Five SEO Mistakes

While it’s not always as critically observed by designers and webmasters as it should be, search engine optimization is not only key to most web site’s success potential, it’s also the first thing that you should be thinking about as you begin work on a new web project. In this article we’ll discuss five of the most common and critical mistakes made during the design process that hinders search engine optimization (SEO) efforts.

One: Lack of Relevant Content

Relevant textual content is the absolute key to search engine ranking! This is a very crucial point and should not be taken lightly. Without content that can be easily indexed by search engines and presented to users in the search engine results pages (SERPs), your ranking will not rise. A page can be made very attractive with the use of images and flash but these aspects are not indexable when visited by spiders. Every page should contain at least 175 words of unique, relevant content. This text should make use of the most relevant keywords for the page. It’s also a good idea to make light use of images within the text and to embed relevant links to other areas of your site.

Two: Design Around Optimization

An attractive design is a great tool to help in keeping visitors once they arrive, but it’s not much good to you if no one visits your site. While there are obviously other methods of obtaining traffic, search engines offer not only potentially huge numbers of visits, but all at no cost to you. This is why is it so absolutely important to make search engine optimization tactics your priority and then design around the implementation of those tactics. If you are having your site professionally designed, you should first consult with an SEO expert and work on laying the groundwork for successful search engine ranking before putting on the glitter.

Three: Graphics Used For Text Links.

While using graphics for links can be a pleasant alternative for designers in a time when browser configuration differences can make it difficult to construct text links that look good across the board, it is never a good idea. Search engine spiders crawl through links and parse the code in order to designate the link by its anchor text. When a graphic is used for the link there is obviously no anchor text of any kind for the spider to read. If graphic links are absolutely necessary for your design, text links should exist somewhere on every page to help the spiders find all pages within the site.

Four: Splash Pages

A splash page is sometimes used for site entry purposes. It is often a page with one graphic or flash animated an ‘ENTER’ link. Besides being a waste of time for your visitors, splash pages of this type have no indexable content beyond the one link that redirects to the actual landing page. There is a risk that search engine spiders will index a site more slowly when it has to work harder to find and index relevant content, and search engines do like redirection as a rule. If you’re even half-serious about your SEO efforts, avoid splash pages at all times.

Five: Search Engine Submissions

There are many services online that charge a flat fee for search engine submission, often claiming that they will submit your site for indexing at over ten thousand search engines. It is important to remember that there are only a small handful of engines that produce any real numbers when it comes to traffic. Submission is never bad thing, but wasting valuable time and money submitting to search engines that may or may not give you two or three unique visits per month is simply bad marketing. Spend that time instead on optimizing your site for the search engines that matter, such as but not limited to Google, Yahoo! and MSN.