by Daniel Xiao Wang

Created on: June 30, 2010

Search engine optimization is the key to success on the Internet. By focusing on strong SEO strategies you can make your blog as successful as possible, driving traffic to your site, but make SEO mistakes and you could hurt the success of your blog.

There are many search engine optimization mistakes that you can make that will hinder the effectiveness of your blog in attracting traffic and back links.

Keywords are a good thing right? They help search engines find you, increase your search engine optimization value, and help people find you on line. But there are two major mistakes that you can make with keywords that will hurt your blog.

1) Keyword density

For strong search engine optimization your main keywords, the words or phrases that best match what your blog is about, should be around 3-5% of your content. So for every hundred words on your blog posts your main keywords should be used three to five times.

Using those keywords too much will hurt your blog because the search engines will determine that your blog is spamming the keyword. From a search engine optimization standpoint, if a search engine decides that your blog is spamming it will assign less value to your blog and will not lead people to you.

Using those keywords too little, or not at all, will also make the search engines assign a lower value to your blog. How will the search engines know to send people searching for guitars to your blog if you never use the word 'guitar?' Search engine optimization is about using the right words the right number of times to make search engines find you and determine that your blog is valuable.

2) Ignoring the long tail

The long tail of search is often discussed, but little understood. Less than half of the searches through search engines are of words or phrases that are considered highly popular search phrases. The rest of those searches are the “long tail of search.” The long tail refers to searches that are not for those highly popular keywords. They include anything that is searched for on the Internet, even if only searched for once.

Why is it important to not ignore the long tail? Because every search on topics related to your blog is a chance for someone to find you. Search engine optimization is about getting people to find you on the Internet when they search. If they are searching for guitar strings on your guitar blog, and you remembered to use “guitar” with a 3-5% keyword density, but never ever mention guitar strings, you may have just lost that visitor.

When using keywords look for variations of the word and variations of the phrase to include. When people search for related keywords and phrases, help search engines lead them to you.

These SEO mistakes will hurt your blog and slow the traffic to your site. Search engine optimization should drive traffic and increase your page ranking. By focusing on these elements of SEO you will improve your chances of being located on line and drive traffic.

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