SEO Tips and Tricks Part III
Linking to sites not on your site is a good idea, but don’t fill up your pages with them. At best, you will dilute the effectiveness of your page in the search engines, and at worst your page will look like a list of links and get slightly penalized by search engines. Also, when you have lots of external links, you have more to check on a regular basis, to make sure that those pages don’t go bad or turn into “bad neighborhoods”.
52. Register a separate domain instead of a sub-domain (LOW PRIORITY)
Subdomains are a nice way to create new websites without needing to register a new domain. This site is a subdomain of About.com – webdesign.about.com. But subdomains are not as recognized by search engines (or customers for that matter) as separate sites. For example, most people who link to my site link to it with a title of “About.com.” But if you were to go to www.about.com, you’d get a very different impression of my site than the true URL of webdesign.about.com. The other problem with subdomains is that most people think that URLs should start with “www”. Sometimes www.subdomain.domain.com will work, but sometimes it won’t.
If you can, you should move all sites that are on a subdomain onto a real domain name of their own.
53. Register a .com domain over a .biz or .us domain (LOW PRIORITY)
Trying to find a good domain name can be challenging, especially on the .com top-level domain (TLD). But finding a good .com domain will rank higher than a similar domain on the .biz or .us TLDs. And if you can get a .edu domain (because you’re a school or university) your site will have more credibility instantly. Some SEO services feel that a .org TLD is better than a .com, but they aren’t any more difficult (in general) to get than a .com domain, and while search engines might give them some priority now, they will probably lessen that as .org domains become more common.
54. Use hyphens to separate words in domains (LOW PRIORITY)
When you’re putting keywords in your domain and URLs, you should consider separating them with hyphens (-) rather than mashing them all together or using underscores (_). Search engine spiders can’t tell where a word ends and begins without cues like hyphens, and most computers recognize hyphens as the end of a word, but see underscores as part of the word.
55. Use hyphens or underscores to separate words in URLs (LOW PRIORITY)
Just like your domains, you should separate words in your URLs with hyphens (-) or underscores (_). Hyphens are better, but outside of the domain, underscores can work. Hyphens work better because many search engine spiders recognize hyphens as the end of a word, but see underscores as part of the word. Also, underscores can be seen as a space by your customers (because the underline of the link and the underscore merge together), and they will then get frustrated if they try to type the URL with a space and can’t get to the page.
56. Write short pages (LOW PRIORITY)
The shorter your page is, the fewer times you need to repeat your keyword phrase and keep the density just right. Plus, short pages load more quickly, and so your readers will appreciate it. Keep pages under 30KB in size. Split long pages into multiple pages and optimize each page.
57. Use JavaScript with care (LOW PRIORITY)
As long as your scripts are valid and don’t break your HTML, most search engines will ignore them. But don’t rely on JavaScript to improve your rankings – most search engines ignore content inside JavaScript.
58. nclude text transcripts of podcasts and sound files (LOW PRIORITY)
Like images and Flash, search engines can’t index the content of sound files including podcasts. By including a transcript of your sound files and podcasts, you give search engines more text to index.
59. Don’t host your site with a host that allows spammers (AVOID)
This means any type of spammers, but especially search engine spammers. If you don’t know what your host’s policy is towards spammers, find out. There should be something in their terms and conditions about malicious activity. If your IP is blacklisted, you’ll be blacklisted right along with it, even if your site is completely innocent.
60. Don’t host your site with a host that is down a lot (AVOID)
While search engines won’t deliberately discriminate against a site that is down, if they can’t get to your URL because it’s down, they can’t index it. And if your site is down several times when the spider tries to access it, it could be flagged as gone, and then the spider won’t come at all. Find out from your hosting provider what their uptime rates are and what they guarantee. Less than 97-98% uptime is bad.
61. Don’t write your content with JavaScript (AVOID)
While search engines won’t penalize a site for using JavaScript, they don’t typically index the contents of the scripts. So if your pages use JavaScript to display the contents, it will be harder to get high ranks for those pages. This includes pages that use scripts to show and hide text and pages that use Ajax for the content.
62. Don’t omit alt text for images especially images inside the text (AVOID)
Images inline with your text can dress up your Web page, but if you leave off the alternative text (alt text) search engines won’t pick up the content relevance. Also keep in mind that the heavier your page is with images, the less likely that search engines will rank it highly. Text is what gets ranked in most search engines, and alt text is a poor alternative.
63. Don’t use images instead of text links (AVOID)
Search engine optimization is all about text, and if you use images instead of text, even if you have good alt text, search engines will have a harder time ranking your site. This is especially true for navigation. Search engine spiders crawl through your site by following links, and links on images can be more difficult for them to follow or rank than text links. Using images instead of text makes your pages slower for your customers too. You’re better off styling your text with CSS, than using images.
64. Don’t misspell your keywords in your content (AVOID)
It can be very tempting to try to optimize your site for misspellings. And while it won’t hurt your site in the search engine rankings – especially if you decide to use the misspelled version as your keyword phrase to optimize on. It will hurt your credibility with your customers. For every one person who misspells the word, there are at least two to three who know the correct spelling. And if they end up on your page for some reason, they will just think you are unprofessional. Plus, many browsers and search engines have spell checkers built into the forms, so the popularity of misspellings will continue to lessen as time goes on.
65. Don’t try to optimize for more than 2-3 keywords and phrases (AVOID)
This is called keyword dillution. If you have too many topics on a given page, it will be hard for both search engines and your customers to determine what you’re talking about. If you have a lot to say on several topics, it’s better to write multiple short pages on each topic, than to try to cram them all into one long page.
66. Don’t use your keyword phrase too much (AVOID)
Keyword stuffing is the practice of repeating your keywords or keyword phrases over and over in a page until there is nearly no other text than the keyword phrase. Check your keyword density to determine if you have used it too much. 10% or higher is too much.
If you are too blatant about stuffing keywords, you could get your site banned from search engines.
67. Don’t rely on links from domains on the same IP (AVOID)
While Google doesn’t discriminate against domains that have the same IP (for example, domains that use virtual hosts), other search engines may. So it’s best to avoid trying to increase your inbound links with links from other domains that you own. The same is true for domains hosted on the same hosting provider (coming from the same C-level IP address). Google doesn’t penalize sites like this, but other engines might.
This is another situation where if it becomes apparent that you’re doing it, you could get all your sites banned from search engines.
68. on’t have more than 10 words in your URL (AVOID)
While you want to have keywords in your URL (and domain if possible), longer URLs tend to look more spammy to both customers and search engines. However, this isn’t a serious issue, and if you need to have 11 or 15 words in your URL, it shouldn’t be a problem, as long as you aren’t doing it all the time.
69. Don’t use URL parameters if you can avoid it (AVOID)
Parameters on URLs make them long and hard for anyone to read. And search engines can get confused by them, especially if the parameters are meant to hold customer information, and not indicate a separate Web page. Also, as I mentioned elsewhere, search engines don’t always rank dynamic pages as high as static pages, and most dynamic pages use parameters on the URL to indicate the correct page. If you must use parameters, you might want to consider doing a URL rewrite to static URLs, at least for your most important pages.
70. Don’t use dynamic URLs (AVOID)
In general, spiders tend to prefer static URLs to dynamic ones. It is possible to rank high with a dynamic URL, but it’s easier if you redirect dynamic URLs to shorter, static URLs.
71. Don’t use session IDs (AVOID)
Like dynamic URLs, search engines don’t tend to like URLs with session IDs on them. In fact, session IDs seem to cause even more problems with search engine spiders than plain dynamic URLs. The problem is that every time the spider comes to a site with session IDs it can index that site as a completely new URL – even though the content is identical. This can lead to the search engine thinking you are trying to spam them with identical content, and could even get your site banned if it got bad enough. Google guidelines now state that id= URL parameters are okay, but that doesn’t mean that other search engines won’t choke on them.
72. Don’t rely on AdSense to boost your rankings (AVOID)
AdSense is a way to earn money on your website. But contrary to popular believe, having AdSense ads won’t improve your ranking in search engines, even Google. They won’t hurt your rankings either. It’s perfectly fine to use them, but don’t expect them to improve your search rankings.
73. Don’t rely on AdWords to boost your rankings (AVOID)
AdWords is a way to advertise your sites on Google. While you can pay to get high rankings in advertising venues, having an AdWords account won’t help your rankings in natural (non-paid) search, even in Google. It won’t hurt your rankings either. You can use AdWords to get more clicks to your website, but they will appear only in paid search locations, not in the natural search.
74. Try to get your site off link farms (AVOID)
You should never link to a link farm. And while search engines state that they don’t discriminate against sites that are linked to from link farms, it’s a good idea to try to keep your site off of them, if only to avoid contamination by association.
75. Don’t link to link farms (AVOID)
Google refers to spamming sites as “bad neighborhoods” and if you link to them, you will end up with a lower PageRank. If you suspect that a site you want to link to is a “bad neighborhood”, check their PageRank and see if they commit any obvious SEO no nos. If they do, or you think they might, then you shouldn’t link to them.
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