7 tips to avoid Search Engine Disaster
If you take nothing else away today, learn these.
1. Make sure you do not stuff your web page full of keywords. If I were to fill this page with the words internet marketing every other line it wouldn't make any sense and the search engines can identify this too.
2. Don't think that you can hide the above by using white text on white background. Search engines aren't daft.
3. Do not try to cloak your website so that search engines see one page whilst you show another to people. If you do not understand any of that then good, just remember: cloaking=bad
4. Do not link your site to bad neighbourhoods like adult sites and sites likely to lead visitors into problems or embarrassment, perhaps including gambling sites.
5. Is your site valid - Internet Explorer is very forgiving for bad web developers but Firefox (another browser) isn't. A search engine spider might not see your content at all if it has to try and work through bad code.
6. Do not duplicate content. Spiders are frightingly clever and act a little too human. Imagine you've just read The Sun newspaper. Ok it won't take long I know, but then someone comes and gives you a newspaper that says The Daily Planet. After a page or two you realise it is the same, exactly the same, as The Sun. how annoyed would you be?
7. Do not submit your site to Google. It doesn't really work and it takes months - why? because they think that if your site is good enough and you are serious enough about your business, it will be linked to from other websites in which case.....you'll be found anyway.
Bonus point 8! : Don't have 'under construction' pages. If a site is under development, get it up there even if more pages are to be added later (just make sure there are no broken links). Most websites are split into sections so this can be achieved. Why do this? Well a spider might visit your website and see nothing so it will come back a few days later maybe. If it still can't see anything the gap gets longer and longer......you can see where this is heading.
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