1. Size Matters. The size of a web site can have a huge impact on search engine rankings. Search engines love content, so if you have only a few pages to your site and your competitors have dozens, it's difficult to see a top page ranking for your site. In some cases it may be difficult to present several pages of information about your business or products, so you may need to think about adding free resources for visitors. It will help in broadening scope of your web site (which search engines like) as well as keep visitors on your site longer, possibly resulting in more sales.

2. Graphics-Based Web Sites. While web sites that offer visitor a more esthetically-pleasing experience may seem like best choice for someone searching for your product, they are most difficult to optimize. Since search engine robots cannot read text within graphics or animation, what they see may be just a small amount of text. And if we learned anything from point #1, small amounts of content will not result in top rankings. If you really must offer visitor a graphics-heavy or Flash web site, consider creating an html-based side of your site that is also available to visitors. This site will be much easier to promote on search engines and your new found visitors will also have option to jump over to nicer looking part of your site.

3. Dynamic Web Pages. If most of your web site is generated by a large database (such as a large book dealer with stock that is changing by minute) you may find that some of your pages do not get indexed by major search engines. If you look at URL of these pages they can be extremely long and have characters such as ?, #, &, %, or = along with huge amounts of seemingly random numbers or letters. Since these pages are automatically generated by database as needed, search engines have a tough time keeping them up to date and relevant for search engine users.

One way to combat this problem is to offer a search engine friendly site map listing all your static pages just to let them know that you do have permanent content on your site. If search engines see links going to and from these dynamic pages within a good internal linking system, this may also lead to pages getting indexed. The link popularity of your site may carry more weight in this case as well, so if you can't offer as much static content as your competition, make sure you have an aggressive link campaign on go.

Google Suggestion Beta – Salvation for SEO’s & Webmasters or a Marginal Tool to Gauge Search Populatiry.

Google has finally rolled out a new tool touted as their latest breakthrough in logical search suggestion. In a nutshell, this tool follows your typing, letter by letter, and as you continue to formulate you search query, Google Suggest opens a drop down box of suggestions based on what it thinks you might be searching for. As you type each letter in your query window, Google Suggest continues to update list based on information you type. The Beta site is located at http://www.google.com/webhp?hl=en&complete=1. After reading Mr. Valentine’s article, I was quick to drop by Beta Site to check this new tool out. I thought to myself, “If this actually reports number of searches being done at Google for a particular search term or phrase, then boy is it going to be easy to evaluate best search terms to use when optimizing a page for Google.” I felt like a kid on Christmas morning running downstairs to see what Santa brought me.

The Investigation Begins – My Hopes Become Fears.

My first idea was to type web site design into search box query area. No sooner than I finished typing “web si”, up pops box listing “web site design” as top suggested pick, and results showing “22,600.000 results”. My first thought was “Holy crap, there’s THAT many searches being done at Google on web site design?” My next question was “Now I wonder if that is a month, to date since Google has been in operation, or what?” Soon after additional thought, my mind began to clear and horror struck me. The next question was “What if these are just number of matching results in Google database for search term web site design?” My hopes and dreams of a new tool to demystify Google search popularity began to disintegrate as my mind started to rationalize situation and ponder question further.

Comparing Suggestion Beta “Results” with Google SERP “Results”.