Pitfalls of SEO

Now SEO is somewhat popular--What's an easier way than to have your site on top of the two famous search engines? It's well known that search engine will notice your key words and add value to your site, and generally, if your key words appear many times in your site, your site will be deemed more important and relavant to the key words. Well, not for all cases. If you add key words in all your alt attributes, and use only key words for all your titles, Google or Yahoo may consider your behaviors as spamming, which will result in bad page ranking. So when you optimize your page for particular search engines, remember to read their guidelines first. Yahoo and Google all have guidelines for programmers. Know what behaviors they hates, and keep in mind to avoid those pit falls.

Part of Guidelines given by Google:

Quality guidelines - basic principles

• Make pages for users, not for search engines. Don't deceive your users or present different content to search engines than you display to users, which is commonly referred to as "cloaking."
• Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you'd feel comfortable explaining what you've done to a website that competes with you. Another useful test is to ask, "Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn't exist?"
• Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or "bad neighborhoods" on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.
• Don't use unauthorized computer programs to submit pages, check rankings, etc. Such programs consume computing resources and violate our Terms of Service. Google does not recommend the use of products such as WebPosition Gold™ that send automatic or programmatic queries to Google.

Quality guidelines - specific guidelines

• Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
• Don't employ cloaking or sneaky redirects.
• Don't send automated queries to Google.
• Don't load pages with irrelevant words.
• Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
• Don't create pages that install viruses, trojans, or other badware.
• Avoid "doorway" pages created just for search engines, or other "cookie cutter" approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.
• If your site participates in an affiliate program, make sure that your site adds value. Provide unique and relevant content that gives users a reason to visit your site first.

If a site doesn't meet our quality guidelines, it may be blocked from the index. If you determine that your site doesn't meet these guidelines, you can modify your site so that it does and request reinclusion.

Part of the Guinelines given by Yahoo:

Yahoo! strives to provide the best search experience on the Web by directing searchers to high-quality and relevant web content in response to a search query.

Pages Yahoo! Wants Included in its Index

• Original and unique content of genuine value
• Pages designed primarily for humans, with search engine considerations secondary
• Hyperlinks intended to help people find interesting, related content, when applicable
• Metadata (including title and description) that accurately describes the contents of a web page
• Good web design in general

Unfortunately, not all web pages contain information that is valuable to a user. Some pages are created deliberately to trick the search engine into offering inappropriate, redundant or poor-quality search results; this is often called "spam." Yahoo! does not want these pages in the index.

What Yahoo! Considers Unwanted
Some, but not all, examples of the more common types of content that Yahoo! does not want include:

• Pages that harm accuracy, diversity or relevance of search results
• Pages dedicated to directing the user to another page
• Pages that have substantially the same content as other pages
• Sites with numerous, unnecessary virtual hostnames
• Pages in great quantity, automatically generated or of little value
• Pages using methods to artificially inflate search engine ranking
• The use of text that is hidden from the user
• Pages that give the search engine different content than what the end-user sees
• Excessively cross-linking sites to inflate a site's apparent popularity
• Pages built primarily for the search engines
• Misuse of competitor names
• Multiple sites offering the same content
• Sites that use excessive pop-ups, interfering with user navigation
• Pages that seem deceptive, fraudulent or provide a poor user experience

YST's Content Quality Guidelines are designed to ensure that poor-quality pages do not degrade the user experience in any way. As with Yahoo!'s other guidelines, Yahoo! reserves the right, at its sole discretion, to take any and all action it deems appropriate to insure the quality of its index.

These guidelines are well hidden in Google and Yahoo's pages. Search their site carefully if you want them.

Referrence:

• Yahoo Guidelines
• Google Guidelines