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.

Before staking out any fund on SEO, your first task is to select the suitable keywords. In trying to pick the right keywords, you need to understand what is behind the ‘why’ and ‘how’ of people’s search. When people surf the web, they are looking for information on the solution to a problem as well as answers to questions.

Here are helpful tips for selecting the most suitable keywords:

• Have a brainstorming session: This is when you would embark on critical thinking to come forth with list of phrases you perceive visitors would likely employ when searching. The list would turn to be your intuitive word list.
• Take advantage of your competitor’s website: Look for the phrases your competitors are using, that are also applicable to your offerings. Another technique for uncovering the target keywords of your competitors is to visit sites such as keywordspy.com, or compete.com.
• Know when to go local: If you are competing for local market, it is better to go local with your keywords – local keyphrases help you rank higher in a faster and easier way. Example of local keywords include florist in Houston, painting contractor in Austin etc.
• Think like your customer, at least momentarily: A customer would enter a search query such as ‘home for sale’, while you may be using an expert term such as ‘real estate for sale’. So, you would need to bring your keywords to the level of the customers, their preferred search terms.
• Take advantage of keyword tools: The free Google Keyword Tool can be useful for this purpose. Also, paid Keyword Service such as WordTracker can be helpful.
• Consider the phrases used by buyers: This is usually 3 – 5 words or longer. They may also include specific locations and refine their searches in particular ways.
• Relevancy: The first keywords to choose from your keyword list are those that apply mostly to your offering. Avoid selecting the keywords that feature the highest search volume first.
• Search volume: After giving priority to relevant keywords, you can now come to keywords based on search volume and the number of competitors using exact or similar keywords. You would prefer to go for most relevant highest volume phrases, that probably feature the lowest competition.
• Analytics: Ensure that you look at your web analytics if you have a website. Check the conversion rate for each keyword. Determine the phrases with greatest time on page, and the ones with the lowest bounce rate.
• Implementation: If you are embarking on organic SEO, apply the keywords chosen for this purpose to the webpages that are most relevant and employ them in the visible text. Use the keywords or phrases in your visible text and titles for articles, social media campaign, as well as blogging.

Taking advantage of these powerful tips would help you achieve outstanding result with your SEO efforts.

As usual, the month of December has been a hot and happening stretch of time for business strategists who have busy brain storming sessions on how to take advantage of the massive traffic for ecommerce sales and for the increased holiday demand. There are special promos offerings, coupon codes, contests and several other tactics of drawing customers with free shipping offers etc. In the midst of these, you can easily loose focus of the long-term business goals.

Pause a moment and let us examine top tips that would help you achieve increased email marketing conversions as we enter 2011.

1. Proper Tracking
   You need all the facts in place before your email marketing optimization can take place. Without proper tracking, you don’t have a means of ascertaining whether the changes you made impacted the results. Conversions are the most essential metric you can track
2. Redesign Your Email Layout
   Perhaps you’ve been using the same email layout for the past 12 months, 6 months or even 2 months. It is important that you experiment with new email layout designs, testing them with a segment of your database. You may be wasting money using a poor email marketing template.
3. Extensive Testing
   The test should start out simple, carrying out basic split tests on your subject line. Then, venture into the layout and design of your message with the testing. As soon as you decipher these variables, go ahead and test other areas which may not be aspects of the real email – however, they affect the outcome substantially. You can achieve untold results by testing the message segmentation, email sending time as well as landing page variables.
4. Segmentation Increase
   A lot of people are yet to start implementing segmentation; if you are among them, ensure that implementing segmentation becomes a priority to you as we approach 2011. Email marketing has grown to become a cooler and increased personalized communication medium, especially with the advent of social media as well as tracking – the engine that moves this personalization is segmentation!
5. Captivating Content
   It is appalling that most email senders do not have the skills and quite surprisingly, most of them do not take a serious note of fresh and captivating content. Ensure that this year you experiment with relevant, conversational and captivating content in place of the graphic-heavy email layout.
6. Get Fresh Subscribers
   One of the email marketing changes you should embark on in 2011 is list growing. Ensure that all hands are on deck for this task in your company (whether large or small). Your team members should take advantage of every opportunity – on the phone, at the register, in person etc and work towards growing your database.
7. Consider Outsourcing  Your Email Marketing
   If you notice that the other techniques (1-6) are not producing results (probably because you are not implementing them rightly), then consider outsourcing your email marketing to any email marketing company with an established