I am giving your 10 most commonly done SEO mistakes which you can easily avoid:

1- Ignoring the <title> tag
It happens that you keep the same Title text for your Readers as well as for Search engines. It is good if you can provide search engines with the title which your perspective visitors are actually searching for. It will help them notice your blog easier and also help you gain ranking for your keywords.

2- Excessive dependence on Meta tags
Depending excessively on Meta Tags and not writing proper content is surely going to fail you as an SEO. Remember that Search engines value long Articles as they are supposed to give quality information. Of Course, the articles must me resembling to the Title and the Meta tags. (Remember that Google no longer considers the META keywords Tag for rankings)

3- Neglecting the URLs
URLs play a very important role in SEO. Try to use Static keyword rich URLs rather than Dynamic URLs. Remove unnecessary words like “to”, “from”, “the”, etc from the URLS to make them Short and Keyword rich.

4- Not doing Proper analysis of What is working and What is not
Using an Traffic Analytics software is a must; to know which keywords are bringing in the traffic. This helps in knowing the sources which we can get the needed backlinks from and also which keywords must/must not be stressed on.

5- Trying to achieve links artificially
Achieving BackLinks artificially is not a crime, but most people fail here! They try to get links using a single link building method and fail drastically. Proper strategy must be created and the Link building methods must be decided before kicking off the SEO campaign.

6- Using Images instead of Words
I do agree that an Image speaks for a 100 words. But in SEO, this may backfire heavily. You cannot expect all the users to understand what is the intention of using an Image. You must Support the Image with proper “ALT” and “TITLE” attributes and if possible add a Proper Heading too.

7- Improper or No use of the 404 error code
Most webmasters fail to have a 404 page. This results in the Users wandering in-the-middle-of-nowhere when the URL being requested is improper/non-existent. This appears non-trustworthy to Google.

8- No Variety in Anchor Text
Using the Same keywords to build all the links. It clearly appears non-natural, and overdoing it may also get your Site penalised in Search Engine rankings.

Now the Last Two are the killer one’s..

9- Trusting the Google Webmaster Tools Data
Google webmaster tools is notorious for showing incorrect or invalid data. It sometimes shows you some out-dated or in appropriate data. You must have more faith in Google Analytics rather than Google WebMaster Tools.

10- Not-logging inside fee SEO tools
Why should I log-in if I am getting what I want, without entering my login credentials? Of course, most of us do this mistake. It is quite possible, that you figure out something more helpful when you are inside your Account. It is also possible, that you are given approximate data when you are a normal user and you are given accurate data when you log-into the site.

Super Bonus tip:
Please Do not make the mistake of doing wrong Keyword research or Trying to Optimize your Site for inappropriate or wrong keywords. You may waste a lot of time and after immense efforts you will realise all your efforts went in vain. You will be left heart-broken!!

Related posts:

• My 3 Biggest SEO mistakes of 2009
• Myths about Advertiser Competition for Keyword Analysis in SEO
• How to create Good META Description tags for better SEO
• 5 Important Tips for Facebook SEO
• Improve Page Rank By Search Engine Optimization(SEO)

I would sincerely suggest all the Beginner SEOs to go through the SEO Starter Guide which was published by Google recently in September 2010. This may also help some pro SEOs to get some of their Concepts clear or updated. This new SEO guide also has some tips for Mobile SEO.

You can Download this SEO Starter Guide in PDF format: Click Here to Download

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• Improve Page Rank By Search Engine Optimization(SEO)
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• Google Search is filled with 38 bugs

List of Do-Follow Directories:

1. articlesalley.com Page Rank 7
2. suite101.com Page Rank 7
3. ezinearticles.com Page Rank 6
4. articlesbase.com Page Rank 6 (now No-Follow)
5. articlecity.com Page Rank 6
6. isnare.com Page Rank 6
7. buzzle.com Page Rank 6
8. helium.com Page Rank 6
9. site-reference.com Page Rank 5
10. articleslash.net Page Rank 5
11. thewhir.com/find/articlecentral Page Rank 5
12. a1articles.com Page Rank 5
13. sooperarticles.com Page Rank 5
14. searchwarp.com Page Rank 5
15. articlesnatch.com Page Rank 5
16. articlealley.com Page Rank 5
17. articledashboard.com Page Rank 5
18. selfgrowth.com/articles.html Page Rank 5
19. ideamarketers.com Page Rank 5
20. bukisa.com Page Rank 5
21. goarticles.com Page Rank 4
22. carolinaarticles.com Page Rank 4
23. articlesfactory.com Page Rank 4
24. articleclick.com Page Rank 4
25. submityourarticle.com/articles/ Page Rank 4
26. infobarrel.com Page Rank 4
27. abcarticledirectory.com Page Rank 4
28. upublish.info Page Rank 4
29. e-articles.info Page Rank 4
30. articlemonkeys.com Page Rank 4 (Now No-Follow)
31. dime-co.com Page Rank 4
32. web-source.net Page Rank 3
33. EvanCarmichael.com Page Rank 3
34. articlerich.com Page Rank 3
35. amazines.com Page Rank 3
36. articlewarehouse.com Page Rank 3
37. acmearticles.com Page Rank 3
38. article-buzz.com Page Rank 3
39. fourpxarticles.com Page Rank 3
40. articlebliss.com Page Rank 3
41. articles.everyquery.com Page Rank 3
42. thecontentcorner.com Page Rank 3
43. affsphere.com Page Rank 3
44. articlecell.com Page Rank 2
45. articlestars.com Page Rank 2
46. articlecube.com Page Rank 0
47. articlecompilation.com Page Rank 0
48. articlepool.com Page Rank 0
49. 365articles.com Page Rank 0
50. articlenexus.com Page Rank 0

Do share with us any more High Page Rank Do-Follow Directories.. Thanks!!

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These kind of SEOs may be good at only one thing. I hope you have guessed it right.. Link Building!!

Anyways, today I am going to tell you about the Advertiser Competition Column in the Adwords Keyword External tool. Its the green bar which you see.

Most SEOs use the Adwords Keyword External tool for Keyword Analysis and Research to find the market share and the health of the Keywords they wish to optimize the websites for. After entering the desired keywords, we come to know about various metrics like the Advertiser Competition, Global Monthly Searches, Local Monthly Searches, Local Search Trends, etc.

Now there are a few myths about this Advertiser Competition column in the minds of many well known SEOs too. Don’t miss out: DoFollow Blog Comments are not very Useful for SEO. I have read a lot of Blog posts written by SEO gurus which say, More the Advertiser Competition, the difficult it is to Rank for that keyword.

Let me tell you, this is utter Rubbish!!

Advertiser Competition has nothing to do with the Competition in Search Engine Rankings. Most SEOs misunderstand this concept and start giving their non-sense SEO Tips!

The main reason for misunderstanding is, the Adwords Keywords Tool is intended for use by Advertisers, but most SEOs use it! This causes the misunderstanding in the minds of SEOs that if the Advertiser Competition is more, it will be difficult to get High Search rankings for that Term.

But the fact is, it is actually good if the Advertiser Competition is more, as maximum number of Advertisers will be Competing for their Ad placements and in this way they tend to keep the Pay-Per-Click (PPC) bidding Amount higher. Thus, this assures maximum earnings from Adsense (if you are going to use it on your website).

There are different ways to find the Actual Ranking Competition, but I will discuss it in my future posts here. Stay tuned in!!

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• How to use Twitter as a keyword research tool?
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• How to create Good META Description tags for better SEO
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• 5 Important Tips for Facebook SEO

As Facebook has become an Hub for Netizens, it is very essential to consider it when Social Media Marketing comes into Picture. And this is the reason why Facebook Search Engine Optimization is such a hot topic. It has become a bare necessity to Rank high in Facebook search if you wish to gain Visibility in the Social Media scene.

So today, I will give you 5 important Facebook SEO tips which will help you rank high in the Facebook Search Engine:

1~ Allow Public visibility of your Content

Due to the recent problems of Facebook privacy settings, there is still a lot of confusion regarding this. Remember that if you keep the content which you want to share as Public, then Facebook can show it to all those who search for it. Keeping it protected to any particular group will enable visibility of your content to only that particular group.

2~ Use proper Keywords in the Title/URL

Now you would say, this tip is very similar to our normal SEO tip! But the TITLE we are considering here is a bit different. Here the title can be the Title of the Blog Post which you are sharing or even whatever is your Status Update, or may be even the Name of some Facebook Group. If it is a Title of the Blog post then you should optimize it for normal SEs like Google, Bing/MSN and Yahoo and it will help you on Facebook too(nothing special required here). But if you are writing a Status Update or Creating a post in Facebook Groups then remember to include the Keywords you want to rank for!
Do not forget to Select a proper Facebook Vanity URL for Professioal pages.

3~ Optimize Meta Tags properly

When you share a link on Facebook using the ‘Link option’, Facebook by default uses the meta description of the Shared Webpage as an effective meta tag, but if that webpage does not include any meta description tag, then it catches the first 160-200 character of the content and uses it as the effective Meta tags. You can write the description of this Link in the Update Space available using proper keywords.
Also, When you make some group the Description of the Group is used as the effective meta tags for Facebook Search engine.
Note: When I say “effective meta tag”, it means Meta tags that will be considered by Facebook Search engine and not any other Search Engine.

4~ Likes, Shares and Number of Mutual Friends

If you are planning to rank higher then the Number of Share and the Number of Likes for your Content/Comment (by different people) does come into picture. The more the number of Likes and Shares, the higher will be your position in Facebook Search rankings. When searching for different Individuals, the number of Mutual friends are considered as a ranking factor.

I am sure you would like to join us on our Tech-Freak Stuff page on Facebook.

5~ Freshness of the Content matters the Most

If you write a Status update containing some keywords and someone else writes a very similar Status update some time after you write it, it is highly possible that his/her status update will rank higher for the keywords and not yours. Facebook gives a lot of stress on Real time (some time difference is always there) Search Engine results and so you don’t have any scope for error and rest. You must keep updating various data on Facebook which you want to rank in Facebook Search.

Let me know weather you use these SEO tips for ranking high in Facebook Search, and if you know some more tips then do let all of us know..

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More Comments on a Single Page divide the Link Juice

Consider that there are 10 links on a particular page and your DoFollow Comment link is included in that. That page can give out X amount of link juice. So, your Comment gets X/10 amount of Link juice. But Do-Follow Blogs usually get a lot of comments so the number of links on that page usually increase. Even if you able to find a rare High PageRank page with Do-Follow Comments, there are a lot of links other than comments on a single page. So the Link juice you get is quite less and inturn nearly negligible SEO advantage!

DoFollow Links in the Comments Section are not treated equally like other Links

Search Engines like Google give more importance to links created by the content author rather than who add value to it through Comments. So, the links in the Content (i.e the Main Article) are given more importance and value and not the links in the Comments section. Even though, your links in the Comments section will be Followed by the Search Engine crawlers, the importance given to it for High Rankings is negligible!

The authority of Links on a Particular page decreases, Once the total link count of that page crosses a particular limit

Imagine a page having hundreds of links on it. The user visiting that page is surely going to be confused on which link will take him to his desired result. For this reason, Google crawlers reduce the ability of that page to pass link credits to the links. As we know that Do-Follow blogs are crowded with comments, your link being one among the many gets negligible credit. (many people say that more than 100 links on a page results in this condition, but it is not verified)

DoFollow comments on Blogs outside-your-Niche are irrelevant

If you get a link back from a website which is related to your website in some-way-or-other then its good. Links from Websites in Off-topic Niche won’t help you for increasing your SERP rankings!

Now the only reason why you can use Do-Follow comments is to increase the number of Domains linking to your Site, even though you are not getting enough Credits from the links. Also remember, that getting links from low-quality pages are not going to help you for SEO.

Even though Tech-Freak Stuff is a DoFollow blog, I would suggest not to comment just for getting a back-link to your blog as it is not going to help a lot. You should comment on blogs for showing your views about the content or add value to it. Many bloggers do not Comment on blogs with NoFollow as it doesn’t give them a positive link back. But, its not the right attitude in the blogosphere. Let me tell you, there are far more better ways to get links from Authority sites which will help in SEO.

So guys, think over it and remember, I am waiting to hear your views..

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• My Friendship Day gift for all of you. Tech-Freak Stuff turns Do-Follow!
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So, before you get confused about what I am trying to say, try to figure out how we can find the most searched keywords from Twitter at a particular time. You can always use Google Trends, but Twitter seems to show quite targeted results at the proper time.

Everyone knows that we can find the most searched keywords using the list of “Recent Trending Topics”. But keep in mind that some hashtags like #nowplaying or #IwillNever , are just used by twitter users for gaining attention and they are not the trending topics in the real Search industry. Now if you want to optimize your Blog post for local Search, then you can use Local trending topics instead of Worldwide trending topics.

After finding the proper trending topics [we will call it keywords] to write a post, just start writing your post as fast as you can and try to finish it in 15-20 minutes. But don’t publish the post yet! Wait for the right time.

Now, when will be the right time?
The right time is when the Trending Topic keywords enter the top 5 spots in the list. This is the time when people really start getting excited about the topic and start finding more and more information about it. It is observed that twitter users are the first to talk about any topic and then that topic gets viral and then covers the Search engine scene.

Now why did I ask you to post it when the Keyword Trending is really on its high. The reason:
Google starts using its QDF algorithm in this case. QDF stands for “Query Deserves Freshness” and when this algorithm is used, the Fresh posts i.e. New posts start appearing in the top pages of the Search results for that particular keywords.

Also, this is the time when a maximum people search for these keywords and its your chance to maximize your chances to be listed in the Top 3-5 rankings [because of your Fresh Content].

Remember, that if you are late in publishing the post, then even though the Search Queries for the Keywords is high, you may not get that good SE rankings and you will lose some valuable traffic too.

So go and start searching for the Twitter trending topics which are in the Niche of your Blog. I hope you will get a lot of traffic by ranking high for those keywords. Do, share with us any such tricks related to Google trends or Twitter. Looking forward to hearing from you!
Note: This article is inspired by a post on SEOMoz.org

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• 5 Major Reasons Why your Twitter Account will be Suspended

Basic structure of Meta Description tag

<META name=”description” content=”Search engine shows the content of this tag below the title of your site when it appears in the Search Engine results” />

This tag must be present in the <head> section of the HTML Web-Page. As this tag is present in the head section, it is not visible to the normal visitors to your website. Only search engines can read it or you can observe it if you look at the source code of the web-page. Observe that this Tag need not be closed!

The contents in this Tag are included in the Search Engine results description of your web-page. Observe the Screen shot below:

Tips to create Good Meta Description Tags

• Keep the content length below 160 characters.
• Use relevant keywords but keep the sentences meaningful.
• Do not insert unnecessary keywords. Keyword spamming can get your website penalized.
• Create Unique meta descriptions on each page of your site.
• Think what people would search for and then decide the description.
• Avoid crossing the 160 characters content limit.
• Your Most Targeted keywords must be present at the start of the Description content. Keywords with lesser priority must be placed later in the description.
• Use keyword combinations rather than pure repetition.

Now these were the ideal tips for creating good Meta Description tags. It must be understood, that if you don’t create a META description tag for a web-page then the Search Engines try to create it on their own, using the content of your web-page. But, this description can be quite irrelevant too. Also, note that if you cross the 160 character’s limit then Search engines might just cut of the further part of your Description.

Example: Meta description: “This is my homepage. I write about Technology, WordPress, SEO, etc. I love my family and I have a lot of fun with my friends too. I like to talk to strangers and understand them. I am a playful and a jolly person.”

Description in Search engines: “This is my homepage. I write about Technology, WordPress, SEO, etc…..”

Do you observe that the keywords you used in the later part of your description got wasted and were truncated. It sometimes also happens that some important parts of the Description are considered and the others are neglected.

Depending on the keywords, the description in Search Engines could also be: “This is my homepage…. I love my family…fun with my friends too…. I am a playful and a jolly person.”

How I create Meta Description Tags

I use the following practices for creating Meta Tags for my Blog:

• I create Meta tags considering the Search Engine titles of my web-pages. I sometimes repeat the keywords in the Titles into the Meta tags to give more priority to those keywords.
• I don’t create Meta Description tags for very long and explanatory content. I let the search engines decide the important contents of that page.
• I create keyword rich yet human-understandable descriptions of Short content.
• Sometimes, I do create long meta tags with keyword rich sentences, so that the unwanted part of it is truncated by search engine according to the User’s search query. [See the explanation in example above]
• I DO NOT SPAM my Keywords!

Do tell me how you create Meta tags for your web-pages. Do you find any mistakes in my ways, apart from they being non-ideal?

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Single Post in Multiple Categories

It must be noted that the Google crawler by default crawls through each category and then indexes the links inside it. If it finds similar content in one or more categories then Duplicate Content Issues may arise. Also it may cause further problem while indexing the website.

Status: Mistake Corrected! Now Each of my post is present in only One Unique Category.
Update: I have understood that this is not really a mistake!

Sticking to Blogger for so long

I was on Blogger for more than 1.5 years, Even though I knew that Self Hosted WordPress is the best software for SEO and professional Blogging. This made me achieve my goals after a long wait, like “I got a Pagerank very late” , “My traffic remained low for a long time”, “I got very less comments because most people hate commenting on Blogger Blogs”.

Status: Mistake Corrected! Now Tech-Freak Stuff is a Self Hosted WordPress blog.

Using a Free Web Host

I am using a free web-host which is causing a lot of problems for my blog. It sometimes deletes my entire database while sometimes it corrupts my database. So my website remains inaccessible for that time. Also, It redirects to some other promotional page when visitors click on some of my links. Also, It sometimes doesn’t even load my theme properly. Thus, Google crawler finds it difficult to crawl my content when such issues prevail with my webhost. Also, this reduces the frequency of Google crawling your website. It may also mark your website as spam. I have not yet faced such problem from Google till date, but I don’t want to risk my blog for such a small issue.

Status: I had purchased a Premium Web hosting account, but there came some problem with the Credit Card billing system so I will have to wait another 60 days for re-registering. I hope I get the account soon! And the reason for the delay of moving to a Premium Host was of course “lack of funds”.

Update: One more SEO mistake I was doing, is NOT using TITLE attribute for Anchor links. I just used the HREF attribute.
Status: I have started using the TITLE attribute in the A tag in the New posts.
Do let me know, if you find any other major SEO mistakes in this Blog. Your Constructive criticism will be appreciated!

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The first ever Google PageRank which Tech-Freak Stuff received as the PageRank 1 long back. But it declined to PR 0 when we shifted to WordPress about 4 months back. But I continued posting valuable comments on other blogs and other bloggers also liked the Content here, which got me Good Backlinks.

If you are already loving the Content here and would like to be among the Part of Tech Freaks community, I would Advice you to join us at the Tech Freaks group at FaceBook.

Also, you can get updated with the the Updates of this Blog by Subscribing to the Feed by Email.

I am thankful to all those who are the Part of this ever Increasing Tech-Freak Stuff Community. I am also hoping for a PR rise to upto PR 4 in the next six months and I am ready to take Proper steps for that. I just hope that you all support me in the same way you have always done. Thanks!!

Editorial: I might not be able to update Tech-Freak Stuff frequently for the next 2 months because of my Engineering Exams.

Related posts:

• Tech-Freak Stuff is now PageRank 3
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• Tech-Freak Stuff moves to WordPress with a Completely new Theme
• Tech-Freak Stuff has moved to a Premium Web-Host after a poor time at a Free Web-Host