SEO: Step 3 Site preparation

Search engines can only rank web pages that make it into their index. It's your job, as a webmaster to ensure every web page that is important to your site gets crawled by the search engines. This may mean website re-design for established websites with low search engine traffic. Look for the obvious signs of search engine spider obstacles such as frames, JavaScript navigation, or long URLs with session IDs. Once you have cleared the way for the search engine crawlers to reach every page on your site, focus your efforts on improving your site's usability.

• Use static text link navigation

• Static text links works best as internal linking with keywords embedded in anchor text create a powerful combination of page relevancy.

• Avoid frames

• As of today many engines are able to follow links within framesets, but it's best not to take any chances.

• Avoid flash

• Flash should be limited to important concept illustrations or special affects, but don't build a flash only website if you want to achieve high search engine ranking.

• Images should be not for navigation or embedded text.

• Search engines can't read text embedded in image objects.

• Unfortunately a lot of menu systems use a combination of JavaScript and rollover images.

• If you suspect your site uses this type of menu system, change it right away to either completely static link system or DHTML without the use of JavaScript.

• Dynamic content with well form URL re-written code

• Dynamic content and e-commerce website should ensure their product and category page URLs are not simply a number or some cryptic code, but a well formed URL re-written code.

• There is a built in URL re-writing engine in Linux based servers and there are many third party tools available for URL re-writing on IIS servers. The URLs can be reformatted so they contain the target keywords pertaining to the page.

• Not use JavaScript dynamic navigation menu but DHTML

• Use of JavaScript for navigation is strongly discouraged.

• Avoid overloading pages with heavy graphics and flash

• If you notice your site's bounce rate is very high it may be due to visitors getting impatient and leave before the pages load.

• Validated HTML pages

• Validate HTML tool is validator.w3.org.

• Strongly recommended CSS usage

• The use of CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) is strongly recommended to substantially reduce the size of your HTML pages. Wherever possible use CSS classes to make your HTML source code more readable and to reduce the ratio between text and HTML codes.

• No broken links and images

• Use a freely available link checker called Xenu to check your links regularly.

• Avoid image map

• Keep in mind the search engines are blind when it comes to image maps.

• Add site map

• A site map is a catalog of important links on a designated page.

• The link to each page ideally will have descriptive text.

• The number of links on a site map should not exceed 50 on a single page.

• If your site has more than 50 pages, you need to create additional site map pages within a new category.

• Add site search tool to your website

• Installing a site search tool on your website is great way to increase your site's usability and at the same time you can get into the minds of your visitors by seeing what they are searching for.

• The search keywords used in a site search could also be a warning sign that certain information on your site is not easily accessible.

• By regularly reviewing your website's search log, you can uncover potential usability problems. Our favorite website search tool is the  Zoom Site Indexer. This tools is MS Windows based and can easily index hundreds of web pages in minutes.

• Reliable hosting

• Reliable hosting is a key essential for well indexed website.

Reference: http://www.trendmx.com/seo/step-3-site-preparation.aspx