1. Don’t use graphics instead of text
Rendering text as graphics is a bad idea and should be avoided. Although you can read it, search engines cannot read the text on graphics. So, any words that are not in plain text will be completely ignored.
A lot of sites use graphical links, which can look nice. Search engines look at the words within the link to check for relevance to the users’ search, so if the link is a graphic, you lose points.
Another drawback of using graphical text is that it takes a lot longer to load.
2. Avoid fancy navigation
Some web designers like to show off by generating all sorts of fancy navigation systems that at first glance look cool. These navigation systems often use links that are generated by a script rather than a regular HTML link.
Search engines index your site by following links on your pages.
Because they can only see regular HTML links and cannot see programmed links they will just stop at your home page and ignore the rest of your website completely, they just don’t know the other pages are there.
3. Don’t use frames
Frames are web pages within web pages. Search engines have trouble seeing past frames so content in framed pages may not be indexed at all. What a waste. You can tell if a page is framed very easily. Just look at the address in the address bar. If the address does not change when you click to another page you are looking at a framed page.
There are cases where the advantages of using frames outweigh the drawbacks, but these are few and far between.
4. Don’t let content go stale
Google continuously scans through all the websites it knows about. This process takes a few weeks or months. If Google finds that the content on your web pages is the same as it was on the last scan, it will downgrade your listing. This may seem unfair, but a very high percentage of websites are dormant, dead or taking a very long rest, which means that their content is of less interest than recently updated websites.
Each time Google finds that your site has not changed, you go lower down the list. With fresh content, you start going up. It’s easy to keep your site vibrant and up-to-date with our Website Management Plans.
5. Don’t spam search engines
Google is too clever for most spammers. Spamming is the process of trying to trick a search engine into giving you a higher listing than the actual content of your website merits. These tricks include: using invisible text (white on white for example); using very small text; text in HTML comments; keywords repeated too many times and many others.
Trying to spam search engines is dangerous!
Search engines will ban sites for a certain period of time if they consider that they are attempting to trick them. There’s nothing you can do about it; you’ll just have to hope they let you back in the club at some time in the future.
