subject: How to get liked by the search engines, not get banned [print this page] How to get liked by the search engines, not get banned
Have you tried any and everything to get the search engines to give your site a higher ranking? Why aren't you seeing the outcome you want? Many new website owners attempt to rank their sites as high as possible but they fail to utilize the regulations they know to be necessary. Search engines are constantly evolving, along with the optimization methods that help you rank well. If your main goal is to remain in the lead of everyone you're competing with and you wish to get on the front page of Google, then you had better not make the following mistakes. Working on these will help you get better results from your efforts, regardless of your budget.
Images do enhance the look of your site, but just like too many cooks spoil the food, having too many images is not good. Having a high number of images on your website will leave less room for search engine friendly content, which will lead to a lower ranking. Plain text on your pages might look boring, but it has a far greater effect on your results than text showing on images. Search engines aren't able to read images, so if your navigation links to other pages in your site are written on images, they're useless for SEO purposes. If you do use graphics, be sure to put your chosen keywords within the ALT attribute for each image. Search engines are able to read the ALT tags attributed to images and graphics, which can give your rankings a bit of a boost.
ALT tags should be added to every image your website has. ALT tags describe an image when it's still loading.
However, if you use ALT tags in your images, you will also get a higher ranking with the search engines. It's common for people not to remember this when it comes to SEO. That's why ALT tags should be made using keywords so that readers and search engines both can know what your site is about.
Never listen to SEO practitioners who tout SEO techniques that don't use good ethics. There has been a real proliferation of SEO companies offering their services as of late. If you find a company that's ethical, work with them, but some companies don't have that kind of ethic and they'll do anything to get ranked. The search engines could ban your site and you wouldn't even realize it until later.
That is why it's important only to hire that company or those people that work within ethics and also those people that will update you constantly on how your site is doing. If they hide anything from you, they're not the right ones to work with. Therefore, always use good ethics when conducting your SEO practices. Some webmasters have no idea the damage the above mistakes can do to their website. Don't just stuff keywords in your site or it will be viewed as spam. You should also know that using copied content will turn readers off and the search engines will penalize you, too. So whether you're hiring an SEO consultant or doing it yourself, make sure you indulge in the best SEO practices.
