Things to avoid when optimising your web site for search engines

Use text instead of graphics

Rendering text as graphics is a bad idea and should be avoided. Although you can read it, search engines cannot read the text on graphics. So any words that are not in straight text will be completely ignored.

A lot of sites use graphical links, which can look nice. Search engines look at the words within the link to check for relevance to the users search, so if the link is a graphic you lose points.

Another drawback of using graphical text is that it takes a lot longer to load.

Avoid fancy navigation

Some web designers like to show off by generating all sorts of fancy navigation systems that at first glance look pretty cool. These navigation systems often use links that are generated by a programme rather than a regular HTML link.

Search engines index your site by following links on your pages.

Because they can only see regular HTML links and cannot see programmed links they will just stop at your home page and ignore the rest of your website completely, they just don't know the other pages are there.

Don't use database driven pages unless you have to

You can spot a database driven website because the address will usually be followed by a question mark and what is called a "querystring". Search for a dentist in London on yell.com and look at the address in the address bar. All the stuff after the "?" is the querystring that tells Yell.com what information you need.

The problem for search engines is that they don't know what to put in the querystring so they'll never find the results page for dentists in London. This is not a problem for Yell.com, and because of the volume of data they handle they are forced to use a database.

If you are using a Content Management System (CMS), your web pages will be produced from a database which means that they are unlikely to get indexed by search engines. If you have a hugely complex web site with a lot of structured data that needs to be "drilled down" then a CMS may be the only solution.

123Live publishes websites as regular web pages so they have no problem getting indexed.

Don't use frames

Frames are web pages within web pages. Search engines have trouble seeing past frames so content in framed pages may not be indexed at all. What a waste. You can tell if a page is framed very easily. Just look at the address in the address bar. If the address does not change when you click to another page you are looking at a framed page.

There are cases where the advantages of using frames outweigh the drawbacks, but these are few and far between.

Don't let content go stale

Google continuously scans through all the websites it knows about. This process takes a few weeks or months. If Google finds that the content on your web pages is the same as it was on the last scan it will downgrade your listing. This may seem unfair but a very high percentage of websites are dormant, dead or taking a very long rest, which means that their content is of less interest than recently updated web sites.

Each time Google finds that your site has not changed, you go lower down the list. With fresh content you start going up.

Don't spam

Google is too clever for most spammers. Spamming is the process of trying to trick a search engine into giving you a higher listing than the actual content of your website merits. These tricks include: using invisible text (white on white for example); using very small text; text in HTML comments; keywords repeated too many times and many others.

Trying to spam search engines is dangerous!

Search engines will actually ban sites for a period of time if they consider that they are attempting to trick them. There's nothing you can do about it, you'll just have to hope they let you back in the club at some time in the future.