Avoid making your website search engine un-friendly

Make Website Smarter

Web Design is a very subjective process. Your idea of what looks good may differ from the next person's. While wild backgrounds and flashing text were once considered cool, unwritten standards have evolved into every web designers inventory. If you have one of these examples on your site, and you like it, by all means - leave it there! These are just examples.

Javascript text scrolling
Do you remember visiting a website and all the scrolling text across the bottom? These are usually put in your status bar along the bottom edge of your browser window. Webmasters used to do that. Some still do. They have become a big no-no in web design. Users like to see their status bar, or, if they don't, they turn it off.

Under Construction signs
There used to be and still are pages with "under construction" signs for webmasters to use. No business wants their customers to think they are running on a low budget or producing an incomplete website. The construction graphic is extinct!

Page counters
Five years ago, almost every site had a page counter. These counters can be easily manipulated. They can start at any number - not just 1, and they can produce vastly over-inflated numbers. Why let the visitor know about your website popularity or lack of it with a low number?

Excessive animated .GIF's
Some years ago, webmaster everywhere were over populating the web with crazy animations and bright and obnoxious colors. Today very few sites use these files. They are now considered a waste of bandwidth. Since most companies pay for their hosting by how much bandwidth is used, animated GIF's went by the wayside.

Page fades
Many websites used to have those fancy pages that fade in and out, from circles to spirals and even window-shades. They fall in the category with the scrolling text - obsolete! Most Internet users are looking for information, not fancy graphics and page transitions.

But most of all, give your visitors the information that they are looking for.