Since we finished with the positive on-page factors described in: On-page landing page optimization tutorials, the next step is to discuss the negative on-page factors.

The one we start with will be about images with text in it, without any optimization and no text around them.
I gave you example in Image optimization advices how an image can be masked within a “regular” mail.
The image bellow gives an example as well how text represented graphically is invisible to search engines.

I am sure you have seen many similar images within your mails and on “good” websites offering fitness, cooking or other help.

Maybe you are wandering why I have plastered up the text on the image, but there are rumors saying that Google is using OCR and face recognition like software to read these “special” words and uncover female forms in images placed on “innocent” websites.
Either it is doing that or not, I prefer to avoid this page in private and the whole site bashed from search engine listings, because of a bad image.

Another object similar to the images issue is Flash sites without HTML alternative and/or no additional text.
Since now there is no search engine that “reads” Flash at all. I have seen many domains with about 100-500 external links to them, and no Page Rank at all and no keywords that appears on a search.
The next image was provided by one architectural company with permission to be as an example, how a very nice architectural website www.4astudio.com has issues with ranking.

As you can see from the image and the provided link, the Flash content of the page has nothing with spam or scam.

Hopefully when you are reading this tutorial, there is any PR and keywords “linked” to that domain, but I would not count on that as for the search engines there is only one page.
All these ‘About us’, ‘Contact’, ‘Family houses’, etc. on that site are Flash which is played under the home page.

Basically for Google and the other search engines, the first “bad” picture and this nice architectural website are very similar as they (the crawlers) just cannot “read” them.

Here is the place where I have to say that the search engines do not like single pixel images, as e link, even spread to a big rectangle with text above it.

What I mean?

There is a technique in the web design which allows you to make one pixel image and with ‘width’ and ‘height’ parameters in the HTML code to make it as much bigger as you want on the page. Then you can place text above it and make it a link.

Recently Goolge started thinking these “small” pictures as a sneaky links.
And probably it is right, as spammers and hackers are using this method to put almost invisible links on other people sites.

Bellow is one of those images, certainly with no text and linking nowhere.

Can you see it?

It sounds funny but there is even HTML code that cannot be crawled by the search engines. There are still spidering problems when you use HTML frames. Frames are used by the designers to make dynamic web pages, as they allow keeping part of information on the site visible, while other views are changing.
For now just do not use them if you want all your content crawled.

Next tutorial in the row will be Overdone optimization.