Monday, May 4, 2009

SEO Tricks that Won’t Win You Traffic

Guest Post by Courtney Phillips

It’s all about SEO these days if you’re looking to make a living on the World Wide Web; unless you’re willing to pay for PPC, that is. You need to make sure your site is optimized with the right design and the right keywords that are strategically placed so as to grab top ranking with the search engines and get you the maximum traffic possible. You need to stick to a particular theme or subject and you need to update your pages on a regular basis if you want Google and its ilk to keep considering you for the top positions. And you need to ensure that your site gets enough publicity throughout the web so that people link back to it from their sites. Yes, SEO is good when it comes to helping you gain visitors and making you some really good money, but there are times when this technique does not work and sort of backfires on you. And they are:
  • When you try to cheat a little: Yes, you have all the right keywords in the title of your post and peppered throughout it, and because of this, you get readers by the dozen. But what happens when they land on your pages only to find that there’s no real content at all between the title and the end of your article? Or that they’ve come to a site that advertised one thing only to sell something entirely different? True, you’ve got the traffic you wanted, but you can bet your last dollar that these visitors are never going to come your way again. I’ve found myself really frustrated landing on sites that have articles that are literally just sentences strung together that make no sense at all. The only thing that gets them to Google’s front page is the liberal use of keywords and phrases throughout the text. If you want to create a good impression, if you want people to keep coming back to your site, you need to offer quality content, goods or services, offerings that are exactly as advertised when they show up in search engines.
  • When you spend too much time on SEO: Search engine optimization does take a huge amount of upfront effort, and you’re not likely to be seeing results immediately. So when you end up spending large sums of money on perfecting your website while neglecting the core of your business (whether it’s offering a service or a product), you’re not going to be making a lot of money.
  • When your landing page has not been thought out carefully: If your main source of revenue is bypassed when visitors land on your site, it’s no use optimizing your site for the best results. You need to ensure that your ads or revenue generators are strategically placed so that you make money no matter where your visitor lands. At the same time, you also need to ensure that your visitor is taken exactly where they want to go; if not, they may leave immediately without taking the time to look through your site and find what they’re looking for.
This post was contributed by Courtney Phillips, who writes about the (colleges or universities with accounting program). She welcomes your feedback at CourtneyPhillips80 at gmail.com

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