Monkey Box

You want more traffic. Great. Who doesn’t?

You’ll surely never get more traffic to your site if you see the words Untitled Page in your title bar. I know this is basic knowledge, but you wouldn’t believe how many people ask me why they get no visitors to their site, and then I check their URL and find things link Untitled Page. So I decided to create this basic list to help beginning webmasters get on the Search Engine Optimization ball. The following mistakes will have a major negative impact on your web page rankings so avoid them at all costs:

Specifying no title for your page:

The title of your web page is crucial. Failing to specify a descriptive, keyword optimized title will do damage to your search engine ranking. It’s kind of like owning a brick and mortar shop and boarding up all the windows. Each page on your site should have a unique, content-specific title.

If you use WordPress I highly recommend you add the SEO Title Tag 1.0 plugin to your arsenal. This plugin will allow you to override a page’s or a post’s title tag with a custom one defined through a custom field, in your WordPress admin.

Convinced yet? Then Download this FREE plugin!

Excessive use of Flash animation and images on a page:

If your web page has plenty of nice-looking graphics and eye-popping Flash animation and not a lot of textual content it may indeed look nice, but have you ever considered how the search engines will see it? Search engines thrive on textual content, indexing as much text as they can, but unfortunately they cannot understand images or Flash animations. They will find nothing of real value on your page. Try to balance your page so that the textual content is given priority and that any images or animations are used only when needed. Also us the ALT tag as much as possible. Search engines use this text when determining rank. ALT tags are simple to add and there’s no excuse for passing up another opportunity to rank your site. Go back right now and tag your images with content rich keywords.

Complicated JavaScript menu systems:

Search engines spiders that crawl through our pages are clunky robots. They find it very hard to navigate complicated JavaScript, Java applet menu systems. Don’t assume that because a human can navigate a menu that the search engine spiders will do the same. A menu system using simple textual links will be easier for a spider to read and it will then successfully navigate your site. Try using textual links or CSS when creating expandable or tricky menus.

If you simply must use a javascript or flash based menu or have recently implemented one and refuse to change it, you should consider making the following small change. Add contextual links to the bottom of your pages to ensure that the spiders will be able to find the pages on your site.

P.s. Try to avoid frames as well. They are usually completely pointless and robots will index your site a lot faster and more accurately if leave them be.

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You want more traffic. Great. Who doesn’t?

You’ll surely never get more traffic to your site if you see the words Untitled Page in your title bar. I know this is basic knowledge, but you wouldn’t believe how many people ask me why they get no visitors to their site, and then I check their URL and find things link Untitled Page. So I decided to create this basic list to help beginning webmasters get on the Search Engine Optimization ball. The following mistakes will have a major negative impact on your web page rankings so avoid them at all costs:

Specifying no title for your page:

The title of your web page is crucial. Failing to specify a descriptive, keyword optimized title will do damage to your search engine ranking. It’s kind of like owning a brick and mortar shop and boarding up all the windows. Each page on your site should have a unique, content-specific title.

If you use WordPress I highly recommend you add the SEO Title Tag 1.0 plugin to your arsenal. This plugin will allow you to override a page’s or a post’s title tag with a custom one defined through a custom field, in your WordPress admin.

Convinced yet? Then Download this FREE plugin!

Excessive use of Flash animation and images on a page:

If your web page has plenty of nice-looking graphics and eye-popping Flash animation and not a lot of textual content it may indeed look nice, but have you ever considered how the search engines will see it? Search engines thrive on textual content, indexing as much text as they can, but unfortunately they cannot understand images or Flash animations. They will find nothing of real value on your page. Try to balance your page so that the textual content is given priority and that any images or animations are used only when needed. Also us the ALT tag as much as possible. Search engines use this text when determining rank. ALT tags are simple to add and there’s no excuse for passing up another opportunity to rank your site. Go back right now and tag your images with content rich keywords.

Complicated JavaScript menu systems:

Search engines spiders that crawl through our pages are clunky robots. They find it very hard to navigate complicated JavaScript, Java applet menu systems. Don’t assume that because a human can navigate a menu that the search engine spiders will do the same. A menu system using simple textual links will be easier for a spider to read and it will then successfully navigate your site. Try using textual links or CSS when creating expandable or tricky menus.

If you simply must use a javascript or flash based menu or have recently implemented one and refuse to change it, you should consider making the following small change. Add contextual links to the bottom of your pages to ensure that the spiders will be able to find the pages on your site.

P.s. Try to avoid frames as well. They are usually completely pointless and robots will index your site a lot faster and more accurately if leave them be.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS