Web Design Mistakes and SEO Tips

Top Ten Web Design Mistakes

1. Using Frames
2. Gratuitous Use of Bleeding-Edge Technology (EX: Flash)
3. Scrolling Text, Marquees, and Constantly Running Animations
4. Complex URLs
5. Orphan Pages
6. Long Scrolling Pages
7. Lack of Navigation Support
8. Non-Standard Link Colors
9. Outdated Information
10. Overly Long Download Time

Other Mistakes Made in Web Design:

• Bad Spelling and Grammar
• Broken Links and Graphics
• Busy, Distracting Backgrounds
• Complex URLs
• Confusing
• Dynamic URL's
• Gratuitous Use of Bleeding-Edge Technology
• Heavy use of Java
• Image Maps
• Lack of Navigation Support
• Long Download Time
• Long Scrolling Pages
• Multiple Banners and Buttons
• Multiple Colored Text
• Multiple use of Different Fonts
• Music
• No Contact Information
• No Content
• No Meta tags
• Non-Standard Link Colors
• Orphan Pages
• Outdated Information
• Over use of java
• Overly Long Download Times
• Poor Browser Compatibility
• Poor Organization
• Poor Overall Appearance
• Pop-up Messages and Windows
• Scrolling Text, Marquees, and Constantly Running Animations
• Text Difficult to Read
• Too Much Advertising
• Under Construction Pages
• Using Frames
• Using the Same Title and Metas for Every Page in Your Site

Don't Spam

Any "trick" or practice you are having to go out of your way in order to achieve a higher ranking in the search engines is probably a spam tactic. When in doubt, ask yourself "will this practice benefit my users in anyway?" If the answer is no, then you're probably spamming. Example: Hidden text does not help your users in ANY way, they can't even see it! Usually the driving force behind such a practice is the hopes of ranking high in the search engines.

The following are considered spam tactics:

• Keyword Stuffing The repeated use of a word or phrase. Search engines have the ability to analyze a page and determine whether the frequency is above a "normal" level in proportion to the rest of the words in the document.
  
• Invisible/Hidden Text Using text color the same as that of the page background; which is also detectable by the engines.
  
• Tiny Text Same as invisible text but with tiny, illegible text.
  
• Page Redirects Search engines do not like pages that take the user to another page without his or her intervention, e.g. using META refresh tags, cgi scripts, Java, JavaScript, or server side techniques.
  
• Meta Tag Stuffing Do not repeat your keyword phrases in your Meta tags more than once, and do not use keywords that are unrelated to your site's content.
  
• Doorway Pages - web pages that are created for spamdexing, this is, for spamming the index of a search engine by inserting results for particular phrases with the purpose of sending you to a different page. They are also known as landing pages, bridge pages, portal pages, zebra pages, jump pages, gateway pages, entry pages and by other names. Doorway pages that redirect visitors without their knowledge use some form of cloaking. (Taken from WikiPedia.com)

Spamming by Submitting

• Do not submit the same page more than once on the same day to the same search engine.
• Do not submit virtually identical pages, i.e. do not simply duplicate a Web page, give the copies different file names,
• Do not submit doorways to submission directories like Yahoo!
• Do not submit more than the allowed number of pages per engine per day or week. Each engine has a limit on how many pages you can manually submit to it using its online forms. If you can only submit 25 pages to Excite, for example, and you have a 1000 page site, that's no problem. The search engine will come crawling your site and index all pages, including those that you did not submit