It would seem that picking out the right keywords and then employing them in keyword advertisements would be an easy enough task. But don’t let the simplicity of the concept fool you. There is much to learn about how to use your keywords effectively to draw traffic to your web site. Today we are looking at the dangers of keyword stuffing on your web page.

As you’re maximizing the value and return of the keywords that you’ve selected, you should be aware of one danger: keyword stuffing. This is the practice of overloading your web pages with keywords. The problem is, it’s hard to know exactly how many times to use a word on a web page.

Search engines don’t publish the maximum allowable number of keywords or keyword appearances on a page, so you’re left to determine how many times you should include keywords in your tags, titles, text, links, and headings.

Keyword stuffing, purposely or not, occurs in several ways on web pages. The first is when the writer includes on the web page (usually at the bottom, but it can be anywhere) a block of text that is nothing more than a repetition of the chosen keyword, like this:

AKC Breeding AKC Breeding AKC Breeding
AKC Breeding AKC Breeding AKC Breeding
AKC Breeding AKC Breeding AKC Breeding
AKC Breeding AKC Breeding AKC Breeding

Sometimes, this block of text is shown in the same font that other text on the page is shown; however, it’s not at all unusual for a block of text like this to be colored the same color as the page background so that it’s invisible to visitors, but perfectly readable by search engine crawlers. When it’s invisible to visitors, it’s called invisible keyword stuffing.

You also run the risk of accidentally falling victim to keyword stuffing on your page. This can happen when you’re placing too many keywords into tags, text, and other elements of your web page. As a general rule, you’ll want to keep the occurrence of keywords (called keyword density) at seven to ten percent of the words on your web page.

Keep in mind that seven to ten percent keyword density isn’t a hard and fast rule. It’s more a guideline that you should try to stay close to. Some search engines will allow a little higher keyword density before flagging your site as a spam site, whereas others might allow less than 10 percent. It’s a game that you’ll have to experiment with to learn what works and what doesn’t.

Tip: SEOChat has a cool keyword density tool which helps with determining the density of keywords on your pages.

One way to ensure that you’re not overdoing it with your keywords is to use several on each page that are unique to that page. These keywords should come from the topic of the page they will appear on. Many webmasters make the mistake of creating some general keywords which relate to the whole of their website, and then using those keywords on every page. This is the wrong approach; to get the best results, tailor the keywords on each page, to the topic of the page they will reside on.

Keywords are still one of the least expensive methods of advertising your web site. However, they’re not a simple select-and-forget-it solution. You’ll have to put plenty of effort and experimentation into learning what works and what doesn’t with your PPC ad and keyword placement. Keep the efforts consistent and regular, though, and you’ll eventually find the right combination that will not only provide the increased traffic and conversions you’re looking for, but will also do it within the confines of your budget.

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Ever wonder what the biggest SEO myths are? I have taken the most prevalent myths that seem to be constantly resurfacing and examined them for you. This is a must read for anyone looking to hire an Search engine optimisation firm or someone looking to do SEO for themselves.

Myth # 1: All Meta Tags Are Of Equal Importance

Some Meta tags are useful while others are not. I have stated this many times. Search engines are relying more and more about what is on the website than what the tags are telling them. The description tag is used by some (but not all) search engines. The same goes for the keyword tag. Keyword tags are used more by spammers and people using software to find you as a link partner than the search engines. In my opinion, the only tags you should concentrate your efforts on are the robot tag and the description tags.

Myth # 2: You Should Submit Your Site to Search Engines Weekly or Monthly

Honestly, I never submit any site more than 1 time and sometimes I don’t even do that. If you submit your site once, you’re good. The engines will come back on their own. You can sometimes speed up the process of getting your site indexed by linking it to a high traffic or high PR site. The search engines will find the URL to your site and index it automatically. Read the rest of this entry »

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In part one of Increase Conversion’s by Decreasing Shopping Cart Abandonment, we shown you the first 10 top tips to increasing your conversion rates. In part 2, we conclude with our final 10 tips, and a conclusion. Read on for more top tips…

11. Give the visitors the option to call.

If visitors have a problem during the checkout or just feel uncomfortable using their credit card online, give them a phone number to call. Use a separate telephone number that is different from the one you use for the rest of your site. this will help you track, evaluate & understand shoppers’ needs and behaviors. While you are at it, give them a fax-order form so they can complete their order by fax if they prefer.

12. Make it always about your new customer.

Make the focus of the checkout process easier for your new visitor with whom you do not yet have a relationship with, than for your registered customer. It is much harder to acquire a new customer than to keep selling to loyal customers. Registered customer’s will find a way to sign in (if they don’t already have a cookie), but don’t make the registration and log-in a barrier in the way of the new visitors finding their way to check out. Read the rest of this entry »

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This isn’t simply how many people don’t complete the buying process. A Checkout process can be a number of steps, and each step is its own little mini-conversion. You really want to know where in the shopping cart process folks get frustrated enough to say goodbye, because thats the point where the carts conversion process is failing. So check your metrics. If you’ve got a tidy little cybershop and still want to improve your shopping cart abandonment rates, then here are some ideas on how to fix your cart:

1. Check how many steps are in your checkout process.

This is usually a prime “knee-jerk” target for results. But we have found that whether you have one step, or seven, it is not all that critical. We had one client whose checkout process we were able to bring down from six steps to one, but there was no correlation in reduction of the abandonment rate to the number of steps. Once people found what they came for, they found a way and the time to checkout no matter how many steps were involved. Should you change the number of steps? No. It may not be worth the time, effort, and expense of trying to reduce the steps in the checkout process. Try some of these other ideas first.

2. Include a “progress indicator” (e.g, “step 2 of 5″) on each checkout page.

No matter how many steps you have in your checkout process, keep shoppers oriented by letting them know exactly where they are in the checkout process by step number. Be sure to clearly label the task to be completed at each step. Always give them an opportunity to review what they did in the previous steps and a way to return to their current step if they do go back. Read the rest of this entry »

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