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However, after seeing all those things that you should do, I felt that another thread is needed, one that tells all those new to SEO what not to do, things that are very likely to stop you from being indexed well or that may even get you penalised.
This thread may be quite controversial as all of us have experienced things that work here but not there.... Okay, here I go to make a start...
Things to avoid if you can!
1. Frames
2. Java applets navigation
3. Flash navigation
4. JavaScript only navigation
5. Signing gazillions of guestbooks
6. Registering with free for all link pages
7. Hidden text (or divs or whatever)
8. Text as graphics and no ALT tags
9. Missing structure of document, instead using FONT SIZE to indicate headings
10. Pointing ten domain names onto the same site
11. Redirects that trap visitors
12. All dynamic pages with many variables (or session IDs)
13. Plenty of JavaScript that pushes content down on page in the code
14. Too many outgoing (offsite) links
15. No outgoing (offsite) links
Hmmm... I am not sure if these and other "deadly sins" of SEO can be easily sorted by importance, but it doesn't look too bad...
I am pretty sure I have forgotten some obvoius things. What would you add? How would you sort the list?
Can point you to sites with nothing but guestbook links on first page of competitive search returns. Although there may be some form of dampening going on for some sites (hard to tell right now - my money is on Google having a mini dance soon, where all the backlinks get calculated and factored).
What you are experiencing sounds like the boogiebar bug - Does not have access to Google's real data, get's meaningless messages from Google HQ, looks nice, means nothing, does nothing except reduce the number of vertical pixels your browser has.
Fact is none of us know anything for certain. About the only real advise that holds true is:not is any order
1) lots of small content rich, easy to navigate and linked basic HTML pages.
2) links from as many on-topic sites as possible.
3) All pages set up with the user/customer in mind.
Dave
Frames make it difficult for a viewer to bookmark a page, and can make it inelegant to enter a site from a google reference
Not by any means wishing to turn this into a frames debate the above is only barely relevant to the topic of this thread, "Google Search Engine Optimization".
Generally, and not specifically aimed at DerekH, the prejudice against frames around here is pretty over the top and has become something of a cargo cult which everyone just joins in on without the trouble of prior thought.
Frames are quite a difficult topic, that's why there is so much controversy about them.
On a site where visitors look at many pages (and not just one or two) they have a potential to save bandwith if the navbar is placed there. A site with that high appeal I would think has been designed by a professional. But this professional could more than likely also come up with super-slim navbars that consist of only a few bytes (eg WW).
A customer asked me once why his site didn't get indexed and a quick look at the source revealed the following: The frames-only site tried to re-gain its navbar when someone went to a content-only page (say via a Google result). It utilised one of the widely availabe "give me back my frames" script. So a human visitor would be redirected to the proper outer frameset that in turn loads the navbar, the banner and the actually wanted content part of the frameset.
All would be fine, if there weren't Google! Google said "Hey, I asked for the page bluewidgets.html and you gave me index.html?bluewidgets! And that for the third time now! You know what? I simply won't put you in my index!".
Frames removed, site, owner, accessibility advocates and Google happy ever after!
That story was about a beginner site though and a true professional may have other ways to have frames and get away with it for Google. However, the tricks needed to have a site indexed properly, the navbar and banner appear even if content page gets requested, every page on the site bookmarkable even with frames, all these tricks in my opinion add a layer of complexity to the site that doesn't need to be.
index.html?bluewidgets
The Google MediaPartners robot has trouble with this, the main robot none at all.
Google said "Hey, I asked for the page bluewidgets.html and you gave me index.html?bluewidgets! And that for the third time now! You know what? I simply won't put you in my index!".
I doubt that the script caused the problems. Google is not executing javascript. Also, I'm using this kind of script on a number of pages/sites for a long time without any problems.
