How Easy Can a "Bot" Crawl Your Site?

Many webmasters believe that great content is the key to Search Engine Optimization but they have forgotten an even more important factor, how easy can the bots crawl their sites? Making a 100% crawlable site should be the top priority for all the webmasters. There is no point having unique and fresh content but cannot be searched from the search engine index.

In order to ensure that bots can crawl a site successfully, one must make sure that all pages can be found by going from page to page via the inter linking mechanism. It is recommended to use text links as a form of linking between all the internal pages. Webmasters can also provide a sitemap that lists all the pages’ links in a page to facilitate this indexing.

One point to take note is that if the site has more than 100 links, it is advisable to split the sitemap into several pages with each page containing no more than 100 links. A page with more than 100 links may be classified as ‘Links Farm’ by the search engine. This is stated officially in the Google Webmaster Guidelines.

Google Sitemap is another great tool to index a new site. Creating a Google sitemap is encouraged because it tells the search engine what are the pages in a site and how often the content is updated. This is particularly useful when some pages are not linked to within the site.

Many sites have faced crawling problems because of the way they linked up the internal pages. Search Engine bots have difficulties indexing JavaScript and Flash navigation menus. If it is not possible to remove this kind of navigation in a site, it is advised to implement a text-link navigation system in the footer of a site. This will help the bots to index the site easily.

According to Google Webmaster Guidelines, it is advised to have a static and short HTML link destination rather than a dynamic URL. Dynamic URL especially those with tagged session identifiers will not be indexed because bots will ignore these pages. It is also encouraged to avoid using the ‘&id=’ parameter when passing variables between pages as Google does not include them into the index. If parameters are needed to pass between pages, a meaningful parameter like ‘&count=’ can be used instead.

When the bots conduct a visit, they will crawl the page like what a general user will see in their browser. Therefore, the bots will never index a password-protected page. If the objective is to get the site indexed by the search engine, it is advisable to remove any password-protected pages to allow access for the bots.

A site should always be search engine friendly so that users can locate the content easily. To conclude, search engines like to index simple and content rich pages. A simple and crawlable site with great content is the essential criteria to Search Engine Optimization.

Fun Site:

Yahoo is a great online resource you might want to use to start your marketing campaign. Put your business on the map. Click Here to Sign up for Yahoo! Sponsored Search and get a $20 bonus.

Until next time
Jasmine


TAN KC is a SEO consultant with several years of related experiences. His advice has helped several Webmasters to increase their SERP. KC is also the founder of www.USESEO.COM , a site that offers free SEO techniques. http://foxiedesign.blogspot.com

10 Effective Seo Design Tips To Impress Both Website Visitors And Search Engines

If you are professional with your search engine optimization efforts and keep your customer in mind before you start considering “what the search engines will think” you will reap a lot more than what you sow. Chances are, if your visitors like your website, there is a very good likelihood that the search engines will like it too.

With this in mind the following 10 tips focus on how to develop your website with your visitors in mind whilst also conducting effective search engine optimization activities.

1. Pick appropriate keyword phrases
This is the single most important thing to do when it comes to optimizing your website for search engines. The words and phrases that your potential customers type into the major search engines are the keywords your site should be using within the specific areas of your webpage (see below; Optimizing your Page Titles and Optimizing your Content). There are a number of useful keyword research tools available on the web such as Wordtracker and Keyword Discovery (both offer trial versions).

However, if you want to find out accurate figures of how many people are searching for your targeted keywords per week/month/year run a Google Adwords and/or Overture campaign and you will get extremely accurate figures of search engine traffic whilst (hopefully) generating income that will pay for your research.

2. Optimize every page on your website
Optimizing each webpage is overlooked by so many websites and can be the difference between competing for a highly competitive keyword phrase such as “Irish Hotels” on your home page and competing for a much less competitive keyword phrase such as “Hotels in County Galway” on another relevant landing page. After that they can check out the rest of your website that is all about “Irish Hotels”.

3. Optimizing your Page Titles
All of the major search engines have 100’s of different algorithms that compute where your webpage should be listed for different keyword searches. Putting your keywords within the title description tag of your pages is one of the most important SEO techniques and will help your website climb through the rankings and allow your visitors to remember exactly what your page is all about when they save it to their “favorites”.

4. Optimizing your Page Content
It is sometimes very difficult to write content for your website. Not only do you need to put the information you want the visitor to see in front of them in an easy-to-read style, you also have to keep in mind the keywords your page is targeting so that you can rank better within search engines.

One of the best pieces of advice I have come across is to write for your visitors and include the keywords as much as makes sense. Read what you have written out loud to yourself and a few others. If it sounds stupid… lather, rinse, and repeat.

5. Create an inbound linking strategy
Submitting your site to website and article directories is a very beneficial way to drive targeted traffic to your website.

Links within these sites not only brings visitors to your website, but search engine “spiders” are easily able find your website and index your pages within their results. If your site doesn’t have a link pointing to it on the World Wide Web the search engines will never find it and you will never see any traffic from Google or the other big ones.

6. Descriptively labeling your links and images (aka the anchor text)
This technique is both common sense and good practice. Telling your visitors what the link that they are going to click on allows them to know exactly what they are going to be directed to. Saying “click here” is not enough to help them understand what they're going to find once they click through. Be as descriptive as possible with every text and graphical link on your site. When writing your anchor text and alt attributes you can almost always describe the page you're pointing to by using its main keyword phrase which is a major factor that search engines take into account when it comes to ranking your web pages.

7. Make sure your site is spider-friendly
Your website may look fantastic. You and your web designer may be talented graphic designers who can make Flash and JavaScript dazzle your visitors with a show that would put Michael Flatley and his River Dance to shame. However, if your website contains Flash and Javascript it’s important to know that search engine spiders have difficulty reading this code (or appreciate the effort you put into the design). The way around this is to provide navigation alternatives such as static links and a site map to allow the spiders crawl deep within your website and index the web pages within their results. Overuse of Flash, JavaScript, and images can also lead to your web pages being very slow to download. If these file types are used sparingly your visitors and search engines will appreciate your efforts a lot more.

8. Create Fresh Content
When you are optimizing your website properly you will see a trend. If you are doing something that benefits your websites visitors then the search engines will reward you for it.

Blogs and forums are effective and easy ways of adding new information to your site on a regular basis. However, if your only purpose of setting up a blog or a forum is for better search engine rankings then there really is no point in doing it. Only add a forum if it contributes something beneficial to your website and if you have the traffic to make it interactive enough for visitors to return to it. And, only add a blog if you have something of interest to say on a regular basis. Once you have your blog and/or forum up-and-running you should optimize them with the same professionalism you do with any other page on your website.

9. Do not think that you can trick Search Engines
As noted before, “If you are doing something that benefits your websites visitors then the search engines will reward you for it”.

If you try to trick the search engines by hiding keyword phrases, joining link farms, or any other sneaky practice your sites will be removed from the search engines and it will take you a long time to get back in (and you will also have to spend more time cleaning up your website before they will accept you).

10. Offer something unique
If your website offers something that is unique and interesting to your target market and it is properly optimized (by applying all of the techniques listed above) you will not only rank well within the major search engines, you will also get the added benefit of people linking to your website in forums, blogs, and through other websites which will send your site more visitors and create more inbound links which will help it rank higher.

Remember it’s human visitors that you are trying to impress, not search engine robots.

Fun Site:

Yahoo! Search Marketing (Click Here)

Until next time!
Jasmine

Barry Fenning is the owner of http://www.betteririshwebsites.com The articles available on this website are suitable for people that want to learn how to conduct effective SEO campaigns. Please include this bio for article reproduction permission. http://foxpromotions.blogspot.com http://foxiedesign.blogspot.com

Beginner's Guide To Site Promotion

Promoting a web site is no real easy task for anyone, including the Internet promotion experts. It's even harder for those of you with little or no experience with web site promotion. In an effort to help those of you that need help in this area I have wrote this article or guide (Call it whatever you like!). Although this is by no means a complete guide, this will show you the basics of promoting a web site.

Search engine optimization - When a Internet user searches for something that is somehow related to your web site, you want your web site to come up as near to the top of the search results in the search engines as possible, right? Of course, you do. But how do you get to the top of the search results? Well, it's easier said then done, but can be done if you follow the few simple tips below.

You need to take a close look at your site and decide which search terms people will use to find it. Example, your site is about dogs, you'll want to come up under keywords such as dog information, dog facts, etc. You need to pick your most important keyword and try to get a keyword density between 5 and 15%, this depends on which search engine you are targeting though. Important keywords should also appear in bold and be one of the first words on the web page

The most important thing is to get is backlinks. But not just from any web site, but from ones that are related to yours and those that look clean, or otherwise the ones that don't use Spam techniques. You also want the backlinks you get to look like they are natural to the search engines, so one-way links are best and increase your backlinks slowly and not get them all at once. Your anchor text should vary, using the same one too many times won't look natural to the search engines.

The web site's structure will decide how the spiders read your web site. You want there to be more text content then HTML content. Stay away from using Java or Flash heavily on your web site, the less you use on the site the better. Spiders (Also known as robots) cannot read Java or Flash. You should avoid programs such as FrontPage or Dreamweaver, they often add coding errors.

After that you may want to submit your web site to the search engines, this isn't important if you get links from web sites that already appear in the search engines and by submitting will not help your ranking or speed up the time it takes for your web site appear in the search results. Some suggest that submitting to the search engines instead of letting them find you can hurt your ranking, but this is highly unlikely.

Links - As you now know getting links can help you in the search engines, but they can also bring in tons of traffic and not just any traffic, but some of the best traffic you can get. You should submit to directories such as Yahoo! and the ODP (Open Directory Project). Even better, try topic related directories, they send VERY targeted traffic compared to most other sources. Contact web sites that are related to yours and ask if they'll exchange links.

Award Programs - Although this can be a waste of time if you bother with all those web sites (Most won't send any traffic) that offer awards, but if you pick the right ones and have a web site that offers something useful, this could send you great deal of traffic for many years to come. Most of these award programs will link back to your web site if you are one of the award winners.

Paid Advertisement - Of course, you can pay another web site to display your advertisement. The cost depends on a number of things, such as amount of traffic they get and where your advertisement is placed at. PPC (Pay per click) search engines such as Google AdWords and Yahoo! Overture is an another posable option. You only pay when someone clicks on your ad and often the traffic they send is highly targeted. This may be the best option out there right now.

Offline Marketing - Most people don't even look into this and many think it's a waste of time, but they are very wrong. Use word of mouth by telling your friends and colleagues about your site, you can hand out cards and flyers to generate good word of mouth. Take your flyers and put them up at local stores, collages and Laundromats, but make sure they are OK with you adding your flyer first though.

Look into placing an ad in the local newspaper, this is often cheap, so you can't lose much money here, but then again you may not be able to lose much. Although Radio has died out because of CDs, Internet and paid radio, it's still one of the best places to advertise offline because it's cheap and can reach a number of people. You may have to look into AM radio depending on your web site's subject.

Don't even try it! - Of course, no promotion guide would be complete without pointing out things you shouldn't use to promote your web site. Do not send email Spam, unsolicited e-mail is not acceptable, it's likely the most hated part of the web. Spamming will make more people hate your web site than like it, thereby making you lose could have been customers.

Don't try to Spam the search engine, most web sites get caught right away, while some may not get caught right away, they will get caught sometime down the road. Remember that the search engines are always changing the ways they ranks web sites and are getting smarter (Although at times that seems hard to believe), so you will get caught if you try to Spam them.

Don't open your web site to the pubic before you have tested (Links, coding errors, etc.) it completely and know it's working correctly. Make sure every section of the web site is completed. Most Internet users will never return to a web site where they find a section of a web site that isn't completed or see an under construction sign.

Until next time!
Jasmine



About The Author
Matt Colyer is the owner of the www.superiorwebmaster.com. He also is a php, CGI and ASP developer. http://foxpromotions.blogspot.com/