Not only this, the good thing about KeywordSpy is that by clicking on each of the keywords under the related tab, you will be able to view the list of PPC advertisers (your possible competition) employing that particular keyword on their campaign, and find out if it is profitable to bid on that particular keyword by looking at its ROI (ROI refers to the profitability of an advertisement copy). Thus, all you have to do is to look for a profitable and has a high search volume keyword which you can use as one of your targeted keywords on your website.

Creating a successful business and website online is not about easy solutions, you need to do your research for you to find the keywords that will lead you to the path of success, however, don’t just find the right keywords, you have to learn how to use them properly on your website. 

Optimization Employing Keyword Phrases Instead of Keywords

Everyone engaged in the online industry, small and huge companies alike, knows that the success of a website in terms of ranking high in search engine results pages (SERPs) depends on having a solid and efficient keyword research. Of course, it is not the sole factor that will get a website on the first page of search engines, but it will definitely affect the page position of a website in the SERPs. Those who are employing search engine optimization on their website and Ad campaigns know the importance of keyword research as it can either make, when properly done, or break, if done carelessly, their campaign or website.

However, although keyword research has been recognized as such and is being employed by everyone in the online industry, most companies, most often than not, still overlook one of the most important part of keyword research, which is keyword selection and evaluation. 

But before going deeper into that, let us first focus on the main issue of this article which is the advantage of using key phrases or keyword phrases over keywords when it comes to getting more traffic and converted sales on your website.

Keywords vs. Key Phrases

Keyword pertains to a single word such as 'shoes' or 'accessories', whereas key phrase refers to multi-word search term such as 'ballerina shoes for women' or 'elegant car accessories'.

Why Use Key Phrases Instead of Keywords?

Both keywords and keyword phrases are good sources of traffic, however, with the current trend in the online industry, keywords are already considered as vague, thus, by using them, it will be extremely difficult for your website to rank on search engines or much worst, it won’t help you rank at all. Aside from this, when you use keywords instead of key phrases, you may get traffic on your site but these won’t be the targeted traffic that you were aiming for in the first place. That being said, why waste your time and effort optimizing your website using keywords that won’t even get you on the first page of the SERPs? Consider using key phrases instead of keywords on your website to get more favorable results in terms of page ranking and targeted traffic which will eventually convert into sales. Majority of Search Engine Optimizers already shifted to the use of key phrases on web sites and campaigns for two reasons:

• Less Competition = Greater Chance of Ranking in the SERPs.  Not everyone in the industry has discovered yet the benefits of using key phrases instead of keywords on their website, thus there is an assurance on your part that the key phrases that you will use will have few competition in the market, thus giving it a higher chance to rank in the SERPs. 

• Getting Qualified Traffic. You have to accept the fact that not everyone who searches for a keyword which pulls up your website would be interested in it. Let’s take the keyword ‘shoes’ as example. If you are engaged in selling women’s shoes in Baltimore, Maryland, and you are only using the keyword ‘shoes’ as the targeted keyword on your website; then whenever the keyword ‘shoes’ is being searched for on search engines, your website may come up, however, not everyone who clicks on it would be interested as they may be looking for children’s shoes or shoes located in Australia, thus those are considered as loss on your part especially if you are using PPC in your campaigns because they won’t be converted into sales. So it is best if you try to target key phrases instead of keywords; you may target the key phrase ‘women’s shoes for sale in Baltimore, Maryland’ or ‘selling women’s shoes in Baltimore, Maryland’; although there will be less traffic coming in to your website, you are guaranteed that those traffic will be converted into sales.

Finding the Best Key Phrases through Proper Keyword Research

As we have pointed out earlier, with the help of proper keyword research, you will be able to identify the best key phrases that you can target for your website. Always remember that when chosen correctly, your key phrases will give you the traffic and profit that you are aiming for, and it will metamorphose your website from a passive one to one that constantly gets qualified and targeted traffic that converts into sales.

Proper keyword research requires a good keyword research tool that will not only give you information such as search volume for a particular keyword phrase and its CPC; you need one that will also give you idea on possible key phrases that you may use, which is related to your targeted key phrase, and this is what KeywordSpy offers. By doing a keyword search on KeywordSpy, you will be able to see the PPC Ads, Related Keywords and Misspelled Keywords connected to your searched term or key phrase; not only this, it will also give you a peek on your competitors (PPC and Organic) that are utilizing the specific key phrase in their PPC advertising and Organic data.

Tips in Choosing Keyword Phrases

Studies show that not all users go beyond the second or third page of a search engine result page, so from here we can conclude that the best key phrases are those that will increase the chance of your article landing on the first page. So here are some tips to help you in identifying the best key phrases for your site or campaign:

• Put yourself into a searcher’s position, your target audience, if you were to search for key phrases connected to your website, what would they be? You may also ask friends and family members for ideas as they can give you a picture of what your customers may be looking for. 

• After you have come up with a list of three or four key phrases, search for them using a keyword research tool like KeywordSpy. 

• Sort and refine your search by looking for the best key phrases that would fit best in your site. Choose key phrases that have high number of searches but at the same time have less competing sites as this will likely generate sales. 

• After you have chosen the best key phrases, choose one that will become your primary keyword phrase. Your primary keyword phrase should be one, which you think; users will tend to look for in your article. 

• Also choose two to three additional phrases which you can use to attract searchers who use variations of your primary keyword phrase as their search queries.

By using the aforementioned knowledge and information on key phrases, you may now put this into action and use key phrases, if you’re not yet employing it on your website or campaign, to get on top of the search engine rankings and drive only targeted traffic on your website. So start thinking key phrases not keywords. 

Taking Advantage of SEO Competitive Research: Get To Know Your Competitors with KeywordSpy

Each time Google makes revisions on its “Google algorithm, webmasters go gaga trying to figure out and finding new means to cope with the abrupt change fearing that it may bring about tremendous effect on their page rank in the SERPs. This means prolonged working hours and sleepless nights for them trying to figure out the effects as well as remedies for this abrupt change.

So, you think that’s too bad, right? Well, you haven’t clearly seen the entire picture yet. It’s bad enough that you have to constantly keep yourself abreast of the latest features, updates and releases made by Google, and on top of that, you also have to find solutions and techniques so that this sudden change in the Google algorithm won’t greatly affect your page rank. However, it doesn’t end there. After you have figured out how the algorithm works, and optimized your website in order to dance with the tune of the new formula, you still have to consider the fact that you are not alone on your chosen niche. You have competitors who could have found better ways to outsmart the algorithm, thus you also have to find ways to outsmart them. This is the part where competitive research and analysis enters the picture.

Competitive Research and Analysis

Competitive research is the process of examining all aspects that may be affecting a business environment. It mainly asks questions about your competitors, the latest economic trends, government regulations, market structure, etc. However, when it comes to SEO competitive research, the processes involved include studying those websites that are ranking for your targeted keywords in order to have an edge over your competitors. In other words, competitive research is basically the study of your competitors, especially the ones that outranked your position in the SERPs. 

When it comes to competitive research, the more information you have about your competitors in the same niche, the better, as you will be more equipped to proceed on the next process called Competitive Analysis or Competitor Analysis. 

Competitor Analysis’ main goal is to create a delineation of every move and technique a competitor of the same niche may be doing or might do in case of an abrupt change in the Google algorithm or other search engines. This also includes the strategies and possible response or contingency plans a competitor might employ in case another competitor of the same niche made strategic and crucial changes to their site; and the most probable reaction that your competitors will do in cases of environmental shifts and industry changes. Competitor Analysis has been proven to be an effective and efficient approach to analyze and figure out your competitors’ marketing techniques and this will help you to find ways and means to outsmart and step up to them.

Both processes mentioned above are huge parts and two of the most important aspects of organic search engine optimization, which every webmaster should focus on.

Importance of Doing Competitive Research and Analysis

In order to get ahead of your competitors and to totally outsmart them, first, you must understand and figure out why your competitors ranks well and how your site matches up compared to theirs. This will give you a better picture which will help you in setting your goals, which will further help you as to which area you should pay close attention to, for you to have an edge over your competitors.

Determining Your Direct Competitors

Before going gung-ho over analyzing your direct competitors, you also have to consider that not all of your competitors’ techniques will work, thus you should only focus on those competitors’ whose techniques actually worked and are producing great and valuable results in the SERPs. Also, pay close attention to those sites that are ranking well for your keywords, even if they do not belong to the same niche. May be you’re wondering why you have to bother checking sites belonging to other niches --- well, if search engines considered those sites as relevant, thereby giving them high ranking, perhaps it’s  also high time for you to pay attention to those sites, scrutinize and figure out why they are ranking so well. 

In selecting your direct competitors, the major search engines (Google, Yahoo!, and Bing) play an important role. Consider the top 10 ranking sites, having your targeted keywords as gauge, in the major search engines as your most important competitors.

Conducting Competitive Research

The first step would be to know your position in the SERPs for your targeted keywords. Look for those sites that have higher page rank than yours, and try to analyze what they may be doing to get a better position in the SERPs. To do this, you need the right kind of keyword tool because a properly conducted research involves good keyword research tool. There are lots of keyword research tools out there, which may help you, but if you want intensive and up to date data, then you better use KeywordSpy. 

KeywordSpy will not only show you your PPC Competitors, but it will also provide you useful data that will greatly help you with your competitor analysis such as the positioning of your competitors in terms of PPC Keywords and Organic Keywords. Aside from the most effective and profitable keywords being used by your competitors, other information that you can get from KeywordSpy are the following: the Daily Ad Budget of your competitor, Average Ad Position, Average Cost per click, PPC Ad Copies, and PPC  and Organic Keywords.

After searching for your competitor in terms of your targeted keywords, you can now start doing your competitor analysis to look for ways to beat them such as examining your competitor’s link structure, the way your competitor’s website has been optimized,  and the effective keywords that your competitor is using, which is missing in your own campaign. After proper analysis and after you have figured out the key areas in your site that needs improvement and the areas on your competitors’ site that have loopholes, then you can work on this to your advantage.

As you continue to optimize your site, competitive analysis allows you to retain your edge and stay on top of your competitors. However, getting on top of the SERPs is not as easy as staying there. The game goes on as you continuously need to find techniques and develop strategies that will give you an assurance of staying on top.

Importance of Having a Sitemap to SEO

The online business world is fast paced and always evolving. Everyone is always looking for new techniques and methods that will make their website user-friendly for online visitors as well as to search engine spiders – without deviating from the rules of SEO. Many tips have been released and published by so called “webmasters” regarding how to effectively optimize a website, however, most of the time the significance of a sitemap is being neglected.

To point out the importance of sitemaps, just take a look at Google’s Webmaster Central Blog, you’ll find discussions on the importance of having sitemaps and in fact, Google even launched a Google Sitemap Generator which you can use on your website.

In the world of SEO, it is important that you pay attention to what Google is talking about because despite the presence of other search engines like Yahoo and Bing, Google maintains the top spot in the world of search engines, so if it’s talking about sitemaps and its importance, it’s high time for you to listen. And if Google already acknowledges the fact that sitemaps contributes to have your website indexed faster, then it’s not a waste of time to incorporate one on your site.

What Is a Sitemap?

A sitemap is an illustration or outline of your website and the link for this is generally located on the main page of a website. It shows and indicates the framework of your website such as the available sections and the links between them. Basically, it tells search engine spiders about the pages on a website that are already available for crawling as it lays out each and every page of your website’s navigation. Each time a new page is added to your website, it is automatically logged on the sitemap which in turn alerts and instructs the search engine spiders to start crawling, pointing them to a particular page where the new article or page has been added. Any important information within a website will be highlighted by the sitemap, which will allow crawlers to instantly catch it. Websites using flashy images, portion of which are only material to the page content, will greatly benefit from sitemaps.

A sitemap also makes it easier for your visitors as well as for search engine spiders to navigate through your website. A sitemap’s function is totally opposite with that of robot.txt because with the former, you instruct search engine spiders where you would like them to go, and as for the latter, search engines are instructed to exclude a certain part of your website from indexing. 

Importance of Sitemap 

1. It will help users to easily navigate on your website as it gives your users an outline of the site’s content.

2. Better visibility and makes it easier for search engines to rank a website’s content, so most likely, it will be indexed and get a better ranked in the Search Engine Results Pages.

3. It encourages and directs search engine spiders exactly where you want them to be.

4. It immediately informs search engine spiders about any changes on your website.

5. By having and submitting a sitemap to the search engines, you don’t have to depend that much on external links.

6. It helps in organizing your website content.

Two Types of Sitemaps

HTML Sitemap (User Sitemap) – is the standard view of all the pages of your website as it provides the link for all the pages of your website. This type of sitemap will help your visitors as well as the search engines to find your content pages. It will make a lot easier for your visitors to find the information that they are looking for. Some of the benefits of having an HTML sitemap are:

• it makes user navigation easier,

• it organizes or arranges each section of your website,

• it communicates the overall theme of your website, and

• your users will find it easier to link within the website

Links for an HTML sitemap is usually placed either at the header or footer of a website.

XML Sitemap (SEO Sitemap) – are exclusively and specifically created for the benefit of search engines. This was introduced by Google basically for the benefit of website owners and of the search engine spiders as it puts all the URLs of a website in one place thereby making it easier for the spiders to locate them. This involves the process of submitting their site pages for search engine spiders to find and indexed them. A perfectly constructed sitemap will guide and tell the search engines the topics on your site, how frequently those pages are being updated, and the date when they were last modified. By using an XML sitemap, search engines will know the specific pages that they have to regularly visit and from there, your pages will be indexed.

However, it should also be noted that incorporating an XML sitemap to your website and submitting it to search engines won’t necessarily affect your search engine ranking as it still depends on the content of your site, but it will help a lot, especially if you have a large website, for your pages to be indexed in search engines.

Conclusion

Incorporating a sitemap to your website may help boost your website’s ranking in the search engine results pages but what’s more important is that it will give your website a better chance of being indexed by the search engines.

If you think you have done everything to improve your website but still your pages are not getting indexed, then don’t wait another minute as your online visibility suffers for every minute that you are wasting. Consider having a sitemap on your website. Although there is no guarantee that your page rank will increase just by having one, using it with your usual SEO strategies will definitely put you one step ahead toward improved online visibility.

Targeting the Right Keywords for an Effective Online Advertising Campaign

Many successful businessmen in the real world are now shifting to a different level of promoting their business, and that is through online marketing or online advertisements. However, physical marketing is very different from online marketing as they have different means of promoting the business.

You may be very well adept in promoting your business in the physical sense but when it comes to online business, your efforts won't even be recognized if you do not know the proper techniques to make your website visible in search engines, and for it to land on the first page of search engine results. 

You may have already heard that in order for your website to be visible, you have to optimize. But before optimizing your website, there's one important thing that you should also keep in mind - choosing the right set of keywords.

Online advertisers often commit the mistake of optimizing their website without first considering the keywords to use and its relevance to their website content and target customers; thus, most of them keep wondering why traffic on their website is not improving after exerting countless efforts to optimize its content.

Keyword research is most likely the most important part of all SEO activities and it is also one of the most important steps that you will take once you start to optimize your website. For this reason, you need a keyword research tool, like KeywordSpy, which will guide and help you in getting the relevant and right set of keywords for your campaign.

KeywordSpy will not only tell you the keywords that your competitors are using in their PPC advertising campaigns such as Google Adwords, by using this tool, you will also see which among those keywords are profitable and from there, you can already determine the keywords that you will use in your campaign.

Simply put, KeywordSpy allows you to gather keyword intelligence not just for your PPC advertising campaigns but for your Search Engine Optimization strategies as well. The Organic data for KeywordSpy results allows you to gather competitor information using related keywords in their website content. PPC information can also be applied in SEO by gathering keyword information that is working for PPC ads and adopting them to your website's content with reduced cost in your online marketing.

After choosing the best keyword tool that will help you with your research, you are now ready to select the right set of keywords for your campaign.

Here is a five item guide you can use in selecting the right keywords for maximum results:

1. Make a list – The first list you should create should be as broad as possible. Tap people that are involved in your business. Think of all possible keywords that are related to your product or service.

2. Refine your list – This is much difficult than making the first list, but this will zoom you right in the money-making keywords. Narrow down your choices from around 400 terms then continue narrowing down to around 80-100. Try using the keywords yourself to find out what pages will be returned. This will help you a lot in deciding which terms are relevant to your campaign.

3. Run a pilot test – You may want to do this by signing up for free blogging pages or you may directly post on your business website. Post your keyword optimized articles then perform targeted keyword search after a week or two. This will return valuable information as to whether you are using the right keyword and/or keyword combination for your published articles.

4. Analyze top ranking pages – After running your pilot test, it is imperative that you perform a comparative analysis of your website content versus your competitor’s content, preferably those that have high rankings in targeted keyword search results.

5. Integrate results – Lastly, integrate results of your comparative analysis with your own keyword campaign. Doing this technically brings you back to step no. 2 which asks you to refine your list. Keep in mind that Search Engine Optimization is an on-going process; hence any process workflow will tend to be cyclical in nature.

There is the five item guide for researching the right keywords for your website. Your guide terms are List, List, Test, Analyze, and Integrate. Following the process outlined above will surely make things easier for you to come up with an effective SEO campaign.

Site Target Marketing: Getting to Know Your Website's Target Market

Every businessman’s main goal when putting up an online business is to generate sales and to make their website popular. However, marketing isn’t just about letting as many people as possible to know about your business, what’s more important is to let the right people know about your business. How you market and to whom you are marketing are two of the most important questions that every businessman should consider.

So, before starting an SEO campaign, the first thing that every online advertiser should do is to set their target market as this is an important, if not the most important, step in business planning.  Before jumping into any marketing strategies, one should first focus on reaching a very specific target as this will increase your chances of success in the online marketing industry.

Let’s put it this way, imagine yourself trying to shoot a basketball on a ring with your eyes blindfolded, hard isn’t it? In fact, it is nearly impossible to shoot that ball if you can’t even see your target; this concept is applicable to every online business as doing one without having a definite goal or target market will keep you from accomplishing your goal, and that is to generate remarkable sales, get high volume of qualified traffic, create online awareness of your brand over your competitors, broaden your market share, etc.

What is a Target Market and SEO Target Marketing?

Target market is a group of individuals, your main audience, or the visitors that you want to visit your website, which will eventually turn into potential buyers that would avail of your products and services. Target market can be identified in two ways, through demographic profile or psycho graphic profile. Most of the time, your target market will have similar characteristics such as age, gender, education, occupation, and or live in the same geographical area.

It is important to identify your target market in detail before launching your business or website as this will help you in creating a competitive and effective online marketing plan; moreover, this will help you pinpoint the most suitable internet marketing techniques in order to fully maximize your return of investment (ROI). So it is safe to say that the main goal of target marketing is to increase your business’ or website’s efficiency while decreasing your advertising costs.

Target Marketing for SEO is very much similar to ordinary target marketing, as they adhere to the same principle and goal, which is to focus on specific segments of the marketplace, and that, is to cater to those who are interested to your products or services.

SEO target marketing refers to the research and strategy of selecting the most effective terms and keywords to drive the best customer types or best visitor types to your website. The only difference it has with ordinary target marketing is that this one does not only focus on the volume of traffic but it is more concerned on getting high volume of qualified traffic.

Importance of SEO Target Marketing

If you think about it, more than 70% of your website visits come from search engines while the remaining 30% may be a website’s existing customers. Majority of website traffic originated from search engines. In this case, although SEO may only be a part of your marketing strategy, it can’t be denied that it is one of the most significant portion of your plan. Here are some of the benefits that you can get by applying Standard SEO and SEO Target Marketing in your online business: 

  Increase qualified web traffic

  It will maximize your ROI

  Greater conversion rates

  Expanded market share

  Greater awareness of your brand over your competitors

Things to Consider in SEO Target Marketing

1. Defining Your Target Audience.  This involves identifying your audience's age groups, genders, income levels, location, interests, and the likes if they are applicable to the business or website that you're putting up.

Some of the things that you need to keep in mind in choosing and identifying a website's target market are:

• The size of the target market.

• The actual state of your target market (whether your target market is growing or shrinking)

• Whether there is a demand, or lack of it, for your online business in your chosen target market. 

• The probability of monetizing your target market. 

• Possible things that might influence your target market.

After you have properly identified your target market, you can now proceed to the different internet marketing strategies that will help you promote your website or online business. 

2. Market Research.  This is done by catering to a specific demographic or market group. There are lots of sources of market research and some of them have already been gathered and compiled, which you can get by going through the internet or visiting your local library for studies and data that have been compiled and gathered for your particular industry. Just keep in mind that you are conducting market research for three specific goals, first, to identify your competitors' target markets and the one that they are currently catering to; second, to identify the markets where your business will be most profitable; and finally, to pinpoint the specific areas or location where market opportunities exist for your online business.

3. Finding the Right Keyword Phrases. Finding the right phrases for your website or online business is extremely important as this will help drive qualified traffic to your site. For instance, if you are running a flower shop in Miami, Florida, then you should focus on targeting your keyword search along that area because it is where your target market will come from. So instead of using the keyword phrase "flower shop" you should use "flower shop in Miami" to get the right kind of visitors that may turn up as potential buyers.

4. Focus on Having the Right Visitors on Your Site. Don't merely focus on gaining a large number of visitors coming in to your site. SEO target marketing is about getting the right visitors (qualified traffic) to your site even if this means having fewer hits.

5. Getting the Right Inbound Links. Some website owners spend countless hours obtaining as many links as they can in order to increase their inbound links. Although inbound links are important to SEO, not all of them are relevant. Thus, it is important that you only focus on obtaining inbound links that are relevant to your site or inbound links that originated from websites that your target market will surely visit.

6. Know your Competitors. Knowing your competitors' next move, such as determining where they are getting their links and determining their target locations, is another aspect that SEO target marketing is dealing with.

There are still other factors that may be considered in SEO target marketing but the above mentioned factors are by far the most important. By just picking a keyword or keyword phrase, incorporating it to your website, and making some slight SEO modifications, you're ready to target potential customers. This is what makes SEO target marketing very powerful - with a little amount of work; you can create online businesses and web pages that are targeting specific words that will later turn the targeted visitors into buyers and revenue.

Search Engine Suicide - Are you Committing the Same Search Engine Mistakes?

Have you ever wondered why traffic on your website is not improving after exerting efforts to optimize content?  Do you think you’ve done everything to secure a spot on the first page of every search engine but still you’re countless efforts are going nowhere? Maybe you have the right things on your mind but you are executing them the wrong way.

Internet marketing is a very complicated business and even a little mistake can severely affect your ranking on search engines. You may be killing your own website without you knowing it, thus putting all your efforts to waste. To avoid being in this kind of scenario, here are the lists of common SEO mistakes which you should avoid:

1. Look vs. Content (Using Lots of Animation and Graphics on your Website).  Having flash animation may look cool and fancy, and it may even attract lots of visitors on your website, however, they don’t contribute at all to your page being listed on the first page of SERP’s as they seldom comprise any content that can be indexed, thus more often than not, it ends up being ignored by search engine spiders. Instead of using your space on GIF or JPEG Images, why don’t you focus on what’s really important, the one that determines your SERP’s, and that’s the content of your website. Remember that search engines mainly focus on the text incorporated in your website for them to index it and they are not interested on flashy images and characters that may be occupying your entire page, so if search engine rankings are important to you, make sure there are plenty of text contents for spiders to find. Always remember the most important phrase in the SEO world: Content is King and you’ll never go wrong with it.

2. Use of Frames on Your Website. If you are guilty of this practice, go ahead and remove the frame on your website now as search engine robots do not and cannot index pages with frames, thus you are just wasting your precious time putting one on your website. In fact, use of frames is considered as one of the top ten mistakes in web design.

3. Targeting the Wrong Keywords. Make sure that you are using the right keywords, keywords which visitors are likely to type in the search bar, on your website to attract traffic. It should be noted that keyword selection is absolutely one of the critical elements of website design as choosing the proper keywords will lead or enable potential customers to find your site. Make sure that the content on your Web pages contains the keywords that are important for your site. Keyword research is the key in determining and finding the proper keywords to use on a particular website and it is also good to invest in a good keyword research tool like KeywordSpy to help you with your research.

4. Using Irrelevant Keywords on your Website to Attract More Traffic. There are many unethical website owners who try to increase the search engine visibility of their site by using keywords that have nothing to do with their website; of course, it is very tempting to use keywords with low competition especially if these keywords also present great traffic numbers, however, if you use keywords or keyword phrases that have nothing to do with your website, visitors will simply leave and much worse, they may report your website as spam to the search engines. So, as early as now, you should realize that you may use keywords with high traffic numbers but all the traffic won’t help you if it’s off your target. 

5. Keyword Stuffing. As stated earlier, Content is King, thus it is important that your website’s content must make sense and not just full of keywords that have no relevance to each other. With the algorithm that Google has been using, old tricks like use of plenty of keywords and various keyword repetition to obtain better search rankings, increasing keyword density about 10%, and using “invisible” keywords, is no longer feasible, so don’t even bother with these outdated tricks.

Aside from the above mentioned SEO mistakes, there are still plenty of other ways to commit search engine suicide, so all you have to do is to watch out for them, and if you are already guilty of doing some, if not all of them, then it’s high time for you to stop using them on your website before it suffers some more in terms of search engine rankings. These mistakes are very common and it is not that difficult to avoid them, just apply a good SEO plan on your website, find out the kind of information your customers are actually looking for, and then give it to them, and you are off to a good start.