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Why would I do this??? Why would I risk my job (home, etc.) to post this? Because I can "make a difference"....
Let me rain on a parade: People who tell you that they can give you better rankings in the search engines are LYING and STEALING YOU BLIND. Major search engine companies are paying "flesh and blood" people to judge the quality of your web pages. I should know...I'm one of those people. You would think that being paid to judge adult material (porn) would be every man's DREAM job. I can tell you it quickly get's boring, frustrating, and disgusting (and not in that order).
Regularly we don't even get to see your page-- all we can see is the little blurb that comes up after the search results finish loading.
So...over the last several weeks I've written this...I hope it helps:
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Things that Piss Me Off (or, Great Ways to get Your Webpage to the bottom of the Shitpile in rough order of preference):
1. Ads that “cram” open to the size of my monitor
2. Ads that force me to at least acknowledge (click something) before I can see the page I want. This also includes video commercials in front of the video I asked for.
3. Ads that flash or make noise. If your product is that bad, get out of business.
4. Ads that promise “free” (FREE SCAN) only to find out you legally lied (Your scan finds the viruses free of charge, but then I have to pay to have them fixed.)
5. Ads that promise free then require me to register, and usually suck down your adaware software too.
6. Too many ads (run them down one side of the page, not both).
7. Pages that have nothing but links to other pages about what I was looking for AND your advertisements.
8. If your site is about golf, instead of advertising clubs and tee times, show me truck driving school—or worse—video poker.
9. Have a pop-up add that repeats the exact same page that I just asked for—with a repeat round of your advertising.
10. Waste my time. In other words…put what I’m looking for at the bottom of the page or at the end of a long video.
11. Rip off other people’s content and slap it onto your own page –without adding any worthwhile content of your own. This CAN be done properly, but it’s almost always so cliché and poorly done, you’re probably not going to “reinvent the wheel” anytime soon.
12. Information that is either incomplete or poorly organized. In other words, don’t even have “a method to the madness” as to how you present your material.
13. Broken links or (worse—more glaring) broken images. It SCREAMS unprofessional.
14. Don’t know you’re market. Say I’m looking for something in America. Even if your page is in English (UK/NZ), cater to a market in another market. Then again…if I’m looking for something for the UK market…..I think you get the point.
15. (True story) You’re a great guy and all but if you live across the nation and I’m looking for tractor parts, show me a quick video of your parts store’s location and hours off to the side of a LENGTHY expose of your entire family tree and its recent history.
16. (True story) Create links within the text of your article that when hovered over flash a totally unrelated advertisement. Example: “fits” (as in a good fit for a shoe on your foot) would show an ad for a national beverage chain.
17. If you’re trying to sell me something and there are three different sizes to what I want, use the same picture file for the “small”, “medium”, and “large” images.
18. Have links that are designed only to keep me staring at YOUR ads. (Example: Your page is about dogs and it is littered with links to pages on your site about Hitler—Answers.com and About.com are notorious for this)
19. Have a lot of “dead” (white, unused) space on the page.
20. If I’m looking for an action game, show me a list of “2,100 action games” that are littered with puzzles and crossword games.
21. Shovel so much shit that my bullshit detector goes off. I don’t like feeling I’m being lied to…why should I think that Internet users would?
22. When there is little or no information about your product or service, have a pic(s) of the product(s) that aren’t also a link to another page with more information about what the picture is.
23. When I have a 17” monitor at 1280x1024 resolution, have a web page wider than my monitor can handle so I have to scroll “left to right” as I read your page.
24. Naming conventions where I can’t figure out what your web page is probably about just by reading the URL. See your web page designer if it’s not you.
25. If your web page is “time sensitive” (like a newspaper article on a breaking story), don’t leave me a timestamp at the top of the article itself as to when the article was written/last updated.
26. Claim that your web page is “up to the minute” or “the latest” information about something and while the topic is still hot, not update the page for a week.
27. Have a search feature for your site that throws an error upon use.
28. If your web page isn’t about graphic design, teenage clothing/makeup or pop culture, pick lots of neon colors.
29. If you’re writing a news piece about an event worthy of reporting, condense your report down to only one or two sentences.
30. Claim that you’re the “official” newsletter when really you’re not or such “officialness” cannot exist simply because no one has the right to make such a claim.
31. “Overload” (cram) your page with the same keywords over and over (Besides…it’s SO “old skool”)
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