While there are a number of great things you can do to optimize your site for the search engines, there are a few that simply need to be avoided. These techniques can do one of two things. They may lower your search engine rankings or they could even get you banned completely from the search results. Do not waste all your effort just to end up at the bottom of the results page because of one mistake. However, in most cases, you can make one or two mistakes, but if you go all out using bad techniques you will be caught. Don't think you can get away with it. So, what should you avoid?

Avoid Link Farms, They Do You No Good

Link farms are BAD! That’s all there is to it. When you link to a farm, you are not only wasting your money, you will hurt your rankings permanently in most cases. Search engines generally know about link farms long before anyone ever pays for their services. Don't think that new link farms are ok. Besides, most link farms do not have a high ranking in search engines anyway. Therefore, you are likely to see positive results even if you don't get caught.

Don't Pay High Prices for a Quick Fix

You will see hundreds, if not thousands of websites online, promoting a quick fix for your search engine results. Most of these sites offer a few hundred links in one or two days. However, this does you no good; you need to build links slowly. Some even offer to search for your keywords for a few hundred bucks. In most cases, you do not need these services; you can pick your keywords based on what you sell and where you are located. Look around and see what your competitors are using and you can figure it out yourself. You may even discover that some of these companies offer quick results. However, when they are out of the picture, the search engine discovers that bad tactics were used to raise your ranking and you are left holding the bag.

Forget Drop Down Menus For Site Direction

Many sites use drop down menus to show the pages on their website. This is not a good idea. Popular search engine spiders are not able to access drop down menus. You need to list text links to your website pages. This will make it easier for the search engines to crawl your pages and get them indexed. If you leave out your text links, you may have very low search engine ranking. Search engines want to see large websites with relevant material. If all they see is your home page, you can count yourself out.

Forgo the Flash Animation

Don't use flash animation to convey your message. This does not mean you cannot have a flash banner at the top of your page. However, if your page is full of flash ads or banners, you may have problems getting the ranking you are looking for. Search engine spiders can only read text at this point. You need to make sure that the text on your site includes your site name and keywords, as well as your flash boxes. Consider this, if you are selling products and they are all within flash boxes, the search engines do not read the product names or pictures. You must have image descriptions or text under and around the boxes to let the search engines know what you are offering.

As you can see, there are a number of things you definitely should not do when promoting and building your website. If you build your site properly, without trying to force the results too quickly, you are sure to see better results.