b>On page factors - Is market then ranking naturally for
your website search engine the major terms will be close to
friendly? impossible. Use the Overture
keyword tool together with the
So you have a website but where number of results on Google to
is it on Google? Have you fallen find out what keywords are
foul of a penalty or have you searched for and how many other
overlooked one of the many common websites are targeting them. If
search engine optimisation you are lucky then you might even
pitfalls when designing your find a popular keyword that not
site? many other websites are optimised
for. Alternatively a good tool
Understanding what works for the for this job is Wordtracker from
search engines and what doesn't Rivergold Associates Ltd.
when it comes to the content on
your website can have a crucial Code validation - If your
impact on the relevance and/or html code is not valid then this
page rank of your pages from a could make it very difficult or
SEO perspective. even impossible for a search
engine to separate your page
Here we highlight common mistakes content from your code. If the
that could affect your ranking on search engine cannot see your
Google and other search engines. content then your page will
obviously have no relevance.
Optimising for the correct
keywords - Basically 'Get Frames - Even though most,
real' about what keywords you if not all, major search engines
feel your website can be ranked now index frames and even with
for. If you have a ten page the use of the NOFRAMES tag you
website in a highly competitive run the risk of your pages being
displayed in the search engine Flash content - Currently
results out of context. As each only Google can index Macromedia
individual page is indexed Flash files, how much or how
separately, it is likely that little content they see is open
your website visitors will not to debate. So until search engine
see your pages within your frame technology is able to handle your
and will effectively be stuck on .swf as standard then it would be
the page they arrive at. advisable to avoid the use of
these. Again if you must use
If you must use frames then Flash then offer a standard HTML
create a 'Home' link on each of alternative within NOEMBED tags.
your individual content pages and
point the link at your frameset Dynamic URLs - Although
index page. Google and Yahoo are able to
crawl complicated URLs it is
JavaScript navigation - If still advisable to keep your URLs
you use JavaScript to control simple and avoid the use of long
your website navigation then query strings. Do not including
search engine spiders may have session IDs in the URL as these
problems crawling your site. If can either create a 'spider trap'
you must use JavaScript then where the spider indexes the page
there are two options available over and over again or, at worst,
to you: your pages will not get indexed
at all. If you do need to include
Use the NOSCRIPT tag to replicate parameters in the URL then limit
the JavaScript link in standard them to two and the number of
HTML. Replicate your JavaScript characters per parameter to ten
links as standard HTML links in or less.
the footer of your page.
The best SEO solution for dynamic
URLs is to use Mod-rewrite or (Google recommends having no more
Multiviews on Apache. than 100) can lower its relevance
and, although it does not result
No sitemap - A sitemap is in a ban, this does nothing for
the search engine optimisation your search engine optimisation
tool of choice to ensure every strategy.
page within your website is
indexed by all search engines. Be careful who you link to
You should link to your site map - As you have no control over who
from, at least, your homepage but links to your website, incoming
preferably from every page on links will not harm your rank.
your website. If your website However outbound links from your
contains hundreds of pages then website to 'bad neighbourhoods'
split the sitemap into several like link farms will harm your
categorised maps and link these ranking.
all together. Try and keep the
number of links per page on a As a rule ensure as many of your
sitemap to less than 100. outbound links as possible link
to websites that are topical to
Excessive links - your field of business.
Excessive links on a given page
About the Author:
John Hill - Developer, Designer and SEO Professional with E-Gain New Media offering search engine optimisation and PPC management
Read more articles by:
John Hill
Article Source: www.iSnare.com
