Do you remember when executing well-done, effective search engine optimization was easy? Getting a high page rank on Google could be accomplished just by using a specific keyword a lot, with some relevant related terms thrown in. After some healthy keyword stuffing, you’d then get a few links from web directories, friends’ sites or maybe even other sites managed by you, and you’d be fine. SEO has changed a lot since then.
Google now evaluates and rebuilds its page ranking criteria frequently in order to keep webmasters from “gaming the system” and using old, well-known SEO tricks to get to the top of searches. A consequence of these frequent tweaks, changes and updates is that honest webmasters suffer, too. Google’s most recent page ranking system, known as “Panda”, radically changed the rules, with one major difference being that content changes and updates might be more important than the content itself.
In this ever-changing page ranking landscape, it’s still possible to work hard to achieve a higher listing in Google. If your own rank has fallen and you feel Google isn’t getting the most out of your site, here are seven reasons why your site’s SEO isn’t working and how you can fix it.
Competition is a major factor that will hinder your SEO efforts. It doesn’t matter how well your other SEO practices are executed if the market for your existing keyword is already too full. Too many established sites fighting for the same keyword means it’s usually impossible for other new sites to break in at the top.
Take the keyword “car insurance” for example. At the time of this writing, the first two pages returned by Google when searching for car insurance are filled with the sites of the major carriers like Geico, Nationwide and Progressive with a handful of comparison sites thrown in. These sites get a lot of hits and have a ton of high quality backlinks, so how can you compete using the same keyword? The answer is you can’t. It is vital to carefully choose unique keywords to avoid getting lost in the crowd.
We all understand a web site can’t just consist of big blocks of plain text. It’s not 1990, we get it. Sites today need to be flashy - pun intended - to draw attention and they need convenient features to maintain usability. Graphics, animated buttons and navigation bars are the norm with sites today. But all this Flash, or JavaScript for that matter, can harm even the best search engine optimization efforts.
The reason Java and Flash hurt SEO is that when Google crawls a site, its bots can only read plain text. This means that any text in Flash or JavaScript animations, buttons, navigation bars and menus is not recorded by Google. This is a problem since your keywords are typically listed in these buttons and bars. You can bump up your SEO by adding plain text links where you can that mirror those in your buttons and bars. Text links in your pages footers, for example, can be used to navigate to the same pages as your navigation bar.
A web site’s title tags are the words that appear up there in the blue bar of your browser. They are an oft-overlooked component of SEO, and with good reason. Once you’ve built a whole web site, it’s easy to forget such a small thing. If this describes you, it’s imperative to go back and populate those title tags with relevant content immediately.
Each page in your site definitely needs its own title tag and each tag must be populated with relevant keywords to maximize SEO. The caveat is that title tags must relate to the content of their pages. For example, if your keyword is “Car Insurance Comparison,” you can’t put “Car Insurance Comparison Rates” in the title tag of pages like “Contact Us” or “Locations” unless these pages specifically mention comparison rates.
Google’s new “Panda” rage ranking system, as mentioned earlier, puts a lot of emphasis on fresh, relevant content. For example, searches for “Super Bowl” will now return results with sites whose content relates to the upcoming game instead of sites dedicated to the history and origins of the Super Bowl itself. Webmasters who don’t update their content enough will find their rank dropping quickly.
Changing and uploading a site frequently enough to impact SEO is a time-consuming process. Webmasters can make life easier on themselves while satisfying Google’s need for freshness by adding a blog to the sites they manage. Blogs by Wordpress or Blogger are easy to update and post, so sites can be refreshed effortlessly.
As we mentioned previously, keywords used to be king. The problem with giving so much weight to keywords was that some unscrupulous webmasters would employ “black hat” methods like keyword stuffing to falsely boost their rank. They’d shove keywords anywhere they could, even hidden in non-viewable areas, with hopes that Google bots would record them and rocket their page to the top of their search results. Google realized this and changed things accordingly.
Google has not only decreased the value of keywords, tough. With their new ranking algorithms, they have actually instituted penalties for keyword stuffing. Sites found practicing this tactic are now downgraded by Google. Webmasters need to thoroughly assess their content to avoid this. The best rule of thumb in this case is that keywords should make up around seven percent of the total content, but definitely no more.
Google offers free apps that webmasters can use to gauge site performance, traffic and effectiveness. Webmasters who aren’t using Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools to evaluate their sites are seriously hampering their SEO efforts.
Google Analytics allows webmasters to track a variety of essential data so they can get an idea of a site’s effectiveness. For example, a stat like “bounce rate” can tell if visitors are staying on a site and absorbing the content or just clicking right off of it, “bouncing” somewhere else. Webmaster Tools offers helpful analytics regarding keywords and other SEO-related topics. Both services are free of charge and are a must for site owner looking to sure up their underachieving search engine optimization efforts.
Every page’s address - it’s URL - is a chance to use keywords or at least maintain a friendly interface and readability. A URL that is clean and readable by humans also happens to be more friendly and readable for search engines, a major key to better SEO.
What this means to you is that, as the webmaster, you need to look at your site and evaluate URLs. There’s no need to stuff keywords into URLs, but they should make sense. This means URLs like http://www.site2you.com/blog/56/11-Keys-to-Creating-Successful-Linkbait.html are much more effective in helping SEO than http://www.site2you.com/blog/56/09863389-&111.htm.
Author Bio: Katie M. is a freelance writer and Independent SEO contractor. She helps people compare car insurance to save money on their car insurance rates and lives with her husband and daughter in Tampa.
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