Every day sees the addition of literally thousands of websites to the online world. Some better than others. The thing they all have in common is that they're just entering the online world. A lot of them will not live to see the light of Google SERP's, and that is mostly due to some common mistakes web developers are prone to do.

Today I'll try to uncover some of these rookie mistakes, and help websites see the light:

1. The first mistake comes right from the start. Most companies tend to secure their own company name as a domain name. While that is a good thing to do, they neglect support domains. While in Google a keyword domain is not all that relevant, it could help with most other search engines.
2. Second error comes from the under construction phase. Once the domain is active, people tend to have something on, even if it's only a under construction banner. While a simple message or picture can help, offline marketers introduced the teaser concept in the online. Teasers work in offline. They don't however work in online, not this way for certain. Having a logo and name, trying to brand the site before the actual content is on can bring penalties. Plus, for quite some time, after the actual website is on, Google will keep the old copy in cache. This can delay your indexing effort by miles.
3. Over-linked footers. Few escape the mirage of internal links as fast indexing tools. One can almost imagine the crawler digging through the myriad of internal links posted in the footer. The trouble is, internal links are most effective when in actual content, with good anchors.
4. All in one fell swoop. Most web developers have a tendency of releasing the website "only when it's done!". This "done" in their minds is linked with "I'm off the hook with this now!". So a website comes in the world stuffed with content. Now that in itself is not a bad thing. The bad thing comes now: no follow-up. The site sees no updates for months. Why would it? It's "done!". So Google sees it. I crawls it. visits it for some time. Then it stops. Now it's done :(
5. Overachievers. I'm selling cars. I want to be Nr. 1 in Google when someone types "cars". Yeah, like that's gonna happen. Most of these sites are optimized (if they're optimized at all) for top level keywords, preferably short tails ("cars" is a short tail, as it's formed by only one word. These days, even some 2 word phrases can fall into the short tail category). Even if by some miracle this is achieved, the conversion rate will be appalling. The business sells cars in Manchester. Not very interesting for that visitor from Poland.  Long tails, geo-location, all must be part of a startup strategy to rule the world.

That's it for now, we will be back with more soon!