We’ve all been to websites with mistakes in their design. Such mistakes can make a website difficult to use, inaccessible on some computers, and/or unprofessional looking. Here are the top 5 common mistakes that website designers should avoid:

1. Lines of text wider than the screen: Some websites require users with common lower-resolution displays to repeatedly scroll left and right across the screen while reading each line. A website should be designed so that it appears properly on any screen resolution. Worse still, a number of websites have design mistakes which cause part of the page (especially common within non-scrolling frames) to be completely obscured at some resolution levels.

2. Too much javascript, Flash, etc: When a website relies upon Flash, javascript, and IFRAMEs (especially those supplied by external sites) for most of its content, search engine “spiders” find very little intelligible material when they check the website, and users with browsers that aren’t javascript-enabled won’t see much either. Having some original content is generally better for search rankings.

3. Right-click blockers: It is relatively common to visit a website that shows error messages if you try to use the right mouse button. The reason for this is to discourage people from copying the page or its images. However, it prevents legitimate right-click functions like opening a link in a new browser window, and someone intent upon stealing the content can still do so in a different way. It also makes the page take longer to load.

4. Poor color combination: One of the top website mistakes is to use a color scheme that is hard to read (or look at). Be creative with the choice of colors, but make sure the lettering contrasts well with the background (which shouldn’t be unnecessarily bright). Even the best information or offers may be ignored if they are difficult to read or otherwise undesirable.

5. Internet Explorer based design: Because IE is the top web browser, some website designers only consider how a site will appear in it. However, when the 08/2008 market share (according to w3schools.com) of Firefox, Opera, and Safari are combined, it is about 48%. Also, search engine “spiders” see a website more like text-only browsers do. Keep in mind that Windows 95 users are limited to IE 5.5, and 98/2000/ME users to IE 6.x, so these versions remain common.

Avoiding these top website mistakes is to the benefit of both the site’s users and owner. Web designers working for someone else will find that they have to correct fewer mistakes and respond to less complaints if they avoid the above-mentioned design flaws.

SWFObject offers the ability to optimize Flash files for search engine optimization. It has 2 optimized Flash Player methods that you can choose from – a markup based approach as well as a JavaScript-reliant method. Because it has been hard to optimize Flash files previously this tool is quite helpful.

Some important basics about the SWFObject include the fact that it offers a JavaScript API that intends to supply a complete tool set for embedding SWF files and retrieving Flash Player related information. SWFObject also only uses one small JavaScript file, 9.5Kb/GZIPed:3.8Kb.

Many experts believe that SWFObject will eventually replace Adobes’ Flash Player Detection Kit. The program also intends to merge all existing Flash Player embed methods and provide a new standard for embedding Adobe Flash Player content. Best of all its an open source project.

There are quite a few reasons for using SWFObject. It is more flexible and optimized than other Flash Player embed methods for one. It also offers a solution for you whether you are an HTML, Flash or JavaScript developer. Additionally it uses unobtrusive JavaScript and JavaScript best practices and is extremely easy to use.

With SFWObject you can use both static and dynamic publishing methods. The only thing it doesn’t support is XML MIME types. SWFObject used to be called FlashObject. The name was changed due to legal/trademark reasons.

A major part of search engine optimization is making sure that all of the pages on your web site are easily accessible by both humans and search engines. Since each page on a web site can be indexed you can also optimize each page for searchers and search engines.

To optimize your site for search engines consider that they use search engine robots to find and index a site. These robots, also called spiders, continually look for content on the web that needs to be indexed. Once they find something these robots will follow the hyperlinks to each web page. This is called “crawling” a site. When the robot arrives on a page it reads through the content and adds it to the index. Because robots do this for every page and this is a way your site pages get added to search engine results it is important to have navigational site structure that is friendly to the robots.

Additionally the search engines will only rank pages that are perceived as important. That’s why it is necessary to create content hierarchy in your navigational structure – your most important pages should be at the top of your site structure. Whichever page is at the top, usually your home page, generally attracts the most links. Often search engine robots stop searching after 3 clicks from the homepage. That’s why it’s important to decide on a hierarchy for your site’s pages.

This leads to categorization. If you want to organize your content in a natural way you should create categories for all of your site’s content. Then link those categories to your homepage. This helps create more key phrases to link to which can help you attract a wider audience for searches.

Keep in mind that search engine robots only follow html links. This means that any links using Flash, JavaScript, dropdown menus or submit buttons don’t get picked up by them and therefore don’t get indexed. Besides that html links are a better choice because the anchor text can describe the destination page for human visitors to see.

Finally, create a sitemap. A sitemap is basically works like an index, listing links to all the pages on your web site. If you link a sitemap to your home page robots have easy access to all your web site’s pages. Be aware though that robots generally follow less than 100 links from one page. If you have more pages than that consider creating a multi-page sitemap.

While it is not currently realistic to optimize Flash content itself for search engines, it is possible to optimize the web page it is contained on. Such optimization can also make your web site more accessible for people who are visually impaired or don’t have Flash Player installed.

One option you can use to optimize your Flash content for search engines is to put a script (JavaScript or PHP are two languages which can be used to create such a script) on your web site which detects if the proper version of Flash Player is installed on the user’s computer. If it is, the script should allow the Fl. content to be displayed. Otherwise, alternate text should appear, providing search engine optimized information similar to what the Fl. content would display. Like computers without FlashPlayer or with text-based web browsers, search engine spiders can’t view Flash, so they will also see this information. The text can include instructions to download the correct Fl. Player version if the user wants to view the page in that format. If you would rather not use scripts, an alternative option is to have two separate, linked pages (one with Flash, the other in HTML) to serve the same purpose, and only take measures to search engine optimize the HTML version.

If you don’t have enough time or feel that you cannot provide a text equivalent of the Flash content, be sure that the page at least has good title and description META tags. The keyword META tag is not considered very important any more, but might be worth using in this situation. If pages within your web site are linked via Flash-based content, make sure there are HTML links or a Site Map (linked via an HTML link from the home page) so that search spiders are able to index the different pages. When using either set of techniques to optimize your site, consider downloading and using a text based web browser such as Lynx to see what your web site looks like to search engine spiders and people using such browsers.

Basically, it is possible to optimize the web pages Flash content is located on, but not the actual content. Even if search engines eventually become able to spider Flash, it is beneficial to make your web site easy to access for people who do not possess the necessary software or have slow internet connections.

In my opinion, the single greatest SEO issue with AJAX is the tendency (although not necessity) of AJAX applications to not judiciously create unique, bookmarkable (and therefore indexable) URLs for SEO.

It is critical for SEO to get as many internal pages indexed is critical. Like the IBM article mentions, the fact that Google put the “Link to this page” feature on the Maps page shows that they understand the SEO need for unique URLs pulled from within the application.

Depending in what you’re doing with AJAX, you’ll derive a ton of SEO benefit from a similar philosophy.
Static HTML Files
One solution is to only use AJAX as  a layer of logic over the top of the application to add usability and interactivity. Having degradable hyperlinks is essential to accessibility and search engine crawlability and SEO.  If this is true, you can to direct the links to the static pages (using href=”linktostaticpage” mce_href=”linktostaticpage” ) and then over-ride that with an external JS function via AJAX code.

Another suggestion is to use traditional links with “onclick” AJAX behaviours returning false. When a javascript enabled browser clicks an AJAX link, the “return false” tells the browser not to follow the link.  With Javascript off (ie google), it will ignore the “return false” and follow the link anyway – the link is of course to the static URL mentioned in rule

1.A partial solution to this is the use of the noscript tag. The careful use of this tag will provide the search engine some static content to review, in addition to providing information for users that are not able to access the dynamic content. Be careful to make this content the best that you can for SEO. Make every effort to provide the same content in the tag as you would find in the AJAX portion of the page. If the content contained in the tag appears too divergent, competitors may report your site as “spam”. If a manual inspection by a search engine rep finds the content too dissimilar, you may find your pages ignored which is not good for SEO. 

Mod Rewrite Solution
So basically, this AJAX SEO solution is to develop some type of mod-rewrite or similar function that will map of series of different url’s to a AJAX page and that page may have a different page title, description, and even body text based on the url called.  Basically, the URL becomes a database, or text file, trigger that is interpreted and results in the browser doing something distinctive. 

A secondary point is that once you’ve created the capability to create unique internal URLs, you need to post them somewhere so they can be crawled.  I would recommend two possibilities…the first is a Site Map that would provide a user with some hierarchical overview but ultimately be a SEO Roadmap to the site to feed unique internal URLs to the search engine spiders.
In addition, this site map provides linkable tags for marketing campaigns, link building campaigns, and other type of exercise that would benefit from a static link to arrive at specific content that is not the default loading of the AJAX Page.  Bookmarks are problematic and the site should offer a ‘link to this page’ or ‘permalink’ option on the page which gives people the correct URL. 
Example of MOD REWRITE for AJAX SEO
Server side script
.htaccess mod_rewrite
If you’re not based on the Apache server when it comes to hosting then mod_rewrite may not be an option but there are always solutions. Check out your hosting platforms options with regards to URL rewriting.
The following links offer an example of rewriting an URL to form a fixed address that a search engine can index safely and rank.
http://www.samplesite.com/ajax seo/company/1/
http://www.samplesite.com/ajax seo/company/2/
http://www.samplesite.com/ajax seo/company/3/
The above URL’s are a rewritten version of:
http://www.samplesite.com/ajax seo/index.php?company=1
http://www.samplesite.com/ajax seo/index.php?company=2
http://www.samplesite.com/ajax seo/index.php?company=3
The mod_rewrite instructions that allow for this are as follows:
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ajax_seo/(.*)/(.*)/$
/ajax_seo/index.php?$1=$2
Although the real URL is a dynamically generated single page, the mod_rewrite instruction gives the appearance (to a search engine) that there is a directory with different and more importantly unique content at the destination.
Site Feeds

Another AJAX SEO solution is using Google Base, ROR files, Yahoo Paid Inclusion, and other type of Search Engine Feed to promote the static urls into the search engine index.  This eliminates some of the spider risk and provides good navigational queries for searches who do not rely on bookmarks. So basically, this solution is or similar function that will map of series of different url’s to a AJAX page and that page may have a different page title, description, and even body text based on the url called.  Basically, the URL becomes a database, or text file, trigger that is interpreted and results in the browser doing something distinctive. A secondary point is that once you’ve created the to create unique internal URLs, you need to post them somewhere so they can be crawled.  I would recommend two possibilities…the first is a that would provide a user with some hierarchical overview but ultimately be a SEO Roadmap to the site to feed unique internal URLs to the search engine spiders.In addition, this site map provides linkable tags for marketing campaigns, link building campaigns, and other type of exercise that would benefit from a static link to arrive at specific content that is not the default loading of the AJAX Page.  Bookmarks are problematic and the site should offer a ‘link to this page’ or ‘permalink’ option on the page which gives people the correct URL.Server side script.htaccess mod_rewriteIf you’re not based on the Apache server when it comes to hosting then mod_rewrite may not be an option but there are always solutions. Check out your hosting platforms options with regards to URL rewriting.The following links offer an example of rewriting an URL to form a fixed address that a search engine can index safely and rank.http://www.samplesite.com/ajax_seo/company/1/http://www.samplesite.com/ajax_seo/company/2/http://www.samplesite.com/ajax_seo/company/3/The above URL’s are a rewritten version of:http://www.samplesite.com/ajax_seo/index.php?company=1http://www.samplesite.com/ajax_seo/index.php?company=2http://www.samplesite.com/ajax_seo/index.php?company=3The mod_rewrite instructions that allow for this are as follows:Options +FollowSymLinksRewriteEngine onRewriteRule ajax_seo/(.*)/(.*)/$/ajax_seo/index.php?$1=$2Although the real URL is a dynamically generated single page, the mod_rewrite instruction gives the appearance (to a search engine) that there is a directory with different and more importantly unique content at the destination.Another solution is using Google Base, ROR files, Yahoo Paid Inclusion, and other type of Search Engine Feed to promote the static urls into the search engine index.  This eliminates some of the spider risk and provides good navigational queries for searches who do not rely on bookmarks. 

So basically, this solution is or similar function that will map of series of different url’s to a AJAX page and that page may have a different page title, description, and even body text based on the url called.  Basically, the URL becomes a database, or text file, trigger that is interpreted and results in the browser doing something distinctive. A secondary point is that once you’ve created the to create unique internal URLs, you need to post them somewhere so they can be crawled.  I would recommend two possibilities…the first is a that would provide a user with some hierarchical overview but ultimately be a AJAX SEO Roadmap to the site to feed unique internal URLs to the search engine spiders.In addition, this site map provides linkable tags for marketing campaigns, link building campaigns, and other type of exercise that would benefit from a static link to arrive at specific content that is not the default loading of the AJAX Page.  Bookmarks are problematic and the site should offer a ‘link to this page’ or ‘permalink’ option on the page which gives people the correct URL.Server side script.htaccess mod_rewriteIf you’re not based on the Apache server when it comes to hosting then mod_rewrite may not be an option but there are always solutions. Check out your hosting platforms options with regards to URL rewriting.The following links offer an example of rewriting an URL to form a fixed address that a search engine can index safely and rank.http://www.samplesite.com/ajax_seo/company/1/http://www.samplesite.com/ajax_seo/company/2/http://www.samplesite.com/ajax_seo/company/3/The above URL’s are a rewritten version of:http://www.samplesite.com/ajax_seo/index.php?company=1http://www.samplesite.com/ajax_seo/index.php?company=2http://www.samplesite.com/ajax_seo/index.php?company=3The mod_rewrite instructions that allow for this are as follows:Options +FollowSymLinksRewriteEngine onRewriteRule ajax_seo/(.*)/(.*)/$/ajax_seo/index.php?$1=$2Although the real URL is a dynamically generated single page, the mod_rewrite instruction gives the appearance (to a search engine) that there is a directory with different and more importantly unique content at the destination.

Another AJAX SEO solution is using Google Base, ROR files, Yahoo Paid Inclusion, and other type of Search Engine Feed to promote the static urls into the search engine index.  This eliminates some of the spider risk and provides good navigational queries for searches who do not rely on bookmarks. So basically, this solution is or similar function that will map of series of different url’s to a AJAX page and that page may have a different page title, description, and even body text based on the url called.  Basically, the URL becomes a database, or text file, trigger that is interpreted and results in the browser doing something distinctive. A secondary SEO point is that once you’ve created the to create unique internal URLs, you need to post them somewhere so they can be crawled.  I would recommend two possibilities…the first is a that would provide a user with some hierarchical overview but ultimately be a SEO Roadmap to the site to feed unique internal URLs to the search engine spiders.In addition, this site map provides linkable tags for marketing campaigns, link building campaigns, and other type of exercise that would benefit from a static link to arrive at specific content that is not the default loading of the AJAX Page.  Bookmarks are problematic and the site should offer a ‘link to this page’ or ‘permalink’ option on the page which gives people the correct URL.Server side script.htaccess mod_rewriteIf you’re not based on the Apache server when it comes to hosting then mod_rewrite may not be an option but there are always solutions. Check out your hosting platforms options with regards to URL rewriting.The following links offer an example of rewriting an URL to form a fixed address that a search engine can index safely and rank.http://www.samplesite.com/ajax_seo/company/1/http://www.samplesite.com/ajax_seo/company/2/http://www.samplesite.com/ajax_seo/company/3/The above URL’s are a rewritten version of:http://www.samplesite.com/ajax_seo/index.php?company=1http://www.samplesite.com/ajax_seo/index.php?company=2http://www.samplesite.com/ajax_seo/index.php?company=3The mod_rewrite instructions that allow for this are as follows:Options +FollowSymLinksRewriteEngine onRewriteRule ajax_seo/(.*)/(.*)/$/ajax_seo/index.php?$1=$2Although the real URL is a dynamically generated single page, the mod_rewrite instruction gives the appearance (to a search engine) that there is a directory with different and more importantly unique content at the destination.Another solution is using Google Base, ROR files, Yahoo Paid Inclusion, and other type of Search Engine Feed to promote the static urls into the search engine index.  This eliminates some of the SEO spider risk and provides good navigational queries for searches who do not rely on bookmarks.