A lot of people will tell you what to do to get to the top of the Search Engines but they are not so ready to tell you about the following 9 simple mistakes that you should avoid:
- Make sure that you try to get links to your web site. Otherwise nobody will be able to find it.
- Your URL should contain relevant, popular keywords with a minimal number of slashes.
- You cannot have only Javascript or Flash navigation menus because Search Engines cannot see these menus and thus cannot follow them. So, if you want a Flash menu, use CSS to make it.
- Be certain to use meta tags as they act as a guide for the Search Engines. There are also some Search Engines that do show parts of the meta tags, especially the description parts, so make sure that you use them.
- Make sure that if you do not use the WWW. That you have the WWW. redirect properly.
- It is important that you optimize any anchor text that you use. Of course, it is helpful to use a variety of text and mix it up some too.
- Any of the written content that you place on your web site needs to be properly optimized or else it is not going to help your web site at all. This is how you show the Search Engines what is important.
- Do not rely too heavily upon images and flash because these things are meaningless to the Search Engines.
- Use your robots.txt file so that you do not allow any web pages to be indexed that shouldn’t be. This is especially important if it is duplicate content, which you can be penalized for.