When it comes to SEO, there are some common mistakes that webmasters make which could be detrimental to actually getting a website to secure a good place in rankings on Google as well as other search engines. However, it should be known that these common mistakes are things that could be easily avoided by just following some simple pieces of advice. Here are the most common errors and ways that you can avoid them:

Focusing too Much on Length of Content

While you may have read that Google prefers content that is longer, this really depends on the context and doesn’t automatically mean that longer articles, blog posts, etc. will give you a magic ticket to a number one spot on Google for your chosen keywords. Remember that the reason why you’re writing the content in the first place is for the readers on your website and not for search engines. If you have a topic that you could comfortably write an 800 word article on, then you can do that. However, there are cases where a shorter post could be just as good. For example, if you’re writing about a specific model of decorative mailbox, it’s going to be pointless to try to force a 1000 word article on it, as there’s just a limited amount of things that you can say about a mailbox without going off topic or repeating the same things over and over with different words. Remember, if somebody came to your site, it’s because they’re interested in knowing more about this mailbox, what it’s made of, how does it look, etc. They’re probably not interested in reading a 2000 word essay about the history of the international postal system.

Using Keyword Stuffing

Keywords in articles should appear naturally. If you write an article that is about a specific topic, then there shouldn’t be any problem getting a keyword density of 1 to 3% in the article. Forcing in a large amount of keywords will not be helpful with regards to SEO. This is for 2 reasons: it makes the text harder to read and makes it look not natural. Also, search engines penalize pages that were clearly designed with nothing but SEO in mind, such as those which contain keywords that are deliberately overused.

Adding New Content to Your Website or Blog Every Single Day

If your site deals with certain topics that change daily, such as news, this could be necessary and very useful. But otherwise, there’s no need to keep posting new things every single day. This is especially if the new content doesn’t actually bring anything useful or informative to your readers but is just a repeat of what you’ve said the days before. Regular site visitors who see this will find your site boring rather quickly and stop visiting it. It also puts you at risk of getting penalized as your site will start having more and more duplicate content posted on it within a short amount of time. Updating your site is good, but don’t do it just for the sake of updating either.

We’ve all gotten the e-mails, and seen the ads for services that claim to boost your traffic in some significant way. Usually they offer a free boost in traffic just for signing up with them, and giving them some information about yourself, which will likely then be sold to other companies for marketing purposes. Most of the claims these traffic providers make are completely false. Let’s take a look at a few of the common claims they make and the truth about them.

“We’ll submit your site to 5 thousand search engines, you’ll get so much search traffic, it will blow your mind!”

Claims like this are rarely a direct lie, but they are misleading. Sure, they will submit your site to all of the search engines they promise to submit it to, but the actual impact on your traffic won’t be anywhere near as amazing as they claim. Most of your search traffic is going to come from Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft’s Bing. The thousands of other search engines might collectively generate 100 hits per month… if you’re lucky.

“We’ll get you to the top of Google”

Again, not a direct and total lie, but extremely misleading. Services making this promise will get you to the top of Google, but it won’t be for keywords that anyone is actually searching. If you have a site about cars, and you choose to use a service like this, chances are you’ll wind up being the first search result for “how to properly eat cheese while driving your car”. Sure, you’re the first result, but who is actually searching for that? No one, that’s who.

“100% Guaranteed”

If a service is offering to boost your traffic, and they try to make lofty promises and guarantees, you should just walk away. SEO and internet marketing are extremely complicated. No one can make a blanket guarantee that your traffic will be effected in a fixed way without looking at your site, and what’s going on in your niche.

The best way to get more traffic to your site is to take the time, and effort to optimize your site for search, and post relevant and interesting content to it. If you absolutely can’t resist using a traffic boosting service, be sure to do some research before picking a service. Avoid free services that make promises like the ones above, and if you’re going to use a paid service, look up some reviews before sinking any money into it.

Search engine traffic is one of the most important ways to be successful online. When people can find your blog or website just by typing into Google your keyword, that is a very powerful thing.

Google and other search engines love new content. It has been said that Google prefers websites that have new content on a consistent basis. So one of the ways to get to Google’s heart is to consistently update your blog or website.

New content is a powerful thing for many reasons, not just search engine ranking.

New content brings visitors back again and again.
New content means your RSS feed goes out, again and again.
New content keeps you engaged with your site.
New content forces you to continue promotion of your site, you’d hate for that great content to go to waste, wouldn’t you?

New content is one of the driving forces behind the next big part of organic, search engine traffic. In order to get that content to show up and rank in Google however, there are some things you have to do first.

Make your site SEO friendly, use good title tags and make good use of heading tags as well. Also make sure you submit your Sitemap to Google’s Webmaster Tools, this will help Google crawl your site more efficiently.

Getting backlinks to your site will also help your site start to rank higher and get crawled more often. What happens when the Google Bot gets to another site with your link on it, is it then follows it back to your. A lot of people call this “Google Juice.” Call it whatever you want, it is one of the most important parts of the organic traffic equation.

If you are just getting started on your website, be patient and make sure you submit your site to all of the search engines so that they can begin crawling your site as soon as possible.

Some of you may of noticed Googles new results page and have you wondered how this might affect your websites search engine results position ?

Google has for the last year have been slowly changing the way their search works, for example the search results are more tailored to the individual using the computer.  The new design is very similar to bing and yahoo.  But Google still dominate the search engine niche with last month being one of their best months in terms of users using Google compared to other search engines.

The new SERPs may make SEO webmasters a little worried as to how users will now start to use the new tools that Google provides users and how results will be displayed.  I can say that my traffic stats to my website haven’t changed much since the new Google changes have been introduced but my enquiries and sales have dropped a little which makes me think if this is a result of the recent Google changes, but i doubt very much as my bounce rate is still the same so im just guessing its a seasonal issue.

The options in the left panel of the new look Google pull from “everything” – classic Google results (universal, organic, paid, etc.), blogs from Google Blog Search, Books from Google Books (which includes magazines), Images from Google Image Search, News from Google News, Maps from Google Maps, Shopping from Google Product Search, Videos from Google Video (which includes videos from YouTube and other sources), and Updates from Google’s real-time search.

You will also notice that at the end of the search results page it will show live results from Twitter and match any keywords from a live feed directly from Twitter.  Google is moving more towards giving you live results as its constantly improving the way it gives the end user results.

I recently ran an experiment using Twitter as a way to get traffic from using the live twitter service on Google by using a plugin on my wordpress blog that updated my twitter account every 15 mins with new articles and this brought in alot of traffic as Google was picking up my keywords in my tweets and giving them tops spot on the results of Google helping direct organic traffic straight to my blog.  The only drawback on this was the plugin i was using crashed my server as it was using alot of bandwidth as it was an autoblog adding 7 new articles every minute, so you can image what this did to my server.  However at the time i was getting around 500 clicks, many from very competitive keywords on Google via the Twitter live feed.