Avoid the Mistakes New SEOs Make

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Are you new to doing SEO? You're probably reading as much as you can, and facing a flood of information, much of it conflicting. There are certain mistakes that nearly every new SEO makes. Keep reading to learn what they are and how to avoid making them.

Focusing on the Meta Keyword Tag

Do not stress about the Meta Keyword tag. If your website is on page 80 for your keyword, nothing will change if you add the keyword tag stuffed with all your phrases. This tag has been abused so much in the past that Google ignores it altogether. If you have a minute, go ahead and plug in some of your keywords, but do no stress too much.

“Should the keywords in the keywords meta tag be separated by commas or not?” Test your knowledge by answering this question now. You will get the answer at the end of the article, so continue reading.

Focusing on Keyword Density

Just like the keyword meta tag, this factor has no effect on search engine rankings. If you change the density from 3.2% to 6.7%, nothing will happen. Your site will not move an inch in the search results.

What can happen, though, is that Google can penalize you for keyword stuffing. In fact, it is very important to appear as natural as possible. If you’re targeting the key phrase “montreal car dealership,” then make sure there are several occurrences of this phrase in the text, but also include each word separately: “montreal,” “car” and “dealership.”

Stuffing Keywords in H1, H2 and Other Parts of the Page

If you’re targeting a keyword, it can be dangerous putting the word in the title tag, H1 tag, H2 tag, H3 tag and all the other parts of the page. It is okay to use the term when it is relevant, but be careful. For example, make sure this does not happen:

Keyword example “make money”

Title: “make money”

H1: “make money”

H2: “make money”

H3: “make money”

If you do want to include the phrase as much as possible, use it along with other phrases. For example:

Title: “Learn How to Make Money With Your Small Business”

H1: “Make Money With Our Get Rich Quick Scheme”

H2: “This Guy Has Been Making a Lot of Money By Scratching His Butt All Day”

H3: “What Can You do To Make More Money”

In the example you can see that we have our phrase in all the tags, but it is not stuffed and looks natural (of course, you should avoid get-rich-quick schemes that promise you mountains of money).

Next: Optimizing the Entire Site for One Phrase >>
 

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Comments On: Avoid the Mistakes New SEOs Make

· Matt Cutts claims that Google isn't letting nofollows affect the flow of page rank...    · Especially on the point of the keywords tag ;) Commas or spaces...Although I...    · Years ago, getting back links to a website was the most important factor in SEO, but...    · good one......the last line was pretty funny ;)    · Some really strong advice for new SEOs.    · I recommended ceriadotmy as a base to promote your blog because it is universal and...    · Thanks for the advice. As a noob I have been a little obsessed with trying to keep...    · I laughed at your article, because i was doing the same thing, grasping all the...    · A very good post I must say. The only thing I would say on meta data is though it...   >>> Post your comment now!