Optimize For Search Engines And For Visitors

Copyright 2006 Matt Jackson The question on webmasters’ lips is whether to optimize their website for search engines or for visitors. There are arguments for both sides of the argument. On the one hand, without good search engine optimization a website may struggle to actually get any visitors but attracting tens of thousands of visitors a day would be of little consequence if the website doesn’t convert those visitors into full paying customers. Keep Your Website’s Goal In Mind It’s incredibly easy to get wrapped up in search engine optimization and to forget the ultimate goal of your website. Whether this goal is for visitors to click on links, purchase products or pay for your service you need to encourage your website traffic to do this. The most effective way is to produce exceptionally written and informative content but natural content writing never used to perform well in the search engine result pages. Is Google Doing Good? There’s good news for anyone looking to profit from their website and keep their customers happy. Despite being maligned by webmasters and SEO professionals, Google is attempting to update its algorithms for the better. The intention behind recent changes has been to penalize websites that rely on nothing more than search engine optimization. It seems that the major search engines are just as serious about promoting websites that are geared towards visitors as the rest of the Internet is. Mild Search Engine Optimization And Why It’s Necessary The problem that search engines face when determining the validity of websites is that they can’t physically crawl every website manually and have someone look over the content. They have to use software and hardware that automates this task. Subsequently, they have to use keyword rules to determine the topics that a website covers. This means it is still necessary to ensure that your website contains the keywords you are targeting and usually more than once in the entire text of the page. However, sites reaching top spot in search engine results because they have crammed their pages with keywords is something that has long been dead. Natural Keyword Inclusion The most effective method, then, of writing website content is to write it naturally as though you’d never heard of search engines, and more specifically search engine optimization. Once you’ve written your text with your keywords in mind you will usually find that you have included the important keywords already. Read through the content again and if there are any areas where you can naturally insert these keywords then do so. This will give extra credence to your content in the eyes of search engines but don’t get carried away. In preference to including same keyword over and over again, use several related keywords. Keep It Fresh, Keep It Popular One other area that will help your site greatly is the regular introduction of fresh content. By regularly updating your website you will keep visitors returning and ensure that they get value from your website, predisposing them to the idea of purchasing or clicking links. Do this and the search engines will also smile down on you without you having to get heavily involved in search engine optimization practices.

Top 25 SEO Myths You Should Know Before Optimising Website

You might think you already know everything about search engine optimisation process. Well, think again. Some of the things you know may just be myths. There are several SEO myths that webmasters and search engine optimisers still fail to recognise. What are the SEO myths? Here are the top 25:

1. Search engine optimisation can be performed just by anyone.
2. SEO is only for those websites who sell products online.
3. SEO companies can give their clients a guaranteed top ranking position.
4. SEO gives an overnight result. You can optimise a website today and expect it rank high tomorrow.
5. Build more links irregardless of the quality.
6. It is fine to copy content from other websites and paste it on your own website.
7. There is no need for you to write unique content for your website since you can just syndicate articles from directories.
8. There is no need for further work after you have optimised your website.
9. Search engine ranking is all that matters.
10. The more links the better, quantity matters and not quality.
11. There is no need for a website to be submitted to web directories.
12. A website doesn’t need updated content.
13. The search engines won’t know if you use black hat SEO techniques.
14. Do it yourself SEO is better than hiring SEO professionals – can be true if you are an expert yourself.
15. Web design doesn’t need to be optimised.
16. The navigability of the website has no effect on its search engine ranking.
17. The search engines must be prioritised than the target market.
18. There is no need for testing, once a website is already optimised let it stay that way.
19. Site visitors already know how to browse a website so don’t worry about usability.
20. Flash is the best way to present your message.
21. You can write anything that you want in your website content.
22. There is no need for you to add keywords on the website content.
23. Adding more large-file images on the website makes the site more appealing.
24. It doesn’t matter if the website is slow to load, after all, there are now more broadband users than dial ups.
25. Why still optimise a website when it can still be indexed by the search engines no matter what?

These are the top 25 search engine optimisation myths that both webmasters and search engine optimiser must be aware of. Some of them seem to be like a fact rather than a myth, so be very careful.