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Deep Submission: Submitting the inner pages of your web site
If I ask you how many web sites do you have? You may say “One, yes it is www.mycompany.com “ or “two” in case you have a second organization or company. When I first began promoting my web sites I was, like most people, only thinking in terms of one...
New Search Engine Ranking System -- Is Your Web Site Ready?
Over the last month some major changes have been taking place in regard to how a web site is ranked in the Search Engines. There is a new ranking system that is now being used by Alta Vista, Excite, Google, Lycos and the search portion of Yahoo....
Quick Sure Traffic, Smart Visitor Containment And Higher Web Profits Starting Now
How do you quickly generate a massive flow of traffic, and make more money out of that traffic? It's very simple really. All you need is a calculator, a few hundred dollars, and your server's log files. Mix that up and you are on to some good web...
Ten Steps To A Well Optimized Website - Step 5: Internal Linking
Welcome to part five in this search engine positioning series. Last week we discussed the importance of content optimization. In part five we will cover your website’s internal linking structure and the role that it plays in ranking highly, and...
What Is Link Popularity And How Can I Increase This On My Website?
Gauging link popularity is a practice that most search engines
use when they rank sites for specific keywords and phrases. In
order to keep their clients happy, search engines are always
developing ways to make their results more relevant. In the...
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Do search engines like your Web site?
Between 75% and 98.8% of visitors to Web sites come from searches made at search engines. If you're going to get high levels of traffic - and hence the levels of ROI you're looking for - it's very important that the search engines can access all the information on your Web site.
Do the search engines know about all of your pages?
You can find out which pages on your site the search engines know about by using a special search. If you search for 'site:' and your Web site address, the search engine will tell you all of the pages on your Web site it knows about.
For example, search for: site:webpositioningcentre.co.uk in Google. Yahoo or MSN Search, and it will tell you how many pages they know about.
If the search engines haven't found some of the pages on your Web site, it is probably because they are having trouble spidering them. ('Spidering' is when the search engine uses an automated robot to read your Web pages.)
Spiders work by starting off on a page which has been linked to by another Web site, or that has been submitted to the search engine. They then read and follow any links they find on the page, gradually working their way through your whole Web site.
At least, that's the theory.
The problem is, it's easy to confuse the spiders - especially as they are designed to be wary of following certain kinds of link.
Links which confuse spiders
If your links are within a large chunk of JavaScript code, the spider may not be able to find them, and will not be able to follow the links to your other pages.
This can happen if you have 'rollovers' as your navigation - for instance, pictures that change colour or appearance when you hover your mouse pointer over them. The JavaScript code that makes this happen can be convoluted enough for the spiders to ignore it rather than try to find links inside.
If you think your rollovers are blocking your site from being spidered, you will need to talk to your Web designers about changing the code in to a 'clean link' - a standard HTML link, with no extra code around it - that is much
easier for the spiders to follow.
Links like these will look something like this:
<a href="index.html">Home Page</a>
Page addresses to avoid
Spiders will also ignore pages if they don't like the URL (the address needed to find the page).
For example, a Web site that has URLs containing several variables can cause spiders to ignore the page content. You can spot pages like these as they have a ? in them, and &, for instance:
http://webpositioningcentre.co.uk/index.php?page=12&cat=23&jib=c
This URL has three variables, the parts with the = in them, between the ? and &s. We find that if a page has one variable, or even two, the top search engines will spider them without any problems. But if a URL has more than that, often the search engines will not spider them.
Spiders particularly avoid URLs that look like they have 'session IDs' in them. They look something like this:
http://webpositioningcentre.co.uk/index.php?page=12&id=29c8d7r2398jk27897a8
The set of numbers and letters do not make much sense to humans, but some Web sites use them to keep track of who you are, as you click through their Web site.
Spiders will generally avoid URLs with Session IDs in them, so if your Web site has them, you need to talk to the people who developed the site about re-writing it so they do not use these IDs, or at least that you can get around the Web site without them.
Clean links = happy spiders
If you use clean, easy to follow links without several variables in them, your Web site should be spidered without problem. There are, of course, many other facets to successful Search Engine Optimization, but if the search engines can't spider your content, your site will fall at the first hurdle.
About the Author
Paul Silver and David Rosam are Head of Technical SEO and Head of SEO Copywriting at Web Positioning Centre (http://webpositioningcentre.co.uk). Paul has been involved with the Web commercially since 1996 and David has been writing marketing copy for 20 years, and writing for the Web for a decade.
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