Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Common Mistakes Made by Webmasters Trying to Improve Rating

By Irmin J. Roybal

Doing Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is to some degree flirting with robots, so certain caution must be exercised. Webmasters, especially beginners, may tend to forget about it, and make mistakes. Since such mistakes can lead to reduced or even ruined rating of the site, it is good not to make them in a first place or fix immediately upon reading of this text.

Graphic Header It is standard and tasty to have a bitmap with a nice graphics on top of your page view. Logo, smiling faces or something else really eye-catching depending on the nature of the site is always nice to have there, your visitors would like it and expect it to be there. Unfortunately, SE robots has a different point. They assign highest value to all words at the top of the page, especially to those which are set under h1 tag. Best tactics: before giving this valuable space to wordless pics (words within graphic file are still graphics), to post h1 heading with crucial keywords above the graphic header.

Invisible Text Stuffing your web site with keywords for robot satisfaction can be creative process or it can be dull, depends on the perception of webmaster. Some, especially beginners, are getting a bright idea of posting a ton of keywords embedded into a code (from simple text white on white to no script areas in the code, and so on). Cheating of this kind cannot pass with impunity, and it will cost the site its reputation.

Excessive use of h1 tag All text under heading 1 (h1) tag is getting higher rating, so one may tend to use text under h1 excessively. Better approach is to use h1 tag only once, a repetitive use of h1 is punishable. For the rest of the headings h2 and h3 tags can be used repetitively, the limitations on usage of these tags are much less restrictive.

Conclusion and last tip Search Engine Optimization is an important part of any traffic generation strategy, however, it cannot be a sole part of it. It is well known that SE change their algorithms periodically, and, as a result, the sites tuned to previous conditions may suffer severe losses of traffic. Best practice is always the same: to combine all affordable (and honest) means of getting visitors to your site.

Good luck!

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