One might not achieve the desired higher ranking on Google search pages
without having planned and optimized the ‘content’ of their webpages very
meticulously. Basically, you need to work on the titles of your webpages,
the contents they carry, as well as the backlinks from other websites.

Often, webmasters tend to overlook the internal link structure
of a website;the internal link structure plays a vital role in any
website’s overall ranking.

Why You Should Pay Attention to Your Website’s Internal Link Structure
Links from external websites count more than the internal links. However, internal links are important aspects of generating signals in search engine algorithms. In the eyes of search engines, links are as good as votes. When you focus on optimizing your site’s link structure, you can create a clear path for the search engines to access the important pages of your site and also reveal the keywords you desire to rank high on.

What You Should Do

• Your optimization should start from the main navigation of your website
  The navigational links that are visible on every page of your website are the major navigations on your site. The most important aspect of your website navigation is the main navigation. 

  Typically, it includes a “Home” link – e.g. linked business logo image. It also includes links pointing to the major sections of your site.

  Don’t meddle with JavaScript and Flash Menus. A good number of search engines would often bypass such web pages in the course of indexing. A better way to design your website navigation is to use CSS as well as standard HTML.

  Don’t fail to incorporate your top prioritized keywords onto links in your main navigation.

• Ensure that the initial link on the page is the correct link
  It appears that the first link on a webpage is the only one that Google considers. Look at it this way; if Webpage A links to Webpage B with “more info” as the anchor text on top of the page, and uses another anchor text ‘buy golf items’ at the bottom of the page, Google is most likely to use only the first anchor text on top of the page. 

  Therefore, if you link to another page more than once, ensure that the first link on top of the page features your most important keyword – the one you desire to achieve a high rank on.

• Breadcrumb navigation may be excellent for sub-webpages
  Breadcrumb navigation can be highly beneficial to sub-pages. Usually, sub web pages are not often linked from the main navigation of the website. 

  Search engines find it easy to place your sub webpages into the appropriate context when you incorporate breadcrumb navigation links.

You can show visitors and search engines the exact location of a webpage by using breadcrumb navigation links.  Don’t forget to incorporate descriptive as well as keyword-rich phrases in your site’s breadcrumb navigation – for example: Golf bag > Golf shoes > Buy golf items.

Now owned by Yahoo, Overture created pay for performance (P4P) basically. They foresaw increase in online shopping, that online buying activities would skyrocket dramatically and that advertising had the potential of getting massive as a result.

Without visibility, web visitors may not get to your site to buy and may not also be part of your list. One of the great ways to increase sales as well as traffic is to place ads that are capable of directing people to your website. The service mentioned earlier, which is now in Yahoo’s ownership enables companies or sites’ ads to be visible based on the keywords that a visitor is using to search.

Your List Building Activities Get Better with More Visitors
A company that desires to generate more traffic to its site can take advantage of this service. More traffic promises more viewing of your site and increased possibility of actual purchase after the visitors must have benefited from the information featured on your site. It would eventually also result in more potential buyers joining your list. It is relatively quicker as well as easier to build your list when you have more traffic. There’s hope that a good number of those in your list may eventually become loyal customers as you follow them up tactfully.

Every business needs high volume traffic to survive, especially traffic that has high potential of translating to actual patronage of your business’s offerings. So, services such as Yahoo Overture – P4P (Pay for Performance) is a great way to make your site visible to targeted traffic.

How Does this Service Work?
If you are conversant with Google Adwords, you would easily understand how Yahoo Overture works. It is simply the use of search-based keywords to put up an ad on relevant websites. The choice of keywords by the surfer would determine the results that would be displayed. You will get to see ads on the result page’s right side when you carry out a search. The paid ads are featured at the top of the ads. The position is exactly what the company or site paid for the listing of their choice keyphrase or keyword.

For instance, if your business offers Dell Computers for sale and computer accessories, you would need to select relevant keywords that would cause your ad to come up when a web visitor searches with related keywords such as “Dell Computers” or “computer accessories.

When leveraging this service, you may not bother much about site content optimization for visibility on search engine results. However, don’t take chances, spread your traffic generation tentacles and do not solely depend on one technique. In essence, embark on other techniques that improve your ranking on search engine results.

Anyway, Yahoo Overture is capable of getting your site listed on search engine’s first result page, but it all depends on the competitive nature of the keywords you chose and the kind of budget you have for the service. Well, ensure that you are not generous with your budget using this service, until you see it working for you. Let me say that search engine optimization still remains the best way to get highly visible to web visitors.

Often, clients consult me to find out how the SEO techniques of their websites can be taken to a greater level. No doubts, these sites are already optimized as far as the previous SEO expert was able to go. However, I usually find out common SEO mistakes that are surprisingly made by most SEO experts. I’m going to discuss the major ones here.

1. Excessively Stuffed Title Tags
   Definitely, you can attempt to incorporate multiple search phrase variations in the title of a webpage. You are probably doing this to be on a safer side in case the search engines may decide to associate your page with majority or the entire variations. This may be effective at times.
   However, I discovered that when you populate a webpage with such multiple search terms, you are likely to alter the main message of that page; thus weakening meaningful ranking value for that webpage’s major search terms.
2. Concentrating Much on Google
   It has become rampant to see that business owners’ websites may have several of their pages indexed at Google, while only few are indexed in other major search engines such as Bing. In same manner, such clients may also be ranking on Google’s first result page for multiple webpages, while getting stuck on third or even fourth page at Bing.
   The SEO world tends to concentrate massively on Google, with the misconception that Bing would automatically work out things on its own. But little do they know that they are possibly missing out multiple businesses by concentrating solely or much on Google. The truth is that other major search engines such as Bing would possibly find it difficult searching out content all by itself.
   If you simply use the Bing webmaster system to submit a sitemap.xml file, this can raise the total number of pages indexed on Bing dramatically. It may interest you to also know that for each additional page in the Bing index, you can achieve a raise across your whole website. Well, there’s more to do at Bing, but this technique requires little or no effort – besides it is fast.
3. Being Philanthropic with Your Unique Content
   One of the most common mistakes I discover in most business websites is this; there’s something wrong with the way they create data feed on their offering listings for the purpose of shopping comparison. They tend to be philanthropic with the few unique content featured on their product pages, giving them away to multiple comparison sites – this results in significant duplicate content issues.   The worst part is when those data feeds get scooped by scrapers, which would eventually result in duplication of those product details on multiple scraper websites.

There are more common SEO mistakes that I surprisingly see in websites; however, the ones outlined above are more critical and should be addressed urgently.