Free SEO Tips and Hints
Ranking No. 1
Your websites organic position is dictated by the Search Engines, they do not recommend any SEO experts or have any special relationships with such companies. Google clearly state within their webmaster guidelines that 'No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google'.
Many optimisation companies boast of this kind of achievement, software companies also make claims of guaranteed top placement, usually within 24 hours, Google do not recommend such products, and even go as far as naming one such product that violates their terms of service.
Search Engine friendly websites
As Search Engines need to crawl web pages for indexing, the importance of producing a website that does not harm this process can not be over stressed. Website design mistakes in terms of SEO can result with a search engine bot not fully indexing a site or even passing over a complete website. A summary of the techniques to avoid include :-
Flash Intro's / Flash Site
Website designers can not resist using flash to show off their design skills, Search Engines to date can not read flash content, websites that have a flash introduction or a complete website produced using flash can not be crawled or indexed by the search engines.
Flash content used correctly, certainly can enhance a website, although it would not be recommended to produce a site with a flash intro, sole means of site navigation, or the main content unless the website includes a non-flash version.
Java and JavaScript
Java and Javascript are commonly used for navigating around a website. Both technologies can be unreadable to search engines and there are known accessibility issues, quite often the web designer produces a second navigation system using standard links and incorporates them into the site, to allow indexing and improve accessibility.
Frames
Frames are not commonly used by website designers today, they are renowned for causing problems for both browsers and search engines. A framed site is split into two or more parts within the browser, with each frames containing individual web pages, search engine can have difficulty getting through the frame definition.
Poor Website Design
The latest professional website designs ensure content is completely separate from any presentational markup, these semantically produced websites are search engine friendly and assist the indexing process of a website.
Semantically produced Websites re-use, presentational images, graphics, background colours, etc and ease the workload on the server. Such streamlined websites assist the crawling process, by reducing bandwidth and the search engines server resources.
Irrelevant Content
The search engines purpose is simple, to match the searchers query with relevant good quality sites.
Information and relevant content is what makes the web, good content is everything. If your site does not satisfy the searchers request, your competitors will. Leading market research suggests that users exit a site within 10 seconds if the information they require is unlikely to be found on the visiting site.
Creating a useful site is key to your website success, even if your sole aim is to sell products via your site. The more useful the site is, the more visitors it will attract.
The nature of the web is to link to other websites, popular sites attract inbound links, relevant good quality links attract the search engine and they display your site to the searchers.
Why is content so important?
Originally search engines were academic research tools, designed to locate text information, by and large this concept still remains.
Search Engines also need to make a decision on which web pages to return, the indexing process involves reading the content, and summarising what appears relevant. The words entered by the searcher are matched to the summarised content and returned via the results page. A website with little or no relevant content is not going to be returned.
Dynamic Websites
Unlike conventional static websites, database driven websites typically produce a new page to each searcher enquiry. Pages are therefore unlikely to be indexed, due to a large quantity of pages looking similar, title pages and meta data being identical.
