Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is all about making your website search engine friendly.

Besides typing in your “www.yourwebsite.com.au” and back links from other sites, search engines are the only way people can find your site – hence the importance of having your website optimised for search engines.

While everyone wants to be up the top of a Google search results list, many website are designed and built in such a way that aren’t search engine friendly, and as a result, they lose a lot of potential traffic.

Here are some SEO mistakes that are commonly made – does your website have any of them?

1. Splash Page / Entry Page
You go to a website where the first page is a huge image or flash banner, with a logo and saying ‘Click here to enter’.

That’s OK if you don’t care about what a search engine knows about your site, but if you do, a splash page is a big mistake.

You see, search engines have these things called ‘spiders’, which crawl through your website tracking all the links and content. The problem with a splash page is that the majority of the time, the link to the main site is embedded in the image, which stops the search engine spider from going any further.

The solution: Your homepage should include, at a minimum, target keywords and links to other pages in your site that are important.

2. Flash Menus or Flash Websites
While Flash might look pretty cool, it’s only a great tool if it’s used properly. When it comes to SEO, things like Flash menus, Flash Banners which contain keywords, or just a complete flash website, aren’t the best as the web spiders can’t search the site properly as they can’t read the keywords you have in your Flash banner or the navigation.

The Solution: Use Flash sparingly and not for important things such as menus or banners which contain keywords.

3. “Click Here” Link Text
I think every website has a link somewhere that says ‘Click here’ or ‘Learn more’ as the linking text. That’s fantastic if you want be ranked high for ‘Click here’! But if you want the search engines that your page has important information on a topic, then use those keywords as the links.

The Solution: Use topic/keywords as your links.

4. Page Titles
Page titles are what you see at the top of your web browser. Many sites just have their business name as the title, but the problem with that is that it’s like telling the search engine that every page on your website is the same.

The Solution: Combine your business name with keywords that are found on the individual pages.

I just read a great article on the Future of Publising in which Andrew Davies from Idio set out a simple ABCD framework for potential revenue streams for publishers in todays climate. They were:

Audience revenue drivers

This category covers the traditional revenue streams that are a function of the audience size: purchase price and advertising or sponsorship revenue.

Brand revenue drivers

Moving beyond the initial audience, this category denotes the brand extensions that can be implemented. Obvious examples include mobile applications, events and new products.

Content revenue drivers

This shifts the focus from the ‘normal’ consumer of any publisher, to explore the opportunities for supplying the asset to other stakeholders. Magazines can use their writers to create branded content commissioned by other companies, and books can be syndicated for other territories.

Data revenue drivers

As direct-to-consumer relationships increase, data becomes an invaluable asset for every publisher. This might be in the form of selling on marketing lists to interested brands, building insightful research from aggregate data, or selling through ancillary products to the current audience.

This is a really simple framework, that can be applied to alot of business not just traditional media houses.

700 billion minutes are spent by people on Facebook each month.

More than 250mn people log on to Facebook each day; Average user has 130 friends. 

Fastest growing Facebook audience is 35+ age group. 64% of 25-34 year olds use more than email to communicate.

Of 18-24 year olds 79% use Facebook more than email; 38% more than cell phone; 35% more than any other communication device.

70 percent of Facebook users are outside United States - Australia is has one of the largest amount of users in any country.