SEO Trends And Mistakes One Must Avoid

Search Engine Optimization or simply known as SEO is one of the most popular type of Internet marketing used in the market today.Search Engine Optimization, or SEO can get us massive amounts of traffic to our websites. But when used wrongly, it has the ability to draw traffic away from our websites instead.This article summarizes SEO trends and mistakes you should avoid from practicing

They key to understanding which Search Engine Optimization mistakes to avoid lies in understanding what big search engines like Google likes and does not like.

Image headers and extensive image use. 
Google spiders cannot read images like text. Therefore, your header cannot be quantified by Google's search engine and as we all know headers are extremely important for SEO. Therefore, use a text header with the "[h1]" tag instead. If you must use images, include keywords in the alt text. 

Excessive keywords 
If the keyword density of your site is over 5%, your site will come across as spam and that will have negative effects on SEO. Instead, use stemmed keywords. (key phrases related to your targeted keyword)

E.g. internet marketing tips and online marketing advice.  

Profanity or Bad Language
Google hates profanity and bad language. Therefore, stay away from it, unless you are running an adult website.

Splash pages 
Probably the biggest mistake anyone can make is by having a splash page. The first thing Google reads is your main page and if your main page is one big hunk of flash videos, you will be losing out on tons of potential free traffic.

Black hat SEO 
Black hat SEO techniques,  involves the use of deception. Black hat SEO is also known in industry as spamdexing. One popular example spamdexing or black hat SEO is hidding text behind images or colored similar to its background. According to many professionals, black hat SEO can give faster results compared to that of white hat. However, these results are usually temporary, and that if caught, websites would be penalized or banned from a search engine.  

Google search engine is always upgrading their algorithm to prevent from SEO abusers and thus, it is always good to stay on top of the SEO trends so that your site will not lose traffic. 

Web Design Best Practices :Rules Of Smart And Successful Web-Designing

 "Design Best Practices :Rules Of Smart And Successful Web-Designing"is my personal pick of the main ideas and concepts, which might improve the quality and popularity of your web-sites and provide a good foundation for successful development in the future.

Page Layout

•  Appealing to target audience
•  Consistent site header/logo
•  Consistent navigation area
•   Informative page title that includes the company/organization/site name
•  Page footer area — copyright, last update, contact e-mail address
•  Good use of basic design principles: repetition, contrast, proximity, and alignment
•  Displays without horizontal scrolling at 1024x768 and higher resolutions
•  Balance of text/graphics/white space on page
•  Good contrast between text and background
• Home page has compelling, interesting information above the fold (before scrolling down) at 1024x768
• Home page downloads within 10 seconds on dial-up connection

 Navigation

• Main navigation links are clearly and consistently labeled
• Navigation is easy to use for target audience
• All navigation hyperlinks "work" — are not broken
• Navigation is structured in an unordered list (accessibility)
• Navigation aids, such as site map, skip navigation link, or breadcrumbs are used (accessibility)

Color, Graphics and Multimedia

• Use of different colors in page backgrounds/text is limited to a maximum of three or four colors plus neutrals 
• Color is used consistently
•  Graphics are optimized and do not significantly slow download
• Each graphic used serves a clear purpose
• Image tags use the alt attribute to configure alternate text to display if the browser or user agent does not support images (accessibility)
• Animated images do not distract from the site and either do not repeat or only repeat a few times
•  Each audio/video/Flash file used serves a clear purpose
•  Download times for audio or video files are indicated
• Links to downloads for media plug-ins are provided
• Captions are provided for each audio or video file used (accessibility)

Content

• Common fonts such as Arial or Times New Roman are used
• Avoids the use of "Click here" when writing text for hyperlinks
• If standard link colors are not used, hyperlinks use a consistent set of colors to indicate visited/nonvisited status
• If graphics and/or media is used to convey meaning, the alternate text equivalent of the content is provided (accessibility)
• Information is easy to find (minimal clicks)
• Timeliness: The date of the last revision and/or copyright date is accurate
• Content does not include outdated material
• Content is free of typographical and grammatical errors
• Content provides links to other useful sites

Functionality

• All internal and external hyperlinks work
• All forms function as expected
• No JavaScript errors are generated

Browser Compatibility

• Displays on popular versions Internet Explorer(IE), Firefox, Opera,. Chrome