Go to content Go to navigation

SmooveNET

SmooveNET

HowTo: Search Engine Optimization, bots

Advance in search engine technology spawned a new industry, the SEO. Those who wish to monetize from their website, whether it be a blog about a favorite television show or celebrity, must design their websites to not only human visitors but also bots.

Article continues below

Bots are computer programs designed to perform specific tasks. Search bots therefore scour the Internet in search for web pages to include in their respective search indexes. It’s important to note the following guidelines:

  • Make a site with a clear hierarchy and text links. Every page should be reachable from at least one static text link.
  • Offer a site map to your users with links that point to the important parts of your site. If the site map is larger than 100 or so links, you may want to break the site map into separate pages.
  • Create a useful, information-rich site, and write pages that clearly and accurately describe your content.
  • Think about the words users would type to find your pages, and make sure that your site actually includes those words within it.
  • Try to use text instead of images to display important names, content, or links. Bots doesn’t recognize text contained in images.
  • Make sure that your TITLE and ALT tags are descriptive and accurate.
  • Check for broken links and correct HTML.
  • If you decide to use dynamic pages (i.e., the URL contains a “?” character), be aware that not every search engine spider crawls dynamic pages as well as static pages. It helps to keep the parameters short and the number of them few.
  • Keep the links on a given page to a reasonable number (fewer than 100).

While it’s important to design a website that can be searched by bots, you should never deceive them. Bots are smart, so it’s important to also note the following:

  • Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
  • Don’t employ cloaking or sneaky redirects.
  • Don’t send automated queries to Google.
  • Don’t load pages with irrelevant words.
  • Don’t create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
  • Don’t create pages that install viruses, trojans, or other badware.
  • Avoid “doorway” pages created just for search engines, or other “cookie cutter” approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.
  • If your site participates in an affiliate program, make sure that your site adds value. Provide unique and relevant content that gives users a reason to visit your site first.

While websites should not be designed entirely for bots, they should not be ignored. These set of guidelines will allow bots to “crawl” your website so that it can be included in their search index. In a follow up article, I will provide a list of links to specific websites to improve your ranking in search engines as well as monetize from your website.

Related Links

Posted by Chris Erice on 1 January 2007

Comments

Sam Brown

3 January 2007, 03:20

Nice article, some good tips that everyone should employ.

Add your comment


Hidden


Textile Help

Preview Comment then Submit.