How Important Is Your Home Page?

Out of all the pages in your site, the home page is given more weight by the search engines than any other.  By no accounts is it the be all and end all but a well designed home page can add that extra boost to your rankings.

Generically the home page should include 250 - 300 words of good SEO text and contain if not all site links, at least links to the pages you consider to have the best chances of ranking well.  Links should be Text based and definitely not made in Flash. Flash based links are not readable by the search engines.  On most occasions your home page is used as the entry point. To have your site indexed the engines must be able to follow links from here to the internal pages of your site.

The Trade Off
You will notice on our home page that we have not included 250 - 300 words. Yes we do suffer slightly on the ranking scale because of this. The trade off made is to have a nice clean home page and Great SEO text built in to our internal pages. As stated above the home page is not the be all and end all but you should consider how well your internal pages are SEO formatted before taking the plunge and accepting the possible detriment of losing those valuable home page points.

What we do have on our home page are some relatively good SEO text that has produced good rankings on some engines. We have not scrapped all text from our home page.

The single link of "Enter"!  Again only having a single entry link from your home page can have a detrimental effect on rankings BUT their are solutions. To help solve this issue you could have the "Enter" text link to an internal page that holds all site links or link it to an internal frameset. The frameset then contains in it's <noframes> area all links to your internal pages (more on framesets & their usage see below).  The loss of keyword based text links on your home page however will be hard to overcome as these links can hold the key for great rankings.

Flash: What You Need To Know

Flash is one big success story when it comes to adding functionality and graphic design to your websites and CD ROM productions. Flash is incorporated into more than 70% of all websites and has become a highly accepted media format.

What Flash will do if it is the only form of navigation on your website is to make your site a wonderful piece of art work that will be rarely seen.  FLASH BASED LINKS OR TEXT CANNOT BE READ BY SEARCH ENGINES! All that hard work for nothing.

By all means include Flash into your site for both graphical and navigation purposes but remember to include text based links to your pages or suffer the death throes of limited search engine depth. The navigation at the top of this page is made from Flash but we have included at the bottom of all our pages a basic navigation structure in pure HTML.
 

Are Framesets Search Engine Killers?

Now we get into a nitty gritty area that has caused lots of debate from web developers world wide. My personal experience is that if used correctly, framesets can be beneficial in some aspects of SEO and user experience in general.

The Users Point Of View
- Faster page load times
- Cleaner navigation
- Harder to print pages
- You can only bookmark the Frames page and not the internal pages

The Website Point OF View
- The use of the <noframes> area gives you another opportunity to include SEO links & text
- Faster page load times
- Cleaner navigation
- Incorrect use can cause disfunctionality to your site
- Pages returned from search engines open without the frameset (the fix)

If you are unsure about how to use framesets then it is probably best to avoid them like the plague. Vortex Media have run very successful SEO campaigns for our clients on websites that are fully Frameset bound.

Meta Tags

I could leave this area blank and enough would be said about the use of meta tags but that would not  be fair to those search engines who still use meta tags to determine their rankings. Yes meta tags still do have some grunt in determining where a certain page will turn up in a users search results but don't get to excited about a quick fix to your SEO nightmares.

The Keywords Meta Tag
While I do still use the 'Keywords' meta tag it is more out of habit rather than trying to achieve any real benefit in it's use. There are still engines that give this tag some weight but they are now far and few between. I am very lazy now when it comes to the use of the keywords tag and any input here on my part is to just slap in of a couple of keywords relating to the page without any real thought or time spent on the off chance that they may have some benefit.  One tip though for those targeting Inktomi engines is to put commonly misspelled words and synonyms of your keywords here.
Example: <meta name="keywords" content="website design,brisbane australia,promotion,SEO concepts,search engine optimization,web developers,ecommerce,website rankings">
 

The Title Tag
Definatly don't skip this tag!  If for no other reason it gives search engine users a chance to quickly scan those results looking for some inkling as to what each returned result is about. Be brief on what you enter here as only 5-10 words are normally accepted by the engines. Include your site name and try to include your top targeted keyword. Example: <title>Vortex Media, website design and database integration.</title>

The Description Tag
Another tag you should not omit. There are still substantial search engines out there that make use of the description tag. Also helpful for the same reasons as the title tag.
<meta name="Description" content="Vortex Media: Some basic concepts and tips on do it yourself search engine optimization. The use of Meta Tags in SEO and how to construct a profitable cost effective search engine optimisation campaign">

The Robot Meta Tags
These tags come in 4 flavours and are growing fast in importance. They tell the search engines if they should be indexing the page or if any links on the page should be followed. The tags come in the following formats.

<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="INDEX,FOLLOW">
<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX,FOLLOW">
<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="INDEX,NOFOLLOW">
<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW">

A note here is that Inktomi by default will index any page it comes across but will not follow any of the links provided. I.e. "INDEX,NOFOLLOW" is set as default. If you want to ensure that the search engines index and follow all links on your pages then set the robot meta tag to <META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="INDEX,FOLLOW">
 

Spamming and Cloaking

The Definition
You are considered to be spamming:

• If you design pages for the sole purpose of getting high rankings on the search engines without any relevant information for your users

• If you hide text from your users

• With the creation of doorway pages

• When using multiple domains that all point to the same site or sites that have very similar content (mirror sites)

• Unwarranted redirections

• Simply put: Any form of code or text that has no beneficial use to your audience

How The Search Engines React
If you are found to be spamming or cloaking then expect to have your sites booted/removed from their index or at least penalised (drop in rankings).
"But I see it all the time with some of the top placed rankings"  Check again after a couple of weeks and I bet you find the infringing site has been removed or is no longer appearing in the top 100, have a look around the thousand mark if the site has been lucky and not been booted altogether.

Genuine Reasons For Having Possible Infringing Code
There are genuine reasons why a site will redirect a page or have built in code that utilises hidden text.  As mentioned above, pages that belong inside a frameset will often have detect-redirect code in place to ensure the page is seen how it was intended to be seen. Interactivity for users will often see text hidden from the user until such a time that the user triggers an action that causes a menu to appear or text relating to some part of the site or page, dependent on users selections or options. Browser detection and screen resolution will often see pages being redirected. To ensure you do not receive a penalty READ up on each individual search engines spam policy.

What Are Your Options If You Believe Your Site Has Been Penalised Without Just Cause?
There are unfortunately not a lot of options available to you if you believe your site has been mistakenly tagged as an abuser.
I wont mention search engine or directory names but some require you to resubmit your site for review with all fees payable before even looking into removing you from their abuser list. Even after you have justified probable cause for having the infringing code that got you black listed in the first place some of these fees may still apply.

There is some hope though! Although the channels may be a bit slow you can contact the engines directly and put your case forward. Just about all search engines have links provided where you can report or dispute spam penalties.

Google:
http://www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html

All The Web
http://www.alltheweb.com/info/contact/spam.html
http://www.alltheweb.com/info/about/spam_policy.html
 

How To Avoid Penalties

• Don't cloak text - same colour text as background

• Don't copy meta tags or text off another site (page jacking) - yes this can be picked up!

• Don't create doorway pages or use multiple domains

• Don't misuse redirects

• Don't mislead users with text or image links that have no relevance to the actual linked information

• Do read up on each individual search engines spam policy

• Do feel guilty about cheating, it could save you in the long run

When you think about the amount of time you would spend on trying to out smart the engines, why not be constructive with your time and actually supply the information to your users that would give you those rankings in the first place! Supply good quality information to your users and the rankings will filter in. Combine this with proper thought provoking SEO and you will be on to a winner.