10 common SEO mistakes that will kill your ranking

An apology to those of you who have been following this blog for sometime, i am about to go over some old ground but no harm in a refresh i guess.

I have had lots of emails this past month, thank you so much for those. I am always happy to help and offer any advice that will help you. If i can thank you for following me by giving you some advice then please get in touch.

The bulk of the emails this week has been about sluggish results in the search engines. Below are a few of the basic things that will effect your ranking. The reason why i have stuck to the basics is because most of my readers are new to search engine marketing. For those of you who are more advanced please drop me a note and i would be happy to get all techie with you.

When your website has high search engine ranking, you will see many benefits. Although seo can be a little hard to get the hang of, there are simple mistakes you should avoid.

1. Using the wrong keywords

The first thing you should do is keyword research. If you get this wrong your off to a non starter. Make sure you target the best keywords for your niche, ones that searchers actually are using.

2. Forgetting to use title tags

Many beginners often forget to use title tags. They are important and tell search engines and visitors what your pages are about. Make sure you use different title tags for each page.

3. Over doing flash

Flash cannot be read by googles bots. If you are going to use flash, it is essential that you also use the html mark-up for it.

4. Back link spamming

This is something even the best webmasters are failing to grasp. Link farms are not a good thing with Google. You will get much further by getting high quality one way links from website with high pr.

5. Keyword stuffing

The content you write on your website must make sense. Do not stuff your content full of keywords that have no relevance to your sentences. This will get you penalized by Google quickly.

6. Keyword density must stay below 5%

7. Duplicate content. Google loves fresh, unique content. Google bots are very clever at spotting content that is used elsewhere.

8. Poor website navigation

Your website must have clean navigation and no broken links. It is essential that both visitors and search engine bots can access all your pages. Here is a great recommendation for clean low cost website design.

9. Using images for headers

Headers are the first thing Google bots see. Take advantage of this and use your keywords in the h1 and h2 headers.

10. Using unreliable hosting. Cheap may be good for your bank but having servers going down and pages not loading will lose you visitors and stop Google being able to properly access your site and give it high ranking.

Quality websites for £99

Hello just a quick one today. I have been in meetings all day and for once i can safely say i am sick of my own voice and have given myself a lovely migraine.

I wanted to add a quick post tonight to share with you a gem of a site.

If you are looking for a quality website with all extras included then head on over to 99site.co.uk.

Here is what you get for £99

•Free .co.uk or .com domain name

•1 year hosting

•3 page website (not ecommerce, see extras, add pages anytime)

•Custom website design

•1 email address associated with your domain name

•1 free contact form

•Website Statistics reporting - you can check visitors to your site

•Free SEO (search engine optimization) for 1 keyword on all pages

•Unlimited email advice for life.

This is an absolute cracking deal. Even if you already have a website, grab one to use for marketing. At £99 your onto a winner.

Make money with the help of Affiliate Programs

If you have a website up and running already and you'd like to make money from it, you may want to consider joining an affiliate program.

If you've yet to start up your own website then you should contact a web designer with affiliate marketing experience.

An affiliate means that via your website you'll be earning from advertising other sellers' products, by the placing of banners or text links on your site.

If someone who is visiting your site clicks on one of the banners, then go to the merchants' website and make a purchase from which you make a commission from the sale.

But you won't be making much by simply putting a banner on your site, unless you're one of the lucky ones who receive thousands of visitors on a daily basis.

But with a few simple techniques you could make even a small site earn you a useful income.

A first priority would be to link yourself to a merchant whose goods would be bought by the type of visitors you get to your site, there isn't much sense in having a banner for a cat food merchant when your website is solely concerned with PC maintenance.

To begin try taking a look at one of the best affiliate network directories, the 'Commission Junction', it costs nothing to join and you won't even be charged if you link up with a merchant that's listed there.

From that point it's very straightforward, you don't need to be a programming expert to get going.

Promoting anothers' goods on your site is a great way of earning an income all you're doing is pointing someone in the right direction and your responsibility ends there.

How to make money doing surveys

Firstly find out which company you want to work for there are a couple of ways you can do this.

Most, but not all, survey companies have a feature in which members can invite their friends, therefore if you receive such an invitation from a person you know you can trust then by all means go for it.

Also you could give the old-fashioned Google search a try for making money doing surveys but as is well known, Google searching usually leads to more confusion, simply typing in "Online Surveys" in the search box is only going to get you millions upon millions of hits.

A more straightforward beginning would be with www.surveypolice.com they have a list of all the legitimate survey companies, with a ratings section and a place to leave your comments.

The following is a couple of the better online survey companies:

Inbox Dollars - www.inboxdollars.com. You're paid $1 per survey and you're allowed one survey per day, you also receive paid emails which although it may not be much you're still going to read your emails aren't you?

My Survey - www.mysurvey.com - look like one of the best with points being awarded for each survey completed.

At $10 for every 1000 points it sounds drawn out but they are forever awarding bonus points, so it doesn't take as long as you think.

Finally you must remember you will not get rich doing online surveys and there a lot of companies who want to get their hands on your money instead of vice versa.

How your blog can make money

You may have quite strong feelings about trying to make money from your blog, if you think it may be immoral, unethical or even uncool or anything that falls into those categories then don't commercialise it.

But if you think that the whole idea is fine, then go for it, or if you think it's evil on the other hand then that's OK as well.

But you must seriously make up your mind before you start, because trying to generate income from blogging is difficult enough without second thoughts kicking in and making your attempt half-hearted.

You should feel good about earning income from your blog, there really is nothing wrong with having an urge to succeed.

If you honestly think that your blog has real value, then you should be earning income from it.

But you can't be shy about the whole thing, if you're going to put up ads, really put up those ads it's the same with requesting donations, you can't be too obvious with these things.

There are always some who will complain when you commercialise a free site, they always do.

But is it possible to make a proper living online? Undoubtedly, although if you have a day job it could take a little longer but the opportunity exists.

The ins and outs of Niche Devil

As far as the development team are concerned it is for, "Making cash whilst feeding the Google Monster it's favourite food while you barely lift a finger".

A snappy, if overlong statement, but it's not about the tag line, it's whether or not it's worth the money?

The initial setup goes something like this, firstly you purchase MANY domains, hosting and Niche Devil onto your hosting account you install Niche Devil, run the script and insert your affiliate links and keywords for the store you're creating and abracadabra, Niche Devil spits out a site with content and products in about 37 seconds. Got to be witchcraft, now all you need is a few spend-happy customers, and Niche Devil can even promise that with the aid of pinging but let's take a step back and look at what makes the whole thing tick.

Your server/hosting account must meet certain minimum requirements before uploading the script via ftp.

It is also nothing less than a glorified niche store builder, very much in the same vein as the old BANS stores, look what happened to them, The Niche Devil has made a lot of noise about it's "ever refreshing" content, scraping/pulling various media from the Internet relating to your keywords, it works well and looks pretty good but what about the legality of using what maybe copyrighted material?.

There are statements from Niche Devil such as, "Hurry up, only available for 14 days" which raises some issues.

They are restricting the window for it's purchase, why? To make you buy now, or before experience of the product kicks in and reality takes hold and why would you even contemplate selling a product that earns £££ and not just use it yourself.

Make money Affiliate Marketing

What does affiliate mean?

It is a term that often is used to describe a relationship between a company and individual. The individual often refers products and services that the company offers.

The merchant is the company supplying the goods or providing the service.

The affiliate is basically the salesperson. The one who is the direct link between the company and the customer.

How to start

If you want to get into affiliate marketing there are many programs that will make it very easy for you.

You may of heard of programs like commission junction. It is where merchants register, and affiliates join to promote the merchants goods.

The first thing to do before choosing and products is to decide how and where you are going to sell them.

Here is what I advise

Get yourself a website. Plan it with the products or services you will be selling in mind.

You must spend time planning your marketing campaign. Making sure you are able to generate quality traffic.

Your marketing campaign will involve:

Lots of research into your chosen niche as well as keywords.

SEO - search engine optimization. Both on site and off site.

How much can you make?

You will get paid commission. So if you don't sell, you don't get paid.

the importance of your marketing campaign is huge, it will impact the amount of money you will make.

When your site and marketing campaign is launched. All you need to do next is paste your affiliate code on your site. Then you are all set to go.

How to get Your site noticed on the internet

It does not matter what your website is for, be it business or pleasure, a definite must have is traffic.

With the Internet being as big as it is, you will be just a small fish in a gigantic sea.

Ways to increase your existence online.

You can increase the traffic to your website in many ways. You will first need an Internet marketing campaign.

Know your visitors

There are certain programs that can generate you masses amount of traffic. Wonderful you may think, but they are no good to you unless they are targeted visitors.

If for instance, you had a antiques website, what are the chances someone who found your site through a teenage social site link are going to buy your products? Not very high.

You get my point? You need to target your potential customers and make sure they know your there.

Search engine optimization

If you are beginner to the world of seo, you may have heard about it and it has had your head spinning.

Seo consists of a series of on site and off site optimization. Do not let anyone tell you its easy, it is not. It takes time, lots of it.

For all those who want to start learning seo here is a simple seo guide. For those who would rather leave it to an seo expert, it will leave your time free to do what you do best.

Pay per click - PPC

If you want a fast way of getting your site noticed you can try pay per click. It is exactly what it says. You pay for each visitor that clicks on an ad that links to your site. Make sure you learn about this prior to starting.

Get traffic from social networking

Links to your site from blogs, forums and message boards, will bring you traffic.

Whichever route you take for your marketing campaign, one thing you must do is lots and lots of research. A poor campaign will lead to poor traffic.

I hope this has given you a short insight to ways you can get more visitors to your website.

Search Engine Optimization is important

I have written lots lately on seo for beginners and what search engine optimization can do for you.

Some of my recent posts include:

10 simple seo tips for beginners Explaining in simple terms basic optimization that will get your website ranking higher on search engines.

Mistakes that will kill your ranking Around 80% of websites are beging penalized by google without even realizing. You might want to read this post and do your own check list.

Seo v Adwords A look at organic traffic benefits against pay per click marketing.

The reason why i have been concentrating on SEO allot lately is because it is important, plain and simple. Whatever website you have, whichever niche you target, search engine optimization will bring you targeted traffic and we all know what targeted traffic means....more conversions.

SEO is not rocket science but it can take time to grasp. If you have not got time and want to concentrate more on what YOU do then contact me, i specialize in Internet marketing and seo. I can help get you more targeted leads.

Since my last post i have created some more resources for all you beginners needing a helping hand:

Simple Seo Guide Does what it says in the title.

Seo for Beginners Similar to the simple seo guide but laid out in simple lessons to follow.

SEO forum This one is brand spanking new, today in fact. Membership is free so why not join. You can ask anything seo related or simply offer some help to others.

This post is just a quick catch up to keep you updated with my campaign to help beginners in the vast world of seo.

Any questions please feel free to comment.

10 common seo mistakes that will kill your ranking

When your website has high search engine ranking, you will see many benefits. Although seo can be a little hard to get the hang of, there are simple seo mistakes you should avoid.

1. Using the wrong keywords

The first thing you should do is keyword research. If you get this wrong your off to a non starter. Make sure you target the best keywords for your niche, ones that searchers actually are using. For example, if you have a site that helps people save money, think about keywords searchers will type in such as voucher codes, or money off.

2. Forgetting to use title tags

This is a common one often overlooked by beginners. Title tags are important and must be different on every page of your website.

3. Over doing flash

Flash cannot be read by googles bots. If you are going to use flash, it is essential that you also use the html mark-up for it.

4. Back link spamming

This is something even the best webmasters are failing to grasp. Link farms are not a good thing with Google. You will get much further by getting high quality one way links from website with high pr.

5. Keyword stuffing

Your content must make sense. If you try and over do the keywords you will get penalized by Google quickly. What you write must flow.

6. Keyword density must stay below 5%

7. Duplicate content. Google loves fresh, unique content. Google bots are very clever at spotting content that is used elsewhere.

8. Inadequate navigation

Your website must contain no broken links and have good navigation. Both visitors and search engine bots need to get around your website.

9. Missing the value of headers

No harm in using images for headers but headers are important and you need to make use of them. Search engine bots don't read images and headers are the first thing they read, surely it makes sense to include your keywords in your headers?

10. Unreliable web hosting. Cheap may please your wallet but it will annoy your visitors and stop you getting high search engine ranking. Google will think your website is not there if it happens to crawl your site during an outage!

10 simple seo tips for beginners

1. Your keywords

You need to decide which keywords you want to achieve high search engine ranking with.

Research is vital, you must make sure the keywords you want to rank high with, pr actually used by searchers.

2. Who are your competitors?

You are going to beat your competitors to the top spot. You need to first find out who they are and analyze them. Type in your keyword in the search bar...bingo, there are all your competitors.

3. Title

Two tips i can give you for optimizing page titles. The first is to make sure each page has its own unique title.

Second tip is to make sure you include your main keyword in the title. Don't keyword spam though, your titles must make sense and flow.

4. Meta

Only use meta tags if you understand them. They are not that important. The keyword density has to be spot on.

5. use headings

When googles crawlers scour your website. They look at h1 and h2 headers. If you have your keywords in these headers, google will see that they are important.

6. Content must always be fresh. Duplicate content is a big no no.

7. One way links are a big seo boost. Try and get a link from a high pr website. Remember to have your keyword included in the link.

8. Site maps tell search engine about your website pages. Having a site map will help to get more of your pages indexed.

9. Alt tags should always have a description and should not be left blank.

10. You need to update your website often, even if it is just a little tweak. Google loves sites that are maintained often.

Having your website search engine optimized is very beneficial. I have built a site for all you beginners. Start with seo basics and take it from there.

What is search engine optimization?

This is for all you newbies who have heard the phrase seo and wondering what on earth it is all about.

Seo stands for search engine optimization.

It is a process that is done to make sure website pages are optimized for google and other search engines.

Why use seo?

Whatever your website is about, one thing you will need is traffic. No point having a website if nobody can find it.

It is true that many methods for traffic building exist, all are effective, but one you should always consider is search engine traffic.

Organic search engine traffic is where you naturally rank high on search engines for your chosen keywords.

This is a biggy you want to be concentrating on.

When google search is used, the searcher is only likely to click on the results that appear on the first page, so you need to be aiming to have your listing in top position on search engines.

Where does a beginner start?

I will write just for you beginners. I wont baffle you with big terms. I will take it slow.

At first glance, seo may seem like rocket science, but it is not. It just takes some hard work and dedication.

My advice as you take this journey is to persevere.

What you will need.

A website to play with

Patience

Lots of coffee lol

OK that's the low down on seo and what it means. I will get preparing your first lessons on how to get high search engine ranking.

Seo or Adwords?

In my last post we looked at search engine optimization or seo for short.

Which is best for your Internet marketing campaign? Seo or AdWords?

The answer is a simple one........ Both!

What is AdWords?

It is a pay per click advertising program.

1. Open a free AdWords account.

2. Set your daily budget. This can be as little as £1 per day.

3. Build your keywords list

4. Create your adverts and your ready to go.

Why you should use both google AdWords and seo

Search engine optimization will bring you free organic traffic.

Google AdWords will bring you fast targeted traffic.

By using both seo and AdWords you get the best of both worlds.

But isn't Google AdWords expensive?

AdWords has a reputation of being an expensive learning curve. But if it is done correctly the ROI can be substantial.

I am not going to waffle about the right way of setting up AdWords in this post, you need to digest a bit at a time. But what i will say is that search engine optimization and AdWords can compliment each other and actually lower the price you pay for a click on your ad.

For all those newbies to Internet marketing, my advice for you is to learn both seo and google AdWords.

In my next post, i will dedicate it to all those beginners baffled by google AdWords.

Seo and your business

search engine optimization or seo for short, is the process used to optimize your website for the search engines.

If you have an online business then you will benefit greatly from having a seo friendly website.

Even if you already have a good system that brings in traffic, organic search engine traffic is a bonus.

If your website ranks high for certain keywords then you will get FREE quality targeted traffic.

How to search engine optimize your website

1. Keyword research

Decide the keywords you want to gain high search engine ranking with. Don't forget to include some long tail ones.

2. URL

There is debate as to whether this matters with seo. It does and it doesn't. It is not vital but in my opinion it is better to include keywords in your URL if you are not going for a branding approach.

3. Content

You have probably heard the saying "content is king". It is important but there are too many factors to consider with search engine optimization for it to be as clear cut as that.

You need to make sure your content is liked by search engines and your readers.

Keyword density in your content needs to be below 5% ideally. Too much or too little will kill your ranking.

4. Links

The best links are the ones that are one way and keyword anchored.

If you can get an anchored one way link to your website from a high pr website, .......BRILLIANT.

They are the main seo tasks you need to implement on your website.

If you would like me to do a free seo report on your website, get in touch.

Advertising Opportunity for blog readers

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The sites mainly consist of league football clubs with popular live broadcasting. All websites are seo friendly and maintain excellent PR status.

Around 40% of visitors are from search engines which benefit any advertiser as new visitors are more likely to click on ads.

The websites that Sponsor-link.tv develops and maintains are all high profile sites with excellent reputation.

As an example during the period 26 Jan 2009 – 28 Feb 2009 www.unibondleague.com attracted

107,468 Visits

447,920 Page views

4.17 Pages/Visit 22.67% Bounce Rate

00:03:09 Avg. Time on Site

29.51% % New Visits

The site has a google pr 5

This is just one example.

Please feel free to contact me for more stats or proof of any of the 48 sites.(you will be under no obligation)

Advertising Opportunity

I am in a position to offer you very reasonably priced advertising across any of the 48 websites.

This can be in the form of banners, text links, coupons, promotions etc... Please feel free to get in touch and I will work with you to see which ads / deal will benefit you.

email for more info

carrie-ann@sponsor-link.tv

Targeted Traffic

In my last post i gave you top tips on ways to get free traffic. In such an uncertain economic time free traffic is the only way for most online companies, their marketing budgets are low or even non existent.Most webmasters will use AdWords to generate traffic. AdWords is a fine way of generating targeted traffic but it is also really costly. Whats the alternative?

Organic targeted traffic

By organic targeted traffic i mean search engine traffic.

If searches find your website or blog through a program like stumble upon they are less likely to be targeted visitors, they are less likely to buy your product or click on your ads, they have done exactly as it says STUMBLED UPON.It is far better to get visitors that want to be on your site, appose to those that have reached it by chance. How do you get organic targeted visitors for free? SEO

Use seo to get organic traffic Your website or blog will be associated with a niche, and this niche will have many keywords associated with it. Take for example this blog. It is about getting free traffic to your website or blog, keywords will be such as: Free traffic Search Engine Optimization Get Free traffic Get more visitors the list could go on and on.......

You need to make sure your website is optimized for your keywords using seo. Free seo tool

To get free targeted traffic you need to make sure your website ranks high in google for keywords that are associated with your site.