SEO Mistakes

May 8, 2008

The web is overflowing with the sites which are not indexed on search engines. The reason for this is their website structure, back-end programming and non search-friendly design mistakes. Being an SEO programmer I would like to mention some of the search engine optimisation mistakes that are made.

The biggest mistake I would say is designing the website first and then optimising it. In fact search engine optimisation should be the main component of the design process. It could cost a lot of money and time if we do search optimisation as an afterthought. So it is recommended to have a search optimisation specialist involved in the early stage of the design process.

Once the optimisation process has been started the big mistake many people make is choosing the keywords. In most cases people choose keywords which are in their mind and are descriptive of their website but an average user just may not use them. Google tools can be used to find which keywords are good for your website.

Leaving the title tag empty is also very common. Don?t forget that the title tag is very important for on-page optimisation. And it?s an important place to have a keyword.

Flash is attractive but it?s not search engine friendly. If you really want to use it and you want to make your website search engine friendly then provide an html version of your website.

The same is the case for JavaScript. It is not search engine friendly either, so if you really want to use JavaScript for navigation then provide a sitemap.

Images look better than text but again they are not search engine friendly. Header tags should be used instead of images. But if you are afraid that they will make your site look horrible then try to modify them with a style sheet.

Backlinks are important to get a good ranking on search engines but remember that you should always go for quality rather than quantity.

Nadeem
SEO Programmer

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1 Comment

  1. Another thing that’s worth mentioning is the use of Google Site Maps. This will allow you to submit a list of your web pages rather than just relying them on crawling your website and hoping that googlebot finds any new pages or web pages that may be pretty deep into your website.

    Commentbymakeawebsite May 9, 2008 @ 9:21 pm

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