Here are lots of reasons why you could do badly in Google's search results. Many of the reasons are quite technical so if you don't understand them then just use the free blog program "WordPress" and you'll be just fine.
The main point here is not to try and "fool" Google into making your website number one for your niche keyword; they'll easily spot any tricks and penalize your website in some way! If you make an honest, useful and unique site then you'll do really well in the search results and can make money online.
Flash Intros – Pointless Flash Intros stormed the internet about 10 years ago I heard and people still make them! They cannot be read by Google so any text within a Flash movie is lost, it may look good but it stops you getting into any search results.
Broken Links – If you click on a link and the page doesn't exist then you'll bring up an error page. These "broken" links are a nuisance to anyone using a website and Google frowns upon them. You can check all your links on a website in one go with the Xenu link tool from Microsoft.
Hidden Links and Content – You can change the appearance of links (using CSS) so they don't have an underline or you can make them the same color as the main text. This is very confusing to users and can even be used to trick people or search engines. Even worse are people who hide whole chunks of text by making the text the same color as the background; this is a fast track to getting your website penalized by Google and they will spot it eventually!
Text in Images – There's nothing wrong with having a little text in your images it's just that Google cannot read it! If you have a navigation bar with text-images for links then it's a guessing game for Google about what those pages are about before going to them. Remember it's not a person looking at your site it's a robotic program that doesn't know left from right so don't confuse it.
Duplicate Content – Thinking about stealing another person's content? Well don't! You are not only breaking copy write laws but you'll easily be spotted by Google and penalized (i.e. not appear in any search results). You can get someone's content and completely rewrite it in your own words and add some other great information from other sites which you've re-written too.
Relevant Content - Pick a subject and stick to it and you'll do well in Google. If you were writing about "slow cooking techniques" and then started to talk about the latest Football players then this is two completely different subjects and you won't rank well for either of them in Google!
Too Little Content – The more you write about your niche subject the more keywords you'll rank for in Google. If you had one page about one tiny area of your niche then that's all your website is worth. If you talk about every aspect about your niche then you'll draw people from the search engines in lots of different ways as you'll have text about it on your website somewhere!
Javascript – You can use a mini program called Javascript to do some tricks with your website. A lot of people make fancy navigation bars with javascript not thinking that some people don't have java enabled on their browsers. Around 7% of internet users turn Javascript off so your whole navigation may become invisible for those users! Avoid using it unless your doing very advanced things, it's not user friendly so Google will knock you down for using it in important areas of your website.
Keyword stuffing – You want to rank highly in Google for your niche keyword right? Well some people keep saying that keyword again and again in the text of their website to try and get more attention in the search results. This CAN work well if you put the right keywords on the page a few times but any more than 3% density can look like spam in the eyes of Google and you may look like you're trying to trick the search engine which could land you with a penalty. Be careful how often you say one word and remember that you can always say other variations of the same thing e.g. cooking, cooked, preparing, cook, make etc.
Meta and Image tag abuse – The <meta> tags are used to describe individual pages and what keywords to expect in them. They used to count a lot towards how search engines ranked a website but now they are almost obsolete. Still people use tricks that worked 10-15 years ago which was to place many, many keyword variations in the keywords and description meta tags. Another tag abuse strategy that used to work was to place lots of keywords in the alt tag on images to make that page as a whole look amazingly relevant to the keyword used. These methods don't work anymore although you can still use them in very small moderation (no more than 3 keyword variations in the tags will be safe).
Comic Sans – The worst font ever created by mankind; using this on your website or any other "kooky" font will put off users big time. Also certain fancy fonts may not be installed on other people's computers so it may look great to you but nasty for them as it defaults to "Times New Roman" if the font cannot be found! Stick to these fonts for your website: "Ariel", "Verdana", "Times New Roman", "Helvetica", "Georgia", "Geneva" and "Courier New".
Moving Gifs – You can have moving images on your site and even in the background. These are often tacky, pointless and distracting and will drive people off your site very quickly! Use moving Gifs only for hover over buttons and anything you really want to be noticed on your site.
Readable Text – Your website should be accessible by all kinds of people. This means the text shouldn't be too small (12px at the minimum) and it shouldn't have too little contrast to be noticed (you need dark text on a light background or vice versa).
Missing attributes – Images on the internet are placed incorrectly on many websites. You need to add the image height and width into every image plus add some alternative text into the image for anyone who is visually impaired or hasn't downloaded the images. There is no need to worry too much about this issue so ignore it if you don' know much about coding websites.
