Search Engine Optimisation Pitfalls
Author: John Hill

On page factors - Is your website search engine friendly?

So you have a website but where is it on Google? Have you
fallen foul of a penalty or have you overlooked one of the many
common search engine optimisation pitfalls when designing your
site?

Understanding what works for the search engines and what
doesn't when it comes to the content on your website can have a
crucial impact on the relevance and/or page rank of your pages
from a SEO perspective.

Here we highlight common mistakes that could affect your
ranking on Google and other search engines.

Optimising for the correct keywords - Basically 'Get real'
about what keywords you feel your website can be ranked for. If
you have a ten page website in a highly competitive market then
ranking naturally for the major terms will be close to
impossible. Use the Overture keyword tool together with the
number of results on Google to find out what keywords are
searched for and how many other websites are targeting them. If
you are lucky then you might even find a popular keyword that
not many other websites are optimised for. Alternatively a good
tool for this job is Wordtracker from Rivergold Associates Ltd.

Code validation - If your html code is not valid then this
could make it very difficult or even impossible for a search
engine to separate your page content from your code. If the
search engine cannot see your content then your page will
obviously have no relevance.

Frames - Even though most, if not all, major search engines now
index frames and even with the use of the NOFRAMES tag you run
the risk of your pages being displayed in the search engine
results out of context. As each individual page is indexed
separately, it is likely that your website visitors will not
see your pages within your frame and will effectively be stuck
on the page they arrive at.

If you must use frames then create a 'Home' link on each of
your individual content pages and point the link at your
frameset index page.

JavaScript navigation - If you use JavaScript to control your
website navigation then search engine spiders may have problems
crawling your site. If you must use JavaScript then there are
two options available to you:

Use the NOSCRIPT tag to replicate the JavaScript link in
standard HTML. Replicate your JavaScript links as standard HTML
links in the footer of your page.

Flash content - Currently only Google can index Macromedia
Flash files, how much or how little content they see is open to
debate. So until search engine technology is able to handle your
.swf as standard then it would be advisable to avoid the use of
these. Again if you must use Flash then offer a standard HTML
alternative within NOEMBED tags.

Dynamic URLs - Although Google and Yahoo are able to crawl
complicated URLs it is still advisable to keep your URLs simple
and avoid the use of long query strings. Do not including
session IDs in the URL as these can either create a 'spider
trap' where the spider indexes the page over and over again or,
at worst, your pages will not get indexed at all. If you do need
to include parameters in the URL then limit them to two and the
number of characters per parameter to ten or less.

The best SEO solution for dynamic URLs is to use Mod-rewrite or
Multiviews on Apache.

No sitemap - A sitemap is the search engine optimisation tool
of choice to ensure every page within your website is indexed
by all search engines. You should link to your site map from,
at least, your homepage but preferably from every page on your
website. If your website contains hundreds of pages then split
the sitemap into several categorised maps and link these all
together. Try and keep the number of links per page on a
sitemap to less than 100.

Excessive links - Excessive links on a given page (Google
recommends having no more than 100) can lower its relevance
and, although it does not result in a ban, this does nothing
for your search engine optimisation strategy.

Be careful who you link to - As you have no control over who
links to your website, incoming links will not harm your rank.
However outbound links from your website to 'bad
neighbourhoods' like link farms will harm your ranking.

As a rule ensure as many of your outbound links as possible
link to websites that are topical to your field of business.


About The Author: John Hill - Developer, Designer and SEO
Professional with E-Gain New Media (http://www.e-gain.co.uk)
offering website design, search engine optimisation, PPC
management and online marketing consultancy.