In any business plan, there is always a section dedicated to competitor analysis. This is because it is important for a business owner to assess the competitor’s strength and weaknesses so that he will be able to attain the right market positioning for the business. The same concept is true in SEO, you need to look into the SEO techniques that are being implemented by the competitors to determine which works and which doesn’t.

1.       Find the Right Sites for Comparison

Of course, the website you will compare to need to be in the same industry as your own. In this regard, you need to know what keyphrase you want to rank highly on in major search engines. After you have determined your ideal keyphrase, type this term up on major search engines like Google and Yahoo; then, select the top websites that have a high ranking on the two search engines. Remember to avoid “Goliath” sites such as Wikipedia, eBay, and Amazon because these tend to achieve high rankings because of their girth.

2.       Search for Patterns

You need to specifically pay attention to the page that is ranking high on the search engine. Pay particular attention to the keyphrases in the page and its location. Record your observations and compare the results on all your competitors. Ultimately, the goal is to find a pattern of tactics that led to your competitor’s successful SEO. Some of the areas you need to focus on include:

·         Title and Description Tags

·         Text Links

·         Heading Tags

·         Navigation

·         CSS Layout

3.       Apply Successful Tactics to Your Own Website

After you have determined which tactics are successful for your competitor’s pages, you need to implement what you have learned to your own website.

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In the previous post, Top SEO Mistakes Part 1, we have tacked why untargeted keywords, insufficient optimized body text, and not using title tags have an adverse effect on your SEO. In this second part, we will look into two of the other top SEO mistakes:

1.       Submitting your site to “1,000″ search engines

Some people fall for the hype “We’ll submit your website to 1,000 search engines”. Don’t use a SEO company that advertises this kind of service. This is because you don’t need to submit to a thousand search engines to receive web traffic. More than 90% of all web traffic is generated by Google and other search engines in the top 10.

In addition, minor search engines usually use the database found in the major search engines so you don’t need to submit your site to these search engines anyway. Several of the “1,000 search engines” may also be Free for All (FFA) websites which can even damage your reputation because search engines consider FFA to be of low quality and which uses spam techniques to falsify link popularity. So basically, you just need to make sure that you have submitted your site to the top 10 search engines; most of them also have regional versions as well.

2.       Resubmitting Too Often

You’ve already submitted your optimized site to search engines but it’s been a month and you’re still not getting any traffic. Is this the time to resubmit? No. Some search engines take up to ten weeks before it indexes your site. Also, there is really no need to resubmit because once you’re on the database; the search engines will know what the site is about and the “robot” will regularly re-index the site to achieve relevant results for the search engine. The only time that resubmission is necessary is if your URL changes or if the domain drops out of the database.

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There are proper techniques in search engine optimization (SEO) but a lot of site owners usually utilize the wrong methods that can do more harm than good. A lot of people who are starting out in the business get SEO techniques wrong; there is nothing wrong with that because most successful web owners have gone through a trial-and-error phrase. However, knowing which mistakes to avoid will definitely help save you a lot of time and effort. So here is the list of top SEO mistakes out there:

1.       Not Using Title Tags – you are missing a vital opportunity to improve your search engine ranking if you make this mistake. Search engine index the title tag and the software considers it as an essential factor in the relevancy algorithm.

2.       Untargeted keywords – the choice of keywords is another common mistakes. It makes sense to use the keyword “data” if you are selling data management software. But when think about it, how many websites are optimized for this keyword? Probably thousands, right? So consider more specific keywords that are really targeted for your business. There are tools such as Wordracker which allows you to discover what people are typing in search engines.

3.       Insufficient optimized body text – some main pages are made up of Flash files or graphics. This may look professional but it is still recommended for you to put texts on your main page to help the site rank well with search engines.

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Only a small number of people actually compress their PDF files. This is because even though PDF materials are increasingly becoming popular on the web, PDFs are still designed to provide high quality output that leaves little room for speed. In fact, even PDF files that are specifically designed for the internet is weighed down by change histories, unnecessary fonts, and unoptimized images. It is important to note though that optimizing these files will improve display speed, save bandwidth, shrink the file size, and help stop user frustration. So how exactly can you optimize your PDF files? Below are some basic guidelines to get you started:

Don’t Use Refried Images

If your graphic needs to be included as bitmaps, prepare them with minimum dimension and maximum compressibility. Take note that inserting compressed JPEG files into the PDF and then distilling them might create “artifacts” because of recompression. It is recommended for you to use back and white images instead of the colored ones so that you will be able to use newer JBIG2 which is great for monochromatic compression.

Use Vector Images

As much as possible, you need to use vector-based images for files that will normally be turned into GIF files. Vector images will scale properly and their mathematical configuration will take up less space compared to bitmaps. Similar to bitmap graphics, you can also compress vector images; you need to use the ZIP compression in PDF to do this.

Minimize Your Fonts

For small PDF files, your font size will have a significant effect on the overall size of the file. Try to limit the number of fonts on the document.

Flatten the Forms

Acrobat forms can actually take up a lot of space. The new Acrobat 8 Pro has a feature that can flatten the form fields: Choose Advanced > PDF Optimizer > Discard option. Remember that flattening the forms can make the form option unusable and the form data will be merged with the page. You also have the option to combine refried PDF files with old form pages to develop a hybrid file. In addition, if color is not required, try converting the file to grayscale.

Using these basic tips will help you get a more linear and compact PDF file that loads faster.

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