SEO: to do and not to do

I found a fairly good article on a not-so-super designed site (case in point, if you click on the link, you have to scroll down to find the article because it does not have its own URL). The article, "Things SEO People Should Never Do," gave five tips for things that will not help improve your ratings in search engines. The Google SEO starter guide we read has very specific things to avoid in building your site, while this article discusses more of the managerial do-nots.

Like focusing just on rankings. The article points out that a business cannot grow if you just look at one part of an analysis. Rankings are not everything. It also tells you not to blow off clients (of course), and not to give guarantees because it gives false hope if you're wrong.

I found another article at e-Commerce Times that gives tips to increase search engine optimization. I found some of the best tips to be these:

• Make sure links lead somewhere: out-links and back-linking pages factor into the Google page rank equation, so they are obviously important.
• Limit the number of pop-ups. The article says pop-ups are still associated with spammers, so when too many appear in a site, people are turned away, thus lowering your authority as a website.
• Minimize use of flash. We all know flash looks beautiful, but if it is all over your site, and your content is entirely built into flash programing, the content will not be picked up by bots. If these bots aren't reading that content, what is it reading?
  

In the Google guide, I was impressed that it covered the need to consider what happens when people remove parts of the URL (p. 11). I do that all the time if I want to go back a page but the page back button won't take me there, usually because I jump into a page from a search engine result. A well-designed site gets me where I want to be just by my taking off the article name or page name.

Obviously there is a lot to think about, not only when you are building a site, but also when you are promoting a site. Some of that promotion goes straight into the code, and other efforts go into the managing and analysis of your site. I think I need a team to help me with my site. My brain can't handle it alone!