2.
Graphics-Based Web Sites. While web sites that offer
the visitor a more esthetically-pleasing experience may
seem like the best choice for someone searching for your
product, they are the most difficult to optimize. Since
search engine robots cannot read text within graphics or
animation, what they see may be just a small amount of
text. And if we learned anything from point #1, small
amounts of content will not result in top rankings. If
you really must offer the visitor a graphics-heavy or
Flash web site, consider creating an html-based side of
your site that is also available to visitors. This site
will be much easier to promote on the search engines and
your new found visitors will also have the option to
jump over to the nicer looking part of your site.
3.
Dynamic Web Pages. If most of your web site is
generated by a large database (such as a large book
dealer with stock that is changing by the minute) you
may find that some of your pages do not get indexed by
major search engines. If you look at the URL of these
pages they can be extremely long and have characters
such as ?, #, &, %, or = along with huge amounts of
seemingly random numbers or letters. Since these pages
are automatically generated by the database as needed,
the search engines have a tough time keeping them up to
date and relevant for search engine users.
One way
to combat this problem is to offer a search engine
friendly site map listing all your static pages just to
let them know that you do have permanent content on your
site. If search engines see links going to and from
these dynamic pages within a good internal linking
system, this may also lead to the pages getting indexed.
The link popularity of your site may carry more weight
in this case as well, so if you can't offer as much
static content as your competition, make sure you have
an aggressive link campaign on the go
4.
Proper Use of HTML. There is quite a bit of sub-par
web design software out there. Word processors usually
have a way to create HTML documents which can be easily
uploaded to a site via ftp. However, in many cases the
code that the search engine robots see is mostly lines
and lines of font and position formatting, not relevant
content. The more efficiently written web sites usually
achieve higher rankings. Our choice for web design
software is Macromedia Dreamweaver, as it is an industry
standard. It also makes using CSS (Cascading Style
Sheets) a breeze, which can drastically cut down on the
amount of text formatting in HTML code. Hand-coding HTML
to design sites is also a good method if you are
proficient enough.
There
are some no brainers too: Web sites with abnormal
amounts of hyperlinks, bold or italicized text, improper
use of heading, alt, or comment tags can also expect to
see low rankings.
5.
Choosing a Domain Name. The golden rule to web
development of any kind is to keep your visitors in mind
above all else - even search engine optimization. When
choosing a domain name, one should pick either your
business name (if you have a high-profile business name
such as Chapters or Coca-Cola) or a brief description of
your products. Domain names can always help with search
engine optimization, since it is another area of your
web site in which important keywords can appear. Forget
about long-winded domains such as
www.number-one-best-books-on-earth.com. No one will ever
remember it and it will be hard to print on business
cards or in ads.
If you
need to change your domain name for any reason you
obviously don't want to lose existing rankings. An easy
way to do this, and one that is currently supported by
most search engines, is the 301 redirect. It allows you
to keep your existing rankings for your old domain name,
while forwarding visitors to your new web site
instantly.
