Tricks & Techniques to Avoid for SEO
Avoid using the following trick and techniques for optimal search engine ranking:
Splash Pages
A splash page is generally an introductory page consisting of a large graphic element or flash animation. You should avoid using splash pages because:
- they typically have few keywords and generally only one or two links, often embedded in a Flash movie. Generally, search engine spiders cannot follow these links so the balance of your site may not be indexed.
- they increase the number of levels in your site without adding any real content. You always want to minimize the number of levels in your website structure for maximum search engine visibility.
Frames
Frames are an html feature that divides your web page into two or more sections that can be scrolled separately. Unfortunately, while this feature might be beneficial for your site visitors, most search engine spiders cannot index framed pages. Even worse, those that can will direct visitors only to a specific frame for your page. When a visitor follows a link from the search engine they will see only this section of your website. Other frames, and sometimes entire site navigation will be missing from what the visitor sees.
Keyword Stuffing and Font Colour Tricks
Never try to fool the Internet search engines. Avoid the repetitive use of keywords and never set your keyword text in the same colour as background text. These "tricks" are heavily frowned upon by search engines. If your site is found using these, your ranking can be severely penalized or you may find your site banned from a search engine altogether.
Gateway Pages
No two search engines weigh the same elements on your web pages exactly the same. As a result, there is no "right" page for every search engine. Previous common practice suggested creating a unique gateway web page for every search engine. Each gateway page was designed to rank high for a particular key phrase in a particular search engine. For even a small website, this could easily result in creating hundreds of pages.
We do not believe the effort to create gateway pages will provide a positive ROI for you. Search engines now use "off the page" weighting factors, like link popularity, when ranking your pages. Since gateway pages are almost always unpopular, we simply see no advantage to creating them.
Cloaking
Cloaking is a term that means your home page is constructed to look different for each search engine spider. Search engine guidelines clearly warn against the use of cloaking. If a search engine finds that your site does not follow guidelines it could be severely penalized in rankings or banned from the search index altogether.
