Creating a search engine optimized web site can be confusing. On one hand you have web site designers telling you to include more eye candy on your site in the form of attractive fonts, animations and graphics. On the other hand SEO experts will tell you that the minute a search engine spider or bot encounters a weird font, picture or flash animation that it cannot translate into text for whatever reason then it will read all of your text as blank space! This is a good way to get yourself ignored by the search engines.



The solution to this is to integrate your text with normal, average fonts wherever you can such as Times New Roman, Arial or Verdana. Never print a photograph on your site without first making sure that you have a photo caption in bold printed beneath it. Google image bots love this and it helps get your site more highly ranked in its search engine pages.

You might also have to reconcile yourself to the sad fact that although flash can be amusing it is very mid nineties and out of style. It looks tacky and having it on your site usually tells your customers that you don't have much experience at either designing or selling on the Internet. You really don't need Flash animation to sell yourself, especially if your product or service is good.

Another big mistake is to simply upload your site with mostly pictures of products or your subject matter. This leaves nothing for the search engines to index. This is a big mistake unless you are linked to a strong partner or have a very efficient linking campaign running. Whenever possible always remember to include as much text as you can to improve your rankings because anything read as blank space by search engine bots and spiders equal low ratings!