scribbling.net: Help the Googlebot understand your web site
This is the best damned collection of tips and solid advice I've read recently for building a website/webpage that works well with Google. Here are a few of the tips from this article:
- Make every single page on your site accessible via a text-based link - as opposed to Javascript, Flash, DHTML, etc. The Googlebot only speaks text.
- Keep the number of links on a given page less than 100.
- Give every single page on the site a complete and meaningful
<title>. Google offers the allintitle syntax, which lets users search only text that appears in a page title. There are over 3 million results returned for "Untitled Document".
- Avoid frames. Avoid frames like the plague.
- Use URLs with query strings sparingly, if at all.
There are plenty more, so I'd highly recommend you read it, and then tell all of your developers and marketing people and content people to read it too. (It helps if everyone in your organization understands a little about "writing for search engines").