A reader has sent me this interesting article. It was sent in by Andy McDonald of Swift Media UK - contact details at the end. All the points he raises are pertinent for any webmaster wanting to improve his search engine rankings.

So you have a website but where is it on Google, Yahoo! Or MSN? Have you fallen foul of a penalty or have you overlooked one of the many common search engine optimisation pitfalls when designing your site? Understanding what works for the search engines and what doesn’t when it comes to the content on your website can have a crucial impact on the relevance and/or page rank of your pages from a SEO perspective.

Here we highlight common mistakes that could affect your rankings on Google and other search engines, and possible alternatives when all else fails.

Optimising for the correct keywords - Basically ‘Get real’ about what keywords you feel your website can be ranked for. If you have a ten page website in a highly competitive market then ranking naturally for the major terms will be close to impossible.

Use the Overture keyword tool together with the number of results on Google to find out what keywords are searched for and how many other websites are targeting them. If you are lucky then you might even find a popular keyword that not many other websites are optimised for. Alternatively a good tool for this job is Wordtracker from Rivergold Associates Ltd.

Code validation - If your html code is not valid then this could make it very difficult or even impossible for a search engine to separate your page content from your code. If the search engine cannot see your content then your page will obviously have no relevance.

Frames - Even though most, if not all, major search engines now index frames and even with the use of the NOFRAMES tag you run the risk of your pages being displayed in the search engine results out of context. As each individual page is indexed separately, it is likely that your website visitors will not see your pages within your frame and will effectively be stuck on the page they arrive at.

If you must use frames then create a ‘Home’ link on each of your individual content pages and point the link at your frameset index page.

JavaScript navigation - If you use JavaScript to control your website navigation then search engine spiders may have problems crawling your site. If you must use JavaScript then there are two options available to you:

Use the NOSCRIPT tag to replicate the JavaScript link in standard HTML.
Replicate your JavaScript links as standard HTML links in the footer of your page.

Flash content - Currently only Google can index Macromedia Flash files, how much or how little content they see is open to debate. So until search engine technology is able to handle your .swf as standard then it would be advisable to avoid the use of these.

Again if you must use Flash then offer a standard HTML alternative within NOEMBED tags.

Dynamic URLs - Although Google and Yahoo are able to crawl complicated URLs it is still advisable to keep your URLs simple and avoid the use of long query strings. Does not including session IDs in the URL as these can either create a ’spider trap’ where the spider indexes the page over and over again or, at worst; your pages will not get indexed at all.

If you do need to include parameters in the URL then limit them to two and the number of characters per parameter to ten or less.The best SEO solution for dynamic URLs is to use Mod-rewrite or Multiviews on Apache.

No sitemap - A sitemap is the search engine optimisation tool of choice to ensure every page within your website is indexed by all search engines. You should link to your site map from, at least, your homepage but preferably from every page on your website.

If your website contains hundreds of pages then split the sitemap into several categorised maps and link these all together. Try and keep the number of links per page on a sitemap to less than 100.

Excessive links - Excessive links on a given page (Google recommends having no more than 100) can lower its relevance and, although it does not result in a ban, this does nothing for your search engine optimisation strategy.

Be careful who you link to - As you have no control over who links to your website, incoming links will not harm your rank. However outbound links from your website to ‘bad neighbourhoods’ like link farms will harm your ranking.

As a rule ensure as many of your outbound links as possible link to websites that are topical to your field of business.

The key here is not to rely on search engines to bring in your next client.

We often hear people griping and lamenting about how Google, Yahoo, or MSN reduced their site’s rankings, causing a huge loss of profits and business. These people surrender to the fact that their favourite search engine failed them and their business and are resigned to finding another search engine to advertise on, not realizing the real fact that they may just be committing another mistake waiting to happen. Aside from the common pitfalls mentioned above, the most common mistake in this type of scenario is simply relying too much on a search engine to rake in the customers.

Two simple reasons could be pointed out why over-reliance on SEO and search engines will kill your business:

First, search engines aren’t doing business for you. They’re doing business for themselves and for their owners. They wouldn’t care if your business took a sudden plummet because of your web site’s loss of rankings. It happens by the thousands each day and search engines really couldn’t care less.

Secondly, if a search engine vanished or completely changed direction you’d be left with nothing. At this point you would’ve lost valuable time and money in focusing all your advertising efforts in that one single search engine.

The bottom line is to diversify your business strategy. You should always have a fallback or contingency plan. If you keep and follow other business tactics aside from SEO, a negative hit on your SEO arsenal will hurt you, but not completely cripple your business.

Some techniques to help you diversify your marketing plans are:

1) Try an offline contact building or ad mailing campaign. Prominently display your website’s URL on printed materials. This would lead people to check out your site, and if they like what they see or find what they need, they may buy from you

2) Don’t focus all your strategies on one single technique, such as SEO. As the old adage goes, don’t put all your eggs in one basket. The basket may fall and you’ll break all your eggs. Diversity, diversity, and diversify some more.

3) Never under estimate the power of well-written press releases. There are many excellent online news submission sites that are being monitored by the major search engines. If you have a good press release with a healthy density of those all-important keywords, your press release (and hence your website) will appear on all search engines’ news features.

4) Depending on your specific field of business, there may be online directories or vertical niche sites that cater to your industry. Seek them out and submit articles or press releases to them. Customers looking for information in your industry will find your site if the location is well targeted.

5) Keep your site updated. You may have regular news or features that search engines will quickly pick up. If you syndicate parts of your site, you’ll reach a wider audience. A blogging or comment-type area of your site is good because it allows customers and visitors to write about your services or products, thus increasing content for your site and improving your search results.

6) Always keep an eye out on the competition. Learn from their tactics. See how their tactics are hurting you or giving you opportunities to offer something more. Then go back and revise your strategies based on what you find out from your opponents.

7) When all has been said and done, it would all boil down to having a website that has keyword-rich content and relevant incoming and outgoing links. Long-term rankings rely on this factor more and more with each passing day. Even if it means hiring a good writer to build your content, do it. The payoff is priceless.

E-commerce, Internet marketing, web business, whatever you may want to call it, might not necessarily be an easy or quick method. In fact, just like conventional avenues of business, it requires as much planning, thinking, and foresight to get the results you are after. The general rules we’ve discussed would go a long way to helping your online business prosper and profit.

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Andy MacDonald owns and runs his own custom website design company called Swift Media UK which also incorporates ecommerce development, affordable web hosting, and logo design.

We will be featuring a Webmaster Interview with Andy in coming weeks.

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