Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a complicated process by which techniques are employed to increase the page rank of a given website. As many good SEO tactics as there are, there are at least as many that should be avoided.

Do not use long or complicated uniform resource locators (URL). Searchbots give preference to URLs that are concise and easy to understand. Use your most important keyword in the URL if possible. Do not embed special characters in your URL, as many searchbots will not include such websites in their indices.

Do not use splash pages as an introduction to your website. Users don't like them, as they are often slow to load and temporarily prevent access to your website. Furthermore, since splash pages usually contain very little content, searchbots will assign a low page rank to such sites.

Don't forget to take full advantage of the title tag. Include your most important keywords or keyword phrases if possible. This will make your keywords more accessible to the all-important searchbots.

Keyword density should not be under or overdone. Density should be approximately 5% - 8% as a general rule of thumb. More than that would be classified as keyword stuffing. Less than that would be missing an opportunity to present your keywords to the searchbots. Also, pay particular attention when selecting your keywords. You must think like the customer who is trying to find your website. What search terms would the customer use? All too often the wrong, or at least inferior, keywords are used.

Do not attempt to keyword-stuff your site by using hidden text. This will be detected by searchbots and will negatively affect your page rank. This should definitely be avoided.

Do not use duplicate content to make your website seem more extensive than it really is. This, too, will be detected and result in a negative impact on your page rank. All content on your website should be original and should not be duplicated on multiple pages, multiple domains or multiple subdomains.

Avoid implementing outbound links to sites with a low page rank. Also, only provide outbound links to sites that contain content that is original and relevant. Doing otherwise can and will drop your page rank appreciably.

By avoiding the many pitfalls of SEO work, you can spare your website from being ranked poorly. Most of these traps are easy to navigate around provided sufficient attention is paid to them. If you follow the aforementioned tips, your page rank will most certainly improve.

Excellent post Graham. I wonder though, with your keywords are you linking internally? We think it is critical to link throughout the site using anchor text for easier navigation and also to provide a more intuitive experience for the end user.

In reference to the splash page, I have to disagree about these sites being rankied lower just because of a splash page. We do develop many sites, and although we do not use splash pages because of the frustration to the user, we have optimized sites like this for our customers and when we removed the splash page it wasn't like we received an increase in PR. I wonder how you associate this? How did you come about developing this theory?

Cade, are you saying that you optimized the splash page or that you took it down. I am confused. Plus it was my understanding that you cannot optimize flash for the search engines. That is exactly why we did not elect to go with a flash site. I really like flash design, but I read that if I used it for my site I could not easily obtain a page one ranking for the search engines. Is that true?

By the way Graham, that is great information thank you!

bettie wrote:
Cade, are you saying that you optimized the splash page or that you took it down. I am confused. Plus it was my understanding that you cannot optimize flash for the search engines. That is exactly why we did not elect to go with a flash site. I really like flash design, but I read that if I used it for my site I could not easily obtain a page one ranking for the search engines. Is that true?

By the way Graham, that is great information thank you!

I am saying that you can optimize flash. We have been able to optimize onsite and offsite for flash sites and obtain a page one ranking. It used to be that Google could not read or understand the content in flash site; however, if you are to go and visit a flash site today and look at the "cached" version of the site, you will notice that Google more often times than not has indexed the content.

We did eventually pull down the splash page because we had a very high bounce rate for the site in question. So, we experimented with splash page by pulling it down and seeing how that would effect our bounce rate. When we pulled down the very clean and neat looking flash intro, we noticed that we were able to obtain a much lower bounce rate. So in this case it made much better sense to pull down the landing page. Of course with any project, I could imagine you might see different results so you will want to make these kind of adjustments gradually.

In my initial studies of search engine optimization I have found that most discussion boards, forums, blogs and other resources have suggested not utilizing flash for sites as it interferes with search engine optimization. Are you saying that this is not true?

I don't think I want to use flash anyway, but I am very interested in hearing your response.

Thanks Graham, I have found your post to be very educational!