This is one of the biggest mistakes made - using complex JavaScript, drop down menus, image maps, Flash, or dynamically generated web pages without providing a path for the search engine spiders to crawl. This is a regularly overlooked factor and you’ll see it all over the web. Search Engine spiders may be very intelligent, but they can’t index Javascripts. They won’t see those links and therefore your listings on search engines will be very limited. If you’re going to use Javascript menus, Flash, or the like, you have to address the fact that the spiders cannot follow these links. You must create a way, within your site, for the spiders to find each page.

As well, many sites contain a whole lot of images and animations to give eye-candy to the page. Now there’s nothing wrong with eye-candy, we always design sites that have a lot of curb appeal, but the problem is when the content of the page is mostly portrayed in images and animations. Alot of poorly ranked sites visually contain a lot of text, but the text itself isn’t actual text, but a graphic. Great eye candy, but forget a high ranking and web traffic if that’s the only text on the page.

Web sites with very little textual content are very hard for search spiders to classify because they can’t see inside those images. Load time is another consideration when using a lot of graphics. Having too many dynamic elements on one page can increase the load time and turn off your visitor. They don’t have time to wait so they’ll leave your site and not come back.

Another really big mistake is not having a Site Map. A sitemap is just what it sounds like – a map of your site. It’s a page that contains a list of links to all the different pages in your website. This can potentially be one of the most important pages of your site, especially if you do use a graphical navigation structure or have dynamically generated pages like those mentioned above. A sitemap helps instruct the search engine spiders where to go on your site, which increases the chances of getting all of your pages indexed. So not having a site map can actually hurt your Internet visibility.

DO:

1. Avoid using site technology that’s not compatible with search engines. Unfortunately, some of the Web's best technology can be a spider nightmare. I’ll go through the list again: Complex JavaScript, drop down menus, image maps, Flash, framesets, Java applets, and dynamically generated Web pages all present significant problems to a search engine spider. A lot of those Javascripts and flash menu's can be replicated almost identically using CSS and XHTML.
   
2. Integrate normal text wherever you can. Content is one of the two most important factors considered by the search engines when adding pages to their index. If you don’t have good, relevant, high quality content that’s updated regularly, you’ll find yourself spinning your wheels. You can make text and text links look really good with a little CSS know-how, so use text whenever you can.
   

   And at the very least, if you must use these dynamic elements don’t make your entire page graphic text. Leave something for the spiders to find and index. This also applies to Flash sites. Rarely does everything have to be a flash object. Quite often you can have text surrounding a Flash object without any negative effects. Achieving a good balance of content and images should be the ideal focus for any website.

3. Create a sitemap and keep it up to date. When visiting your site it's absolutely necessary that the spiders can follow the links on your pages. If they can't, it's likely only your home page will be listed in the search results. Unfortunately, there are a lot of site navigation techniques that look really cool and function well when a human visits, but they won't allow a spider to follow the links. It's imperative that your site's navigation be search engine friendly and/or that you include a breadcrumb trail. That’s where a sitemap can help. If you create a sitemap and keep it up to date, this can help increase the chances of getting all the pages of your site indexed by the search engines.

Continue...