Tips & Techniques - Do’s and Don’ts

Most prominent search engines have highly evolved algorithms that are trained to reward content of a site that is structured logically, well presented and refreshed frequently. They are also trained to detect and penalize sites, which attempt to spam or manipulate its very essence of the algorithm – to present true, accurate and closely relevant information to its users. Search Engines are constantly fine-tuning and adjusting their algorithms to battle abuse and spamming. Avoid all deceptive or spamming practices or your site may be permanently excluded or banned from their indexes.

Overkill of Meta tag inflation, multiple-repeat submissions, link farms, use of doorway pages, invisible text and cloaking fall in this category. Some webmasters feel elated that they have ‘beaten’ the algorithm of a particular search engine but it is just a matter of time before their site is either totally thrown out or ‘black listed’ due to use of these techniques. Many search engines today ignore Meta tags altogether. For example, most search engines do not give heed to your keyword, Meta tags.

Safest and a long-term optimization is best achieved by structuring your site optimization with honesty and integrity. If you think you have an idea of search engine’s algorithm, use this knowledge to present the best content to the search engine. Make your site search engine friendly, not to beat it’s algorithm. You don’t want your trick to last only till their next algorithm update.

The following checklist will help you avoid the pitfalls.

Here's a list of Don’ts:

1. Don’t make your home page in all flash. Most search engines cannot read the flash yet. Although search engines are experimenting ‘flash readable’ algorithm, it still needs a lot of working and formal deployment.
   
   
2. Don't build your site in frames - most search engines spiders have problems with frames. Although there are techniques available to work around this problem if you must have your site in frames. Consult a good expert who knows how to handle framed sites.
   
   
3. Don't rely on heavy graphics to convey your site content - spiders can't read graphics, they need your site 'meat' in text.
   
   
4. Don't 'inflate' your Meta keywords by irrelevant terms like "Pamela Anderson" to attract traffic. Firstly, such highly competitive words will not get you anywhere and secondly, irrelevant terms dilute your keyword relevance and keyword relational density. It also gets you irrelevant traffic.
   
   
5. Don't use JavaScript rollovers, graphical links or image maps as the only means of site navigation, search engines need text links for navigation.
   
   
6. Don't try to trick the search engines with keyword spam techniques like putting 'invisible' text, white-on-white. Search engines can detect this, consider this as spam and can ban your site from their database permanently. Show them the content your visitors would ordinarily see.
   
   
7. Don’t repeat keywords in your tags more than 2-3 times. Search engines consider keyword repetition as spam and abort indexing when a keyword is encountered ever so often.
   
   
8. Don’t repeat identical content in all your ALT Text attribute on the same page.
   
   
9. Don’t repeat your home page Meta Tags on all your inner pages. This is not a spam but you are losing the opportunity to leverage variety and theme-based high-ranking potential. Each page’s Meta tags should be optimized as per the content and ‘theme’ of that page.
   
   
10. Don’t serve different pages or content to search engines than your visitors. This is called "cloaking" and considered unfair by search engines. Rule of the thumb is, don’t show search engines what you don’t want to show your human visitors.
    
    
11. Don't pursue links farm based or FFA (Free for All) link popularity methods to improve your Page Rank. Most of these link farms are banned or ignored by search engines and rampant use of this method can result in your site being banned. A few inward links from 'quality' sites can boost your Page Rank more than what you would get from a 100 ordinary sites.
    
    
12. Don’t use automated software to submit 100’s of URLs or doorway pages or submit repeatedly. Your site can get penalized for doing this as this is considered spam.
    
    
13. Do not submit to 1000's of search engines using automated software or online submission services. Really, there aren't those many meaningful search engines. The top 20 search engines control 95% of search traffic. If you are well indexed in the top-20, you don't need to worry about the rest.
    
    
14. Don't use multiple instances of the same tag on the same page. For example, search engines can detect and penalize your site for using more than one title tag on the same page.
    
    
15. Don't create identical content on your site with different filenames in the hope of getting more pages listed. For example, do not duplicate a page of your site, give the copies different file names, and submit each one. Search engines can detect this and usually drop out all such pages.

Here's a list of Do’s:

1. Update your Meta tags. They are not fully redundant yet. Due to the ease of manipulation, keyword Meta tag has lost its importance in search engines but some still look for it. Title and Description tags are very important in that order.
   
   
2. Keep the Title tag short, 50 to 80 characters. Put most important keywords in its beginning but make sure your title makes logical sense to users and is not just a collection of a bunch of keywords. Edit Title tags as per theme of each page.
   
   
3. Keep the Description tag crisp but populated with your most important keywords. About 25 words description should be fine.
   
   
4. Keep the Keywords tag short, about 25 words. Do not repeat words too often. Keep the words related and relevant.
   
   
5. Use spelling and term variations in your keywords. Americans prefer spelling with 'z' like- ‘optimization’ while UK and Asian countries prefer to spell it as ‘optimisation’. However, don’t overdo this. Also be sensitive to cultural difference in terms usage. Different countries use different terms to denote an item - ‘crisp’, ‘chips’, ‘fries’, ‘potato fingers’, ‘french fries’ may all mean the same thing.
   
   
6. Leverage your ALT Text attribute to add your keywords. However, avoid stuffing them with too many keywords. Focus keywords based on link and there of the page.
   
   
7. Research your keyword selection by using tools such as Overture.com & Wordtracker.com. This cannot be emphasized enough. No matter how much you optimize your site, it will get you nowhere if you start out by incorrect or inappropriate keyword phrases. Tools like Overture will help you research and understand what people are typing in the search engines to reach for site such as yours. Do not gun for only the most popular key phrases. You'll get better positioning and traffic with fairly popular yet not so competitive keywords.
   
   
8. Ensure that you have sufficient visible HTML text in your home page as that is what search engines can read and are looking for. Keep the most important key phrases towards the beginning of the text. A minimum of 250 words of text, populated with your most important keywords should be good for you home page and important inner pages. However, your language should be as natural as possible. You don’t want it to look like a thesaurus to your users.
   
   
9. Update your content frequently. Give search engines (and your users) something new to find on their each visit.
   
   
10. Graphical navigation or menu bar should have alternate text navigation links.
    
    
11. Put up a Site Map page for your site. Site map is also often called ‘spider food’. Search engines find it very easy to navigate and index all the site content using this file. So do your users.
    
    
12. Use your directories and filenames to contain your important keywords. It helps in your ranking.
    
    
13. If your site is dynamic, research workarounds to remove the variables from your URL's. Search engine spiders are programmed to leave sites that have variables such as "?" and "%" in the URL. Some search engines will index some of your pages with variables, but certainly not all of them, and probably not enough of them to position your site effectively. Some scripts like Mod_Rewrite allow you to present a dynamic looking URL as if it is a static URL.
    
    
14. Make your HTML code multiple browser and W3C compliant.
    
    
15. Include Robots.txt file to guide search engines what to exclude from indexing. The search engine bots usually spend a limited time on your site. You don’t want them to waste their time indexing your ‘images’ directory.
    
    
16. Seek and request links from sites, which list topical sites such as yours. This is different from FFA links. Persuade prominent sites to link to your site. Offering reciprocal link usually helps them to accede to your request. Remember, quality of inward links, not quantity is what matters in building your Page Rank.
    
    
17. Hand-submit your site's main URL and your Site Map page to top 20 search engines. There is no need to submit each file of your site. Search engines will automatically spider your complete site through your Site Map links. If your site does not show up in their index in 8 to 10 weeks, try submitting it once more. If your site is focusing on regional audience, hand-submit to the prominent few search engines catering to such audience.
    
    
18. 18. If you can set aside a budget of $500, we strongly recommend paid submissions in Pay-for-Inclusion based Search Engines and Directories network, like - Inktomi, AltaVista, Fast/Lycos, Ask Jeeves/Teoma, Yahoo. Paid submission to these directories and search engines will 'really' help you boost your site traffic within days. Money well spent.