If you’re not getting any heavenly blessings via rankings, then you’re probably upsetting the big G (Google, but I also mean other major search engines like Yahoo! and MSN). You’re committing some sins that are harmful to your website’s soul. How do you know if your committing these cardinal SEO sins? Then check the following list to find out:

1. Unoptimized Page Titles. This is a simple one. Just because they’re not on the page per se, it doesn’t mean they’re not important. I’m talking about the title tags on your webpage.

For one of my websites, the only change I implemented in my SEO tactics was to re-optimize the page title, and my site jumped from nowhere to the second search engine results page. The point is that you could be spending time obsessing about META keywords and the keyword density of your articles, while the simple, easy-to-implement stuff is overlooked.

You may think it’s a good idea to put your firm’s very vague name as the sole page title. “McFlurry, Geronimo, DeGraw and Associates” doesn’t mean anything to the Average Googler. Instead, be more specific by writing “Certified Public Accountants – McFlurry, Geronimo, DeGraw and Associates”.

Since the page title is just one line of text, you need to put your most important keyword there. Don’t make the title too long either, most search engines only read about 10 words or so of it.

2. Ignoring landing page logic. You do your keyword research and place the same set of keywords for each page on your site. You sign up for a PPC campaign and automatically assume that your homepage should be the landing page. You market every page of your site in exactly the same way. Then, you’re surprised that you’re not having any success.

You know, not all pages are created alike – even if they do wear the same design template. You should have different techniques, keywords, and strategies EACH for your homepage, sales page, product page, etc. This is because each page has a different purpose. Different people with different mindsets need to get to your site in a different way.

For example, Todd is urgently in need of a silver chain and pendant for his girlfriend. He needs it within the week, but he still needs to choose the design. Todd shouldn’t land on your very generic jewelry business homepage. There’s a 10% chance of losing him as a customer every time he needs to take an extra step before the checkout process. Where should Todd land?

On your silver chain and pendant catalogue page. He doesn’t need to go through the homepage to look at the hundreds of jewelry types you offer – he has a rough idea of what he wants. This page should be optimized for “silver chains and pendants”.

On the other hand, Steve knows exactly what he wants, a silver claddagh ring. Where should he land? On the silver claddagh ring product page of course! The one with the “Buy Now” button. The page should be optimized for “silver claddagh ring”.

Find out who will need each page on your site and optimize it for their searching habits. Don’t make your SEO efforts generic. It’s sinful.

3. The absence of backlinks. You believe in “If you build it, they will come.” That’s only true if you’re building a tower of dung and want to attract flies. The same isn’t true for websites.

A site without backlinks is like a nice restaurant in a remote place without any signs pointing to it. Backlinks help bring in visitors to your site from other sites, plus, they “tell” search engines what the most relevant keywords are for your web pages. To use backlinks effectively in your SEO campaign, they need to have the following characteristics:

• They are text links, not image links.
• The anchor text for the links contain an important keyword for you.
• As more sites link to you in a consistent manner, your site will be easier to appear in SERPs for the keyword used in the anchor text.
• Some backlinks have more weight than others, depending on the site they’re on.
• Linkfarms are bad. From a white hat perspective.

This concludes the first part of Smart SEO Blog’s 7 Deadly SEO Sins. Tune in tomorrow for the continuaton of this truly sinful article.

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Ah, the Black Hat SEO world… something that invokes either a disappointing look or an evil grin.  Still, SEO practitioners – whatever their hat color – must look at black hat techniques from time to time.  Here’s why:

Your competition could be using black hat tips.  If they are, you need to understand their SEO gameplan well if you’re to outwit them.  You can only do that if you’re familiar with black hat seo techniques yourself.  Find out what their strategy is and try to beat them with your own tricks.  Or, you know, you could just report them when you find out (sneaky!).

Black hat tricks give you a better idea of how search engine algorithms work.  This is because black hat SEO practitioners exploit weaknesses in the algorithms, and use it at their own advantage.  This kind of knowledge will prove to be useful when you’re planning your SEO campaign.  Almost everyday, black hats figure out new ways to take shortcuts to the top of SERPs.  If you find out about these shortcuts, you can find a legit way to use them for your own site.

It’s much easier to explain to others what they can/can’t do during their SEO campaigns.  If you’re a web designer or SEO practitioner and your client is saying “I’ve heard something about raising your PR through a 301 redirect…” you need to know what your client is talking about.  A lot of people, especially those new to the SEO world, get a series of bad advice, often black hat in nature.  Knowing these techniques like the back of your hand can help you explain to people the downsides of applying them to their SEO campaign.

Because they make you look marginally cooler.  In other words, if you’re an SEO practitioner, you’d have more credibility if you know all the possible tricks – whether you actually apply them or not.  Although wearing an actual black hat on your head might make it seem like you’re trying too hard.

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Nowadays SEO has become very popular so that more and more people are becoming aware of the need for an SEO (search engine optimizer/optimization firm) to work on their site. However, if you’ve done any SEO you will know that there will be a lot of times when you’ll actually butt heads with web designers and developers. This is pretty normal since it feels to some that SEOs are not really that effective and actually not needed. If communication is properly done though, it will actually yield very good results for your client.

So how can you figure out a way to make things work between the three specialists?

First of all the actual job description should be clear for all three. That means that web designers will do the designing (the look, format and feel), the web developers will do the coding, and the SEOs will give recommendations before and after the coding to ensure that everything is optimized (from copywriting to back end code). As SEOs though you need to know your boundaries and when asking for help from a developer to insert some function it would be best to leave the actual coding to them. It’s their job and they’ll probably come up with a more elegant code than you! So as long as you get the results you want and get all your tracking data then leave the rest to them. You don’t want them telling you how to do your job and they sure don’t want you to tell them how to do theirs.

In cases when a suggestion is made to you, them listen and welcome them if it makes sense because in the end it is not about who doing the best job but if all three are doing the best job TOGETHER for the client.

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Last month I wrote a post on pagerank sculpting (See “Pagerank Sculpting: Not Worth Your Time”) after reading Matt Cutts’ explanation on why there are other things you should focus on. One of the most common ways pagerank sculpting is done is to use the “no follow” tag. Because of this, the use of “no follow” tags is less important. Furthermore, in a recent post by Eric Enge of Search Engine Watch he explained why the use of “no follow” tags can, not only be of no help, but actually even harmful in terms of link juice.

In Eric Enge’s post, “Should You Still Use Nofollow?”, he explained that the link juice that is supposed to go to links with “no follow” tags are not split between the remaining links with out the tag but are discarded. This means that it lessens the overall value that a page passes. Due to this, and the fact that pagerank sculpting is a waste of time, it seems that the “no follow” tag’s days are over for SEOs. However, note that you should still remember to use the “no follow” tag for paid links (See my post “Google Says Use No Follow for Paid Posts or Else…”). It pays to preserve the value of your links but not at the expense of being tagged by Google as a violator of their paid links guidelines.

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“Double U what?” was the most common answer I got when I posed this question to some friends who are also casual bloggers. I then realized that not everyone pays attention to W3C anymore – especially those who are relatively new to the Internet game. I was once again reminded of W3C when I read Ann Smarty’s post on the topic.

So what is W3C exactly? She explains it as:

The World Wide Web Consortium working to develop open standards for the World Wide Web (abbreviated WWW or W3) so that Web documents can be consistently displayed across all platforms.

Founded in 1994 the consortium is still the main web standard against which all websites are evaluated. The most well known W3C tool is Markup Validation Service that checks the markup validity of Web documents in HTML, XHTML, SMIL, MathML, etc. Other valuable tools include RSS/Atom feed validator or CSS validator, Mobile content checker, and broken link checker.

So if it is a standard, does it mean that it is most updated? Unfortunately, technology seems to be developing too fast for W3C and this may not be the case. Ann Smarty further writes:

• many of the standards are too old and are based on the last century realia (e.g. according to W3C any page limit is twenty kilobytes which is not necessary to conform to with today’s high-speed Internet connections);
• the market is moving many times faster than the W3C committee (e.g. mobile Internet which evolves too fast for both W3C and Google to compile).

So should you check your web site if it is W3C compliant? I suggest that since it is still considered the main standard, you might as well. However, do not be content with merely being W3C compliant. Do take a look at other trends and see how your web site can be improved.

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Before I continue with the other blunders that Tad Chef shared in his article titled “7 Weirdest SEO Mistakes Big Companies Make Abroad,” let me acknowledge some readers who left comments in the previous post. gMoney asked for the link to the original article – sorry for my oversight, it has been fixed. Data Entry Service said something about not doing business overseas and it struck me that even if we do not engage in business overseas, perhaps we could gain some insights from the article – we should NOT make these blunders. So here goes some more of these blunders – here’s to NOT making them!

Big foreign clients spend ridiculously limited budgets on SEO, sometimes I work for small ecommerce sites as well as for big brands at the same time and the big brands just spend twice the amount as the tiny online shops with niche audiences.

I think that this can happen – it is probably happening – in domestic soil as well. If the people behind big brands do not know much about SEO, they would probably just leave the responsibility to someone, never mind the cost. This is never a smart move, especially when there are always ways by which you can cut on the cost without sacrificing quality, right?

They insist on outdated SEO practices like directory submission and meta keywords tags. Instead of using methods that work quickly or over time such clients just want me to write meta keyword tags and submit to directories.

I have no problems with directory submission and keywords. My beef arises when they become the sole activities for SEO. That, in my mind, is a surefire way of failing in the long run.

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If you are based in the United States and you focus all your SEO efforts locally, you might not be able to relate to this post. For those of you who are expanding or thinking of expanding to other countries, however, you might find this information useful. I was reading up on SEO trends when I ran across an article titled “7 Weirdest SEO Mistakes Big Companies Make Abroad.” Let us take a look at some of them.

They have more lawyers than marketers it seems as I always get the NDAs first and am not allowed to even tell my mother who I work for. Imagine a web designer etc. not able to brag about the brands he works for. They (both) lose so much publicity!

This is really weird although I have encountered a lot of situations like these. On the one hand, there is some rationale in NDAs. However, on the other hand, wouldn’t it be better for everyone involved to at least acknowledge each other’s existence? Can anyone shed light on this matter?

I am not allowed to use the simplest and most effective SEO techniques. The corporate structure is sometimes so monolithic, the CI so rigid, the technical limitations so many that basically everything a SEO does usually is not possible or permitted. How do you build links when no press releases, no blog posts, no link baits, no nothing is allowed?

I guess that business practices in other countries limit SEO efforts and if this item is to be believed, they limit SEO effectiveness a LOT. If you cannot create online press releases, you can create blogs, and so on, how are you supposed to be as active as you can in the SEO perspective?

(to be continued)

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I think I have been watching too much of the Mythbusters lately – I find myself on a mythbusting spree! Then again, this is not necessarily a bad thing, is it? I think that today, I shall go on a web site optimization mythbusting mission. Come take the journey with me!

I am but a regular person. Web site optimization is too complicated for me.
NOT! Web site optimization CAN be hard. However, there are some basic elements to it that any person (with the most rudimentary understanding of technology) can use to optimize his web site. Do not let this way of thinking hinder you from working wonders on your web site. (Perhaps in the future we can look at these basic steps for web site optimization.)

It is too late in the game. I cannot possibly catch up with the web site optimization game.
Again, NOT. More and more people are only starting on their web site optimization journey. Do not belittle yourself so much that you think you cannot do it. There is no such thing as too late. You only have to learn the basics (here is that term again!) and then move on from there.

I just need to submit my site to search engines. Then I have my work done.
NOPE. Submitting to search engines is one step. It does not mean that you cannot do other things to optimize your web site, though. The truth is, merely submitting your site to search engines cannot guarantee any results.

Want to know more? Wait for the next post.

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I love blogs.  To be honest, though, I used to NOT care about blogs at all.  Yet when I started reading some really good blogs and then I started maintaining my own blog, I realized just how fun they can be.  But have you heard of some web site owners who have turned to blogging merely for SEO purposes?

The truth is that blogging has been touted to help one’s SEO program get started.  I have heard people saying that if you want to be a success in SEO, then your main web site should have a blog.  Now I am not denying it – blogs do play a role in SEO.

The basic premise behind a blog is that you provide fresh, relevant, and timely content on a regular basis.  Your ultimate goal is to help improve your search engine rankings.  What I have noticed, though, is that some blogs do not do this – they do not present well-written, relevant, and timely content.  Indeed, sometimes blogs made SOLELY for SEO purposes are not interesting.

What am I trying to say in this post?  It is really simple.  Jump into the blogging bandwagon NOT ONLY because you are thinking of your SEO strategy.  When you start blogging, think about your readers, how you can entice them to read, keep reading, and stick with your blog.

In the next post, let us look at some types of blogs that are examples of blogging solely for SEO purposes.

Photo courtesy of Daniel Greene

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We all know how important linking is when it comes to SEO.  We have talked quite a bit about linking and how it can help your web site in many different ways.  For one, the more links you have pointing to your web site, the higher your PageRank would be.  This is simply because the fact implies that your content is good enough for other people to refer to your site.

Another important aspect, however, goes beyond mere linking.  I am talking about the practice of deep linking.  If you have not heard of deep linking, it is the practice of other sites linking to different web pages in your web site aside from the main page.  Why is deep linking more important than linking to the main page only?

David Leonhardt explains it:
Make sure you have links coming in to as many pages as possible. What does it tell a search engine when other web sites are linking to different pages on your site? That you obviously have lots of worthwhile content. What does it tell a search engine that all your links are coming in to the home page? That you have a shallow site of little value, or that your links were generated by automation rather than by the value of your site.

A thought – you cannot really get deep links unless you do it naturally.  This means writing great content spread out through your different pages and encouraging readers to link to those pages.

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