SEO : Do’s and Dont’s – What to Avoid : NJ Web Designer

The Do’s and Don’ts of SEO

Search engine optimization has gained extreme popularity and has become a crucial strategic long term decision of a business. Search engine optimization is a must for anyone who desires to get a page rank and high traffic. Simply building a website with a rich content has never helped. Search engine optimization is a time consuming and a tactical process where each element has to be considered properly. There are a lot of “do’s” and “don’ts” that can pave the way for an efficient search optimized website.

The basic and the first search engine optimization do, is also where most people stumble. It is focused on picking the right correct keyword set for the website. The correct keywords are not that those terms which are based on your opinions about the product or service. They are also not the words which are returned in the Overture inventory tool, if there was one. The places where you can find the exact keywords and phrases are on sites like Google AdWords, WordTracker, etc. these sites provide you with an analytical tool that provides the exact phrase and keyword which are used by the prospective customers, how often the words are used and which words are the easiest to get high rankings. It is always recommended to subscribe to such websites so that you can see the critical change in your rankings. It’s better to go for annual subscriptions so that cycles of keywords are picked.

The second ‘do’ is the isolation keyword strategy. Many people try embedding as many keywords as possible into a page. However, excess of keywords destroys the prospects of high rankings. Instead, you should carve out various niche key phrases and devote one page for each key phrase. This largely creates a positive effect on the search engine rankings.
The third ‘do’, revolves around the structure of the top and bottom of the page. The starting paragraph should always have the key phrase that also serves as a Meta description for the entire content. Similarly, the concluding last paragraph should also include the key phrase.
The fourth ‘do’ is interlinking. The links connecting one page of the site to another matters a lot. Do it, and use robot checkers to make sure your links are up to date, and don’t contain any dead entries.

Search Engine Optimization has several don’ts as well.

Here are some basic things to avoid on your website:

• The website name or .COM  should be not used anywhere in the Meta title
• Frame based and flash based structures simply DON’T WORK as they are outdated and invisible to the search engine spiders. Try using standard based layouts, that are keyword rich, XHTML preferred. Take the case of a local restaurant who I suggested building a website for. They had a flash website being designed already, I wished him luck and moved on after warning him that a website completely made in flash would look nice, but be unreadable by search engines. The site came out, and looked nice, but wasn’t readable by search engines. What’d they do? They pulled the website, and instead replaced the nice looking flash with… a static image, of a compressed JPG, of the original flash site? WTF? Seems things have only gotten worse. End of story, Do NOT become this website. It’s an epitome of broken dreams, as well as broken web usability, and no attempt at optimization, whatsoever.

• Avoid using image based navigation elements on your website because search engines cannot read images.
• Don’t include any hidden links and texts. Keyword stuffing went out with Pets.com.

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