Search engine optimization can be one of the hardest and most rewarding tools in your business arsenal. It can be your best friend when it comes to marketing and selling your products or services online. Because it’s such a broad topic, there are about a gazillion and five places to overlook … I’ll tell you 5 to avoid here… but you’re on your own with the other gazillion.

Mistake #1 Under-Utilizing Your Website

Optimizing your website for maximum performance involves utilizing every aspect of your site. Most people think that the only important part is the content, which couldn’t be further from the truth.

Optimizing content is only one piece of the pie. When you concentrate only on content and not on leveraging all areas of your site, you’re robbing your own pockets and causing your site to be a serious underachiever

You’ll get visitors if your content is on point, but the search engines can rank you even higher if you used keywords in other places. For example, articles have titles, pages have headlines and pictures have captions. Learn to use them all to your advantage.

Mistake #2 Keyword Overload

Search engine bots are smarter than most people give them credit for – DO NOT try to outsmart Google … it’s the equivalent of trying to outrun a car.

Overusing the same keywords will cause those little bots to just skip right over your content, thus giving you a lower ranking for those keywords. Tragic.

On the surface it seems like you should be able to use as many keywords as you’d like in your article – I mean, it’s your site, and your words, so why not?

Not true. Google says “no” and until someone comes up with a search engine that trumps the all mighty Google, I’d say just don’t do.

Overusing (or overstuffing) your website raises a red flag to the search engines and they’ll waste no time labeling you as cheater.

Content that is well written will stay within the allowable keyword density. And, those keywords will show up naturally throughout the article so it doesn’t sound like it was thrown together just for the keywords. Capiche?

Mistake #3 Keyword Density

To make things even murkier – Google has decided that not only can you have too many keywords on your site, but you can also have too little.

Some people make the mistake of writing their content without even considering what keywords they’re targeting. You might have a strong article that talks about cutting edge information but without something to help the search engines look upon you favorably; sadly, no one will ever read it. Using the word once or twice in an article is just not going to cut it.

Mistake #4 will help you with some ideas on how to add a bit o’ variety to your content.

Mistake #4 No Variety

For the best results in search engine optimization, and to avoid overstuffing or understuffing (not an actual term – but you get the idea), the best thing to do is focus on a variety of keywords rather than just one or two.

For instance, if your site were about pudding, you wouldn’t want your whole SEO efforts to center around the word pudding right? People use a variety of similar words alone or in combination with others to find what they are looking for when trying to find information on search engines.

If you make and sell pudding, there are more keywords to target other than just the word pudding. For example, chocolate, chocolate pudding, how to make pudding, etc. Get it? Basically, just don’t throw all your eggs in one basket – the key is to diversify your keywords.

Mistake #5 Reciprocal Links

While it holds true that backlinks can increase your search engine ranking, just like all puddings aren’t made equal, neither are all backlinks.

Search engines favor organic links better than simply offering reciprocal link sharing.

You want others to link to you because they like your product and what your website presents to others. Using quality content on your site, in article directories and on social bookmarking sites can increase your quality inbound links for higher ranking.

Start out on solid footing with SEO on your website from the start and get in the habit of creating content that avoids these 5 mistakes and you’ll be well on your way to Google domination – or at the very least, a ranking with less digits.

If article writing or search engine optimization is something that makes your brain hurt, I suggest you not waste the time of putting “write articles for blog” on your to do list every day for 3 weeks straight.

Instead, consider delegating this very important marking tool to a professional.

And guess what? You’re in luck! We happen to be bonafide experts in content creation for marketing purposes. Check out our Copywriting/Article Marketing page to see how we can help you promote your business through copy with purpose!