As nearly any business owner knows, online advertising can be a potential goldmine for new leads and sales, with arguably the largest potential for gain from optimizing for search engines, also known as Search Engine Optimization (SEO). When used in combination with sound web design principals, SEO can be a powerful weapon in your marketing arsenal. However, if you push your SEO too far (particularly on-page SEO), then you can negatively affect conversion rates and tarnish your branding efforts. 1. Stuffing Keywords in The Alt and Title Attributes: The Alt and Title attributes were originally intended for usability and accessibility purposes – the alt attribute is used to describe the content of an image, and the title attribute gives additional information for several HTML elements, such as links and forms. However, somewhere down the line, people optimizing for search decided that a better use of these attributes would be to stuff keywords into them. First off, these “techniques” provide a terrible user experience for text based browsers and the vision impaired, which will naturally result in lowered conversion rates. Secondly, Google very likely considers these poor signals for relevancy, and perhaps even considers keyword stuffed alt and title attributes a spam signal. Bottom line; don’t stuff keywords in these attributes. 2. Multiple Pages Optimized For Minor Variations On Thematically Identical Keywords: I am all for having as many pages on a website as possible – it allows for more optimal on-page targeting of multiple key-phrases. But this technique becomes less about SEO and more about spamming when you have separate pages for minor variations on the same keyword theme – for example, having individual pages for “web design”, “website design” and “web site design”. The extra pages offer no more information on the subject, it potentially confuses visitors and site architecture/navigation becomes difficult to manage. This is a definite conversion rate killer. 3. Keyword Stuffing In Body Copy Possibly not a web design compromise as such (even though web design is more than aesthetics), trying to trick search engines into ranking your site higher by putting keywords in as many places as grammatically possible is both difficult to read and an eye sore, so it gets a mention here. One particular technique is the practice of styling the H1 tag to make it appear at the very top of the website, in an effort to make it the first text that a search engine sees. Excessive internal linking with keyword rich anchor text and keyword repetitions are other conversion rate suicide techniques. Conclusion: On-page SEO never got anyone ranking number 1. These tricks are simply ill-conceived short cuts to search engine success, which can only really be attained through link building. My advice: Make sure your on-page SEO is solid while not stepping on any usability, accessibility or conversion rate toes, and use link building to make up the shortfall.
Article Source: http://bizymoms.com/business
First Choice Loans is a mortgage broking company that offers business loans for people looking to start or expand their current business.