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| Search Engine Optimization Mistakes Of Others |
If you knew all the right things to do and you had a roadmap showing you in detail the correct path to follow then life would be very easy. I will do my best to share many SEO mistakes common to people trying to promote there site and webmaster blunders.
- Search Engines HATE SPAM
SPAM is usually associated with either the food, or email solicitation. We all hate SPAM, when we receive bulk email that is untargeted and intrusive. Well search engines hate SPAM also. You may be SPAMING search engines now but just don't know it. Search engines will "Black List" websites that do not play by the rules. It is unclear what the rules are, as search engines are afraid of backlashes that this might have. I will explain, Thousands of companies or individuals claim that they can optimize your site for search engines when in fact most of these are scams. With so many companies trying to figure out the latest ways to trick search engines into ranking them number one and create software that ruins things for the rest of us. Below is a list of rules to follow to make sure you will not be black listed.
Search Engine Guidelines |
- Create your website pages for visitors not search engines.
- Do not try and trick search engines for better rankings.
- Don't add your link or send a link to websites that are questionable. This can affect your rating and blacklist your site.
- Don't use unauthorized computer programs to submit pages, programs like WebPosition Gold™ that send automatic or programmatic queries to search engines may improve your site positioning in the short-term but they can cripple your changes in the long-term.
- Invisible links are Bad. Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
- Don't employ cloaking or sneaky redirects.
- Don't send automated queries to Search engines.
- Don't load pages with irrelevant words.
- Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
- Avoid "doorway" pages created just for search engines, or other "cookie cutter" approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.
- Hand submit your site to search engines
- Input accurate content in metta-tags
- Search engines can not read JavaScript
- Search engines will not follow dynamic links
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Here is my suggested To Do List with a recommended timeline
- Check www.Alexa.com to see if the company providing SEO software is even ranked on search engines. A lot of companies give false advertisements promising the world but in reality they will leave you with nothing.
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| To Do List |
SPAM = BAD
Not only is SPAM illegal, it is very annoying and attracts hackers who also hate spam and want to destroy your site. Once again SPAM = BAD
However newsletters, can be very resourceful and bring attention where you want it (back to your website) Be sure to email list with "Opt In" in short this means the person receiving the newsletter signed up for it.
Banner ads
Posting your banner with banner blasting companies you will increase your visibility but unless your banner is located on high traffic sites like yahoo, msn, hotmail, careerbuilders, or others you will not have as good of a return for your money.
Search Engine Submission
You should submit your site to as many true search engines as you can find, try and stay away from FFA (Free For All) search engines.
Metta Tag Analyzing
Make certain that your metta tags are specific to that page
Advertise
with
Search
Engines
This is one of the best solutions for traffic flow. I suggest google adsence this works very much like the PPC but since it is with a huge established firm you can have a absolute guarantee that targeted traffic will arrive at your site.
PPC
-
Pay
Per
Click
You can find many pay-per-click sites and these run in a account based manor. You put money into your account with one of these PPC search engines and they will send traffic your way. For every user who clicks on the link to your site they will deduct the pre-designated amount from your account.
Web
Directory
Web Directories like yellowpages.com will help your site get recognition from search engines and local traffic. This is usually free to list with these companies
Strategic
Linking
Search engines use something called a crawler. This allows them to follow links from one website to another. The more links that the search engines find on different sites to your creates a popularity count. The higher your count gets is the one of the deciding factors to your rankings on a search site and placement.
Text
&
Title
The content in your site is looked at by search engine crawlers and the association of your content to your title. A great site to view is tigerdirect.com they have used content and titles in every page on their site that work together proving to the search engines that the specific page being crawled has information that emulates the metta tags and title.
Exit
Exchange,
Text
&
Banner
Exchange
This is a visual way of doing strategic linking. Please look at the subject above.
AD
Swarming
or
Blasting
Programs
and
IP
to
IP
This is a up and coming technology, it does not have as strong of an effect yet as traditional methods. This method works well with end-user computers that do not have pop-under & pop-up blockers installed.
Posting
Links
Post links to your site whenever possible, some suggestions are through forums, blogs, guestbook's, emails, text exchange, link exchange and banner exchanges.
Hire Professionals
As you can see getting visitors to your site can be accomplished by any one of these and the more you use the better your |
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| Layout & Design |
Believe it or not the way you design your site has an impact on the result you will receive on search engines. Sites that take longer to load due to slow servers or to many or large images add factors in this. You can fake search engines by creating gateway pages that load in fractions of seconds and redirect to your website or you can just create a site that is on a fast server and doesn't have large images allowing the pages to load faster. When you design a site make it attractive but remember K.I.S.S. this means Keep It Simple Students. A site that is to busy can distract visitors and frustrate them when they can not find what they are looking for.
The use of Frames, Flash, JavaScript, Image Maps, or Dynamic URLs can hurt your SEO performance. It does not matter how good you are at SEO you will fall short every time just because search engine crawlers can not follow the code. Before you get tied up in all the optimization tips, read this carefully and make sure that your current site or the one you will build will give you grief with search engines. Almost everything can be fixed or worked with one way or another before you submit.
Optimizing Frames
If your site uses frames, you've got problems - as far as the search engines are concerned anyway!
The problem is that search engines do not index framed sites very well. In fact, the search engines do such a poor job of indexing frames that we recommend redesigning your site without them if you want to get good listings in the search engines.
Now, if your site must use frames there are some tips we recommend you implement to make sure that you get the best listings you can even with frames.
The problem:
A frame is exactly what the name conveys - they are an HTML page that "frames" other HTML pages. Now, the problem arises when you go to submit. In most cases a framed site will only have one page you can submit, the home page. Since your site uses frames the home page actually has nothing that the search engine can use to determine how to list your site. Why? Because your home page is actually a frameset which does not have any real content. Here's an example that should help you see what we mean. Keep in mind this code is what the search engines see:
| Example Code of a Site Using Frames |
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Example Framed Site</TITLE>
</HEAD>
<FRAMESET cols="150,*">
<FRAME name="contents" target="main">
<FRAME name="main">
</FRAMESET>
</HTML> |
We can't explain everything about frames here, but you should easily be able to see in the above example that their is no real content for the search engine to use to determine how to list your site. All that is there is HTML code. The result is a framed site will often not get listed at all, and if it does it will usually be listed very poorly.
The solution:
Not really a "solution" (the solution would be to get rid of the frames!), but the best thing you can do to improve your results is to use the <noframes> tag within your frameset. This tag was originally used for displaying content to people using older web browsers that did not support viewing frames. While just about all web browsers now support frames the <noframes> tag can still be used for content that will help your framed site get listed. In addition, you should also implement the best title tag, and meta tags that you can.
Where it belongs:
The <noframes> tag belongs just before the </frameset> tag for your frameset, as you can see below in red.
| Example Code of a Site Using Frames with <NOFRAMES> Tag |
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Example Framed Site</TITLE>
</HEAD>
<FRAMESET cols="150,*">
<FRAME name="contents" target="main">
<FRAME name="main">
<NOFRAMES>
Optimized page content goes here for best results.
</NOFRAMES>
</FRAMESET>
</HTML> |
Tag tips:
-
Place optimized content within the <body> tags that you see above within the <noframes> tag. An easy way to do this is to create a new regular (not framed) home page for your site that describes your site, products & services. Often the content can be taken directly from one of your existing framed pages. Once you have the page created view the HTML of the page and copy everything from within the <body> and </body> tags. Then paste the new content within the <body> and </body> tags found within the <noframes> tags of your frameset. A complete page (including all the HTML) can be placed within the body tags.
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Search engines like simple HTML pages, so since it is very unlikely anyone will ever see this <noframes> content we recommend keeping it very simple and text based for best results.
-
Make sure all your <noframes> content is optimized following all our tips. If it is not optimized, it is not going to help you very much.
-
Include links in the <noframes> content to all of the other important pages on your site so that the search engine will crawl and index them too.
-
Implement the best title tag, and meta tags that you can on the frameset page.
Drop Down Wizard
Easily create drop down menus! Unbelievable and super easy to use software makes creating drop down menus a breeze! Create drop down menus that perfectly match your website!
Sites That Use Dynamic URLs
Most search engines cannot or will not list any dynamic URLs. Dynamic URLs are most commonly used on database driven sites, or sites that are running scripts. They commonly look something like this one from MSN Search:
http://search.msn.com/results.asp?q=dynamic+url
If your URL contains any of the following elements it is considered a Dynamic URL as far as the search engines are concerned:
?, &, %, +, =, $, cgi-bin, .cgi
(commas above are just used as a separator)
If your URL contains any of the above elements it is very unlikely that it will get listed at any of the major search engines. We recommend that you submitting a different URL that is not dynamic if possible. If all of your URLs are dynamic you should probably consider making static pages (i.e. not dynamic) with URLs that do not contain any of the elements noted above so that you can get listed in the search engines.
Sites That Use Flash
Flash itself is not the problem. The problem is how it is used. The 2 largest problems with how Flash is used are:
-
Flash is often used on home pages as a "splash" page. The problem with these splash pages is that many times they are made entirely from Flash, which the search engines can't index. That means your splash page will not get listed. Your best bet search engine wise is to avoid submitting any page that is made mostly of Flash. If you must submit a page that is mostly Flash you can improve your chances of getting listed by to adding as much page copy to the page that you can. You should also make sure you have good meta tags and title tag.
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Hyperlinks made with Flash can't be spidered by the search engines. Normally, when you submit a page to a search engine you can expect the search engine to follow the links on the page you submitted and spider the rest of your site, which is a good thing. Unfortunately, unless you have (or add) standard HTML hyperlinks to the other pages of your site none of your other pages will be able to get spidered by the search engines, which is a bad thing. An easy way fix this problem is to create a site map page uses standard HTML links to link to every page on your site. Then add a standard HTML link on each page of your site that links to the site map.
Sites That Use Image Maps for Navigation
Due to the code that makes up an image map search engines often get trapped in them and can't spider your site.
If you use image maps for your main site navigation you should consider switching to standard HTML hyperlinks or your site will most likely not get spidered. If you want to keep the image maps you can, but you should add another navigation scheme to your site that uses only standard HTML hyperlinks so that your site will get spidered. An easy way to do this is to create a site map page uses standard HTML links to link to every page on your site. Then add a standard HTML link on each page of your site that links to the site map.
Sites That Use JavaScript for Navigation
Search engines can't follow links that are within JavaScript, so your site will not get spidered unless you also have some form standard HTML hyperlinks that they can follow. You should add some form standard HTML hyperlinks to all of your pages on each of your pages so that your site will be spidered properly. An easy way to do this is to create a site map page uses standard HTML links to link to every page on your site. Then add a standard HTML link on each page of your site that links to the site map.
HTML Fast Track
Stop putting up with the hassles of learning web design. This set of over 35 fantastic tools and tutorials will help you learn how to create profitable web sites instantly with ease!
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| Hosting Plans |
When choosing a host remember to purchase enough bandwidth and also make certain it has the features you want like statistics, or even certain scripting languages like PHP.
www.godaddy.com
We use them as a host and domain provider. They have a customer support line as well as the best deals on the market. Highly recommended. |
| Website Tools |
It is my belief to give you as many resources as you could possible need to make your interaction with this site as easy and painless as possible. Here you will find third party links, we have no control over the content that is released in these sites. But we will continue to monitor for invalid links and information. I hope you find these resources as helpful as I have.
www.buttongenerator.com
The Button Generator is an online generator that allows you to create on the fly free or membership only buttons. We have used them many times and will continue to use them as they grow. This company has a great technology and very speedy results translating your text into a png button.
www.swish.com
Create Flash movies for your site in minutes, this easy to use software makes Flash animation simple. You can also download a free trial.
www.godaddy.com
We use them as a host and domain provider. They have a customer support line as well as the best deals on the market. Highly recommended.
www.needscripts.com
Need Scripts? This company is becoming the best resource for webmasters. You can find free scripts as well as paid, but they provide you with many unique ideas to be imported into your existing website.
Accurate Site Stats Counter
Do you know where you visitors are coming from? What keywords, browser and OS they use? What pages they view the most? Over 30 traffic stats reports in easy-to-understand way! Sign up today at www.RelmaxTop.com
Web Hosting Reviews
Web Hosting Reviews by Actual Customers. Thousands of webmasters have reviewed their host. Find out your host's rating. Also free SEO articles, web marketing articles, and web developer news.
SEO
Tutorial
Free 21-part step-by-step guide to getting a top ranking on Google and other search engines
Flash
Templates
Free-Flash-Template offers a good selection of free, eye-catching multimedia web templates. Flash Templates include all source files to get your site up and running right away.
ScriptExchange.com
Post your projects and have coders bid on them. Find the best prices! Freelance programmers for hire Sign up for a free account today!
BoxedArt.com
High quality Mascots, Templates, Interfaces, and Photos for royalty free commercial and personal use.
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WoW
Directory
Offers free, sponsored and express submissions. Get into the major search engines fast and improve your page ranking with WoW.
Cheap
Web
Hosting
Find Cheap Web Hosting at Ratemyhost.com Now you can find the right web host the first time. There are hundreds of web hosting companies to choose from.
WoW
Yellow
Pages
Business
Directory
Submit your site to WoW Directories partner site WoW Yellow Pages. A regional and world business and services directory offering free, express, and sponsored submission.
Free
Website
Content
Add fresh content to your site in minutes. Games, Weather, News, Movie Search and lots more! Best of all it is 100% free and customizable.
Free
Web
Tools
Free guestbooks, message boards, chatrooms, polls, stats/counters, classified, forms, instant message, and a ton more!
Website Analytics
Do you know how many people visit your website, which search engines and keywords they use? Get instant, reliable statistics about your visitors.
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Don't forget to add your site to the major search
engines |
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