Using Images For Primary Navigation Links

Many webmasters like to use fancy looking navigation links but, in doing so, they fail to establish a theme for their sites. For instance, using a graphical link back to your home page does not tell the search engine spiders what that link is about unless the spider actually visits that page. If you use optimized ALT text on that graphical home page link, then that would be a step in the right direction. But to maximize the effect and clearly define the theme of your web site, you need to use a text link that has your primary keyword or phrase within the link text. This is called Link Reputation.

Home, Site Map and Contact Page Links

The Home, Site Map and Contact pages are your site's primary pages and should be your SEO strategy top priority. It is essential that these pages be spidered and exposed to your site visitors. To ensure that they are spidered, place links to them near the top of your source code on every page of your web site. Your home page is, of course, the main entrance to your web site so you want that to be the focal point in the search engines. Your site map page should (if properly optimized) have links to all of your sub pages and use primary keywords belonging to each sub page within the link text pointing to those sub pages. Your contact page is just as important because it's used by visitors who have questions or who wish to order products and services.

Redirected Pages

When a web page has outlived its usefulness, webmasters will, on occasion, redirect visitors hitting that page to another page. Search engine spiders, however, take a dim view of page redirects. If you change the content of your site and find that you have no further use for a page, do not place a redirect on that page. Instead, remove the outdated content and replace it with something relevant. Include a text link to your home page or to a new replacement page. When you remove a page or place a redirect on an outdated page, you're cheating yourself out of better rankings and search engine traffic. Moreover, using page redirects can result in the removal of your site listing in search engine databases with a consequent loss of revenue.

Excessively Small Type Font Sizes

Text in a font smaller than font size 2 is normally reserved for copyright information and the legal jargon often seen at the bottom of web pages. Use font size 2, or greater, for the majority of text on your page. Font size is a major factor in SEO strategy because the font size used defines the relevancy a search engine spider assigns to the content it finds on your page. An example of this would be the text within heading tags (H1 through to H6). Text surrounded with H1 tags has a higher relevancy placed on it than text surrounded with H6 tags. Visit the World Wide Web Consortium website for a better understanding of how on-page text is viewed by search engine spiders with regard to importance and relevancy. Search engine spiders tend to follow the W3 HTML standard.

Hidden Text, Door Way Pages and Other Tricks

Nowadays search engines are pretty smart and trying to trick them is not a wise course of action. Take some time to stop and examine your approach before proceeding with your SEO strategy. The rule of thumb is that if it looks like spam or could be perceived as spam by the search engines, then it probably is spam. The last thing you need is for a competitor to report unethical SEO tactics to the search engines. Such tactics could result in a loss of existing site listings as well as a ban on future submissions. So, to ensure the longevity of your online business, stay away from any technique that looks unethical.

Using HTML Frames

In short, don't. Frames are not very search engine friendly because search engines cannot read a framed source document that tells your browser to load more than one page in your browser window at the same time. Thus, achieving a high PageRank on your home page is difficult. Frames also make it hard for search engine spiders to find all of your sub pages.

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Non-Spider-Friendly URL's

If the URL's for your web site contain characters such as &, $, =, %, etc., that is they are dynamic in nature, then search engine spiders may not be able to read them. And, if they can't be read, then the search engine spiders won't be able to follow them to index your pages. However, there are solutions available to fix this problem. For example, webmasters who have sites hosted on servers with Unix operating systems can use Apache mod_rewrite to rewrite URL's that contain a session ID, or other nasty characters, into search engine spider friendly URL's. See this page at WebDevelopersJournal.com for more information about how you can invite search engine spiders into your dynamic web site.

SEO, of course, is not just limited to the 13 areas covered in this article, but if you apply the SEO strategies outlined in these 13 areas to your web site, you will find that your site rankings and traffic improve dramatically.

About The Author
Brendon Turner is a certified search engine optimization specialist and Senior SEO Consultant with eTrafficJams.com, a professional search engine optimization company that specializes in getting targeted, eager-to-buy traffic to your site! Brendon also maintains FreeSEOAdvice.com, a progressive free SEO forum advocating access to accurate and timely information related to the industry. Want some tips on how to improve your web site's optimization? Call 877-785-9977 or click to request a free search engine optimization analysis.

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