1. Not Targeting 1 Keyword Per Page
This is the most important part of on page SEO and so many people are either unaware of its importance or forget to do it. It’s a hell of a lot easier to target a single keyword per page than to target 10 keywords per page. At the most you should target 2 keywords, but you should try to keep it to just one. My tip is to focus your efforts on 1 keyword per page. If you do this your site will get better results.

2. No Keyword In URL
The URL of each page should have the keyword you are targeting for that page. If it doesn’t, then it’s just going to be harder for you to get that page ranking for that keyword. Simple. This is crucial to SEO success and if you can change it, do it before it’s too late!

3. Poor Use of Meta Description and Keywords
The most common mistake regarding meta description is people not using it at all, unbelievably. To be clear, the meta description is a short description which is used to describe your website in search engine result listings. It is a great way to encourage people to visit your website when they find you on the search engines. It also doesn’t hurt to have your target keyword there – use it as part of the “advert” for your site. Meta keywords can be the most common mistake people make. Putting too many keywords is the cardinal sin. You should limit yourself to a maximum of 5 to 8 keywords because putting more will only get you penalised by the search engines for keyword spamming.

Speeding up websites is important — not just to site owners, but to all Internet users. Faster sites create happy users and we’ve seen in our internal studies that when a site responds slowly, visitors spend less time there. But faster sites don’t just improve user experience; recent data shows that improving site speed also reduces operating costs. Like us, our users place a lot of value in speed — that’s why we’ve decided to take site speed into account in our search rankings. We use a variety of sources to determine the speed of a site relative to other sites.

Just announced today over at Google Webmaster Central Blog – this is something you should already have been tweaking for user experience but knowing it will effect rankings in a small way (as one of over 200 factors) this should wake up some sleeping webmasters, SEO’s and designers.

1. Use Your Blog to Set the Stage

A blog is the basis and foundation for getting your message or viewpoint across to the world. Using the blog as a central hub of information provides a web presence that you can use to interact with your existing customers and potential customers. Blogs are also a lot cheaper than having a full website built for you, and they can be pretty customisable. The content of your blog is where you can demonstrate your knowledge and expertise and provide useful information to your peers.

2. Use Facebook Strategically

Using Facebook shouldn’t be a question of if it should be used, it should always be used. Facebook has half a billion users and for a business it is essential to create a Facebook page for your information and services. In terms of visibility it is essential because the content and resources that you post get indexed by search engines. Making relationships that can last with your fans is also important.

Make sure that you constantly expand your page by reminding people to join. Ask and answer questions with your keywords (if possible), send updates and let people know what you’re doing.  The more active your page is, the more visible it is because every action taken by a member of your page is posted on his or her own profile with a link back to your page.

3: Use Twitter

With millions of Twitter updates every day, you want to make sure your message is out there on the popular micro blogging site as well. Tweets are showing up in real-time search results and with tools like http://search.twitter.com and Twitter management clients like TweetDeck and HootSuite that enable you to search and follow keywords, it’s critical to have your content show up when your ideal client does a search. You do need to spend some time every week on Twitter, in real time, responding, replying and sharing great resources (that support your objectives).

Recently on Google webmaster forums someone was seeing a new form of phone numbers in AdWords ads. Google is placing a grayed out phone number on the ad, between the ad title and ad description. Normally the advertiser places their phone number directly in to the description, which is different from this new feature.

It seems that Google are currently testing the feature with a small number of advertisers in which a phone number can be included within the ad to help them more effectively engage with customers who prefer to connect over the phone.

This is interesting news as currently many PPC experts try and fit in the phone number as part of the ad, to try and get people to call them before clicking through to their site, and therefore saving money from the adwords. It is interesting to see Google making this easier for people to do, but to be honest most people actually want good quality traffic coming to their website, rather than just interacting over the phone.