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Site Optimisation > Search
Engine Optimisation Sydney
 Web
Site Optimisation Article
19 common mistakes that prevent your Web
site from showing up on search engines
Many webmasters have the problem that their Web site is not listed
in search engines at all. There can be a variety of reasons that
your Web site doesn't show up on search engines.
Reason #1: You are using frames.
Many search engines have problems with frames. They often only
index the frameset page and not the individual frames that contain
the actual content. Unfortunately, the frameset page usually doesn't
have META tags, title and enough content (text) to obtain a listing
on a search engine.
The best solution to this problem would be to avoid frames. Usability
guru Jakob Nielsen counts frames as one of the top ten mistakes
in Web design:
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9612.html
If you really must use frames, consider the following points:
1. Add a description of your Web site in the <noframes> area
so that search engines can index that text. There you should also
add a link to the homepage.
2. When a search engine indexes a frame page outside of the frameset,
the visitor can be left stranded and unable to link into your site.
So your individual frame pages should always contain a link back
into your site.
3. Add some JavaScript to force frame pages into the frameset.
This prevents visitors from inadvertently accessing an orphaned
Web page. You can use the following JavaScript snippet:
---
if (top.location.href == self.location) {
top.location.href = "URL of your frame file";
}
----
Webreference.com offers a very good introduction to frames:
http://webreference.com/dev/frames/
Reason #2: You are using a lot of pictures on your Web site but
very little text
Search engines need text to index your Web site. They cannot know
what's written on your GIF or JPEG images. If you use a lot of images
on your Web site, you should also create some Web pages that have
a lot of text.
Some Web site promotion consultants will tell you to create so-called
doorway pages. A doorway page is a Web page that contains plain
text and a link to your main Web page. On that doorway page, you
should describe the content of your Web site in many sentences that
contain many keywords that are important for your Web site.
However, some search engines only lists Web pages if at least one
remote Web page is linking to it. In that case, a doorway page will
not work. Don't use doorway pages for search engine spamming! Only
use doorways that have something to do with the content of your
Web pages.
Note that many search engines already ignore doorway pages. For
that reason, try to give your real Web site as much content (text)
as possible. Fresh, continuously updated content is one of the best
ways to ensure that your visitors will return again and again.
Here are 3 tips for building and distributing your content:
1. Build one page of quality content per day. Write timely, topical
articles with about 250-500 words. If you aren't sure what you can
write about, look in your log files which search phrases have been
used to come to your site. Or use Overture's keyword suggestion
tool at
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/
and find the core set of keywords for your topic area. Those are
your subject starters.
2. Stay abreast of developments in your sector. If the big site
"ABC" is coming out with product "XYZ" in autumn,
then write about the product or the product sector in general and
have it ready in June so that search engines can index it early.
For example, all the Nintendo GameCube sites you can find in Google
today - those have been submitted 3-4 months ago.
3. Syndicate your content (along with your name and Web site URL)!
Other webmasters will gladly incorporate your articles into their
Web sites. Just search for "syndicate your articles",
"syndicate your content" and "submit your article"
on Google.
Reason #3: The submitted Web page is only a redirection.
If the Web page you submit contains a redirection to another Web
site, most search engines will skip your Web site completely. Do
not submit a redirection Web page.
Many webmasters tried to cheat search engines with redirection
pages in the past. The search engines companies discovered that
and they decided to totally skip Web pages with redirections.
Submit a real Web page that contains the product description visible
to the reader.
Sometimes, you have old Web pages listed on search engines and
you want them to redirect to the new Web site. There are several
ways to do it:
1. You can implement a server side redirect on the old Web page,
using the 301 Moved Permanently error message. This will redirect
users to the new Web site, but also tells the search engines that
this page has moved permanently. Some search engines will drop the
page from their index, and some will eventually replace the old
page with the new one without hurting your rankings.
2. You can use the META Refresh tag on the old Web page, for example
<META HTTP-EQUIV=Refresh CONTENT="5; URL=http://www.seo-xpress.com">
tells the browser to load www.seo-xpress.com 5 seconds after the
current document has finished loading. However, some old Web browsers
don't support that tag, and some search engines penalize pages that
use a refresh of a few seconds or less.
3. Instead of the META Refresh tag, you can also use JavaScript
to load a new document:
<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript">
<!--
location.replace("http://www.your-new-site.com");
-->
</SCRIPT>
Most search engine robots ignore JavaScript so this method of redirection
is unlikely to be penalized.
4. You can also delete the old Web page and create a custom 404
error page. This ensures that visitors will be redirected to the
new site if they click on a broken link or enter an incorrect URL.
The 404 error page should contain a link to your home page and to
the primary sections of your Web site.
To move to a new Web site and to keep your old search engine rankings,
I recommend using one of the methods 1 or 3.
Reason #4: You have submitted your Web site too often.
If you submit your Web site more often than once a month, most
search engines will consider that spamming and they will skip your
site.
Spamming does not work with search engines. Most likely, it will
backfire to you. More and more search engines are able to detect
spam attempts and penalize or ban your page from their listings.
Sites that spam search engines degrade the value of search engine
listings. As the problem grows, these sites may face the same backlash
that spam mail generates. The content of most Web pages ought to
be enough for search engines to determine relevancy without webmasters
having to resort to repeating keywords for no reason other than
to try and "beat" other Web pages. The stakes will simply
keep rising, and users will also begin to hate sites that undertake
these measures.
Submit your Web site to search engines and wait for 4 weeks. Then
search for the URL of your site. If the search engine cannot find
your site, submit your URL again.
How you can check if your Web site has been indexed:
http://www.searchenginewatch.com/webmasters/checkurl.html
Reason #5: You overuse keywords on your Web site.
Many search engines fear to be spammed if you overuse keywords
on your Web site. Do not repeat your keywords too often in your
meta tags or in the body of your Web pages.
Nobody knows the magic number for the search engines but a paragraph
such as the one below is not a good idea:
"Ebooks are great. I love ebooks. I've read hundreds of ebooks.
You can learn much from ebooks. On my Web site you can find tons
of free ebooks. When you subscribe to my newsletter on ebooks, you
get two additional free ebooks."
Some years ago, you may have obtained a top ranking for the keyword
"ebooks", but today the search engines will quickly ignore
such nonsense and probably write it off as "spamming".
It could even cause the engine spider to skip your Web site completely.
Unfortunately, search engines do not indicate on their help pages
the maximum allowed number of repetitions. Some webmasters suspect
this to be three, some say six. There's no way of knowing until
you are penalised.
Further webmaster discussion about keywords:
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum.cgi?ran=956&forum=8&show=60
Reason #6: Text in the background color of the web
"Color can kill your ranking!" Some Web designers, in
order to get high rankings in the search engines, try to make their
Web pages as keyword-rich as possible. They try to spam search engines
by repeating keywords in the same color as the background color
to make the text invisible to browsers and search engine spiders.
However, almost all search engines already know that trick. They
will penalize or even blacklist your Web page if they determine
that your page is trying to unfairly misrepresent its actual content.
This tactic is commonly referred to as "spamming the search
engines" or "spamdexing".
Unfortunately, the problem is that the search engines may end up
penalizing Web sites which did not intend to use the hidden text
trick. For example, suppose you have a Web page with a black background
and a table in that page with a white background. Now suppose that
you've added some black text in that table. This text will be visible
to your human visitors, so in fact, the text isn't hidden. However,
the
search engines can interpret this to be hidden text because they
overlook the table background color.
I recommend going through all your Web pages and make sure that
you haven't inadvertently made any such mistake.
And, by the way, search engines also catch on using a slightly
different color than the background color to hide words, so don't
use that trick.
Copyright by Axandra.com
Internet
marketing and search engine ranking software
Proceed to the next 6 reasons...
Internet
Site Optimisation - Unfortunately, dynamically generated Web pages
can be a nightmare
For search engine spiders the pages don't actually exist until
they are requested. A search engine spider is not going to be able
to select all necessary variables on the submit page.
Web Site Optimisation Article
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