Category: SEO and Search Engine Optimization
Optimize for conversion - web hosting provider explains
HTML Description Tags: Do You Use Them to Best Advantage?
Description Tags Explained by Web Hosting Provider
Let’s start at the beginning. A conversion is a sale. You, the web site owner, convert a visitor to a buyer. Point one.
Point two: Conversion rate or conversion ratio (same difference) are measures of the percentage of total visitors who actually make a purchase, opt in, request sales information of perform some other desired action from the total pool of visitors who reach your site.
The whole objective of a website is to convert and site owners spend hours and days tweaking their sites to optimize for conversion - web hosting provider explains. But are they using all of the conversion opportunities available to them. Many aren’t.
Your First Chance to Convert is the Search Engine Results Page
A lot of marketers believe that the first chance to convert is the access page the visitor reaches via SERPs or links. Not true. If there’s a link on the SERPs to your site, and the search engine user didn’t click on it, you didn’t convert. Heck, the visitor never even saw your site.
There are a couple of suggestions for improving SERPs conversion, i.e. getting more people to click on your organic links. One is your site’s HTML <description> tag. This tag is part of a site’s Meta data and usually appears between the <Head> tag and the </Head> tag, though the actual placement is less important than what the tag contains.
The HTML syntax for creating a Meta description tag is:
<META NAME=”Description” CONTENT= “A great site to learn all about the fine art of beading. Beads from around the world.”>
Why the sales pitch? Because the content in your description tag is what appears below the SERPs link on Google, Yahoo or other search engines. Now, you’ll see some web owners stuff these description tags with keywords. Which link would you click on?
<META NAME=”Description” CONTENT= “A great site to learn all about the fine art of beading. Beads from around the world.”>
Or
<META NAME=”Description” CONTENT= “beads, bead, beading, beading supplies, beading materials, beading hobby, beading store.”>
Stuffing description tags doesn’t make a sale. In fact, most smart web shoppers avoid these links because of the gibberish contained below the SERPs link.
The Real Functions of Description Tags…
…and how to use them to best advantage.
There’s disagreement within the SEO ranks on everything. Part of it is due to a lack of reliable science. Sure you can test, but the rules of the game change every time Google tweaks its SERPs.
One point SEOs disagree on is whether search engines give any credence to the content of description tags. In an excellent, un-cited post on HighRankings.com, the writer states:
“I used to believe that the purpose of the Meta description tag was twofold: to help the page rank highly for the words that were contained within it, as well as to provide a nice description in the search engine results pages (SERPs). However, today it appears that, similar to the Meta keywords tag, the information you place in this tag is *not* given any weight in the ranking algorithms of Google, and only a tiny amount of weight in Yahoo's.”
Conversely, Danny Sullivan posts on Search Engine Watch:
“The meta description tag allows you to influence the description of your page in the crawlers that support the tag…”
Two SEO professionals with polar views. And, if you want to take the time, you can find divergent opinions on virtually every SEO topic, despite the desire of many SEOs to create a science out of something as amorphous as search engine optimization.
However, the point isn’t which SEO is right and which is wrong. The point is that there is little hard science to back up any aspect of SEO. The best way to determine the effectiveness of description tags is to conduct simple, single-variable testing that will deliver empirical results – irrefutable metrics. Something you can rely on.
Simple A/B Testing
While the focus of this post is description tags, the application of A/B testing is useful in determining which tactics and strategies work and which don’t. There are means for multi-variant testing in which several variables are changed, but if you’re just starting out and metrics analysis isn’t all the fun you thought it would be, stick with single-variant, A/B tests on any changes to your web site. You’ll get understandable, utile results and you’ll get them quickly.
Start by using a couple of top tier keywords in your description tag. These will be highlighted on the SERPs pages as a direct hit. However, avoid description tag stuffing. Bots don’t much care for any kind of keyword stuffing because it dilutes the relevance and usefulness of the SERPs. Still, you see lots of site owners who use their description tag to stuff with keywords. (See beading examples above.)
There’s Bot Territory and Human Territory
Bots crawl the HTML or XML code used to create a web site. It’s all letter strings to these data collector agents. This is where search optimization (designed for search engine bots as the name suggests) takes place. Below anything that will be seen by a human.
Humans only see the description tag on SERPs – but they do see it. Yes, the SERPs were machine generated, but a human is looking over those links now. An attractive, two-line description and welcome will draw many more site visitors than a tag filled with keywords.
Want proof? Don’t take my word for it. A/B test it.
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Web Hosting Provider Lists Tips for Search engine optimization:
5 Quirky Tips for Web Site Optimization: Little Things Mean A Lot
Optimization Tips from Web Hosting Provider
Okay, you’ve just gone live with your retail site, selling services or products over the web. You’ve joined an “elite” community of one billion other web sites and you’re trying to figure out how to make a little noise in the loudest, most omni-present marketplace ever there was. The world wide web. The W3. The big game. The show.
Hate to burst your bubble but you’ve got a lot of work ahead of you to build your unknown site to profitability. Your web hosting provider explains the facts: 94% of all web ventures implode within 12 months of launch. Most of these, of course, are undercapitalized from Day One, lack any sort of business plan and lack management that knows how the digital marketplace functions. It’s nothing like the 3-D world in which a local store drops a weekly quarter-page advert in the local Picayune. So, even if you’ve been marketing since mirror balls were all the rage, you’re in a new ball park now.
And every little bit of your web site and everything you do to market and monetize your site will be tracked, scrutinized, policed, monitored, recorded and stored by mindless bots that crawl the web. Your new venture has to be bot friendly and human eyeball friendly. Tip the scales too far in one direction or the other and your site isn’t optimized – optimized for search engine indexing or optimized for improved conversion ratios. In other words, you could be doing better.
Little Things Mean a Lot
No “so-called” SEO expert has a clue how search engines assess the quality and topicality of a site. Lots of theories but, in a recent study of Google ranking factors, 31 SEO pros were asked to rank various factors such as site accessibility and quality of inbound site links.
Of the two dozen or so ranking factors assessed by the panel of experts, not one single ranking factor received 100% consensus as a critical factor in how and why a site is spidered, assessed and, finally, cataloged in the SE index.
Tons of theories, lots of debates (some quite heated on SEO blog sites) and plenty of “sure-fire” strategies to “Get you on page 1 of Google.” Big whoop. Want to see your site on page one of Google? Use your URL as your search words.
Okay, enough ranting. There are some strategies that, under testing using Google’s own diagnostics and metrics, seem to have a positive effect on site performance - web hosting provider explains. Small sites improve in reach (number of visitors factored with number of page views) in a matter of weeks and large sites see PR improvement and some of that link love all site owners are after.
It’s not the big things that separate you from web-based profits. On the W3, often it’s the little things, the quirky tactics, that make the difference between a site that looks good to spiders and humans. In other words, a successful site.
Five Quirky Tips for Improving Site Performance – All FREE
Of course, you have to do the big stuff. Create the site’s content architecture, choose the site’s look, create user-friendly navigation and all of the other macro-design elements that define a quality site, regardless of the product or service.
And, if you have deep pockets or an extensive knowledge of Flash animation and design or CSS technology, you can create a site that has visual impact – zip, zing, kaboom – even if you’re site sells rat traps in bulk. This is all pretty much the standard in the Era of Web 2.0.
But once the big stuff is taken care of and you’ve priced the creation of a Flash-based site (if you have to ask you can’t afford it), there are some small, quirky kinds of things that seem to have an impact, at least on traffic and reach rankings.
So, before you take that second mortgage on the farm to pay a hotshot site designer, try these steps. They don’t cost anything and there’s at least a consensus among SEO pros that these strategies help, or at least, they can’t hurt site performance. You decide.
Web Hosting Provider Lists Tips for Search engine optimization:
1. Embed an ultra-optimized page deep in your site.
This page will be indexed by search engine bots and, because it’s optimized for bots and not people, it’ll simply be a page of HTML code optimized for bot consumption only.
To a human, this page is meaningless code with tags and HTML conventions designed as bot bait to rank highly with search engines. This is the page that will appear on the first or second SERP – the link on which visitors will click. But wait, visitors don’t want to look at code. They want pizzazz or understated elegance or shock value.
So, when a visitor clicks on the deeply-embedded, ultimately-optimized site page, s/he is immediately redirected to pages designed for human consumption. This way, you can focus on perfectly optimizing one page for SERPs while developing other pages for human views.
Ahh, but bots don’t like redirects, right? They indicate something suspicious. Wrong. Redirects are used all of the time. When you post to a blog thread, you’re often redirected to a “thank you for you submission” page before returning to the blog itself. Bots encounter redirects all the time. Just make sure your super-optimized bot bait agrees with the rest of the site’s content.
You will get slammed if the redirect takes a professional CPA from a link promising the latest in CPA news (whatever that may be) to your faux flower on-line boutique. That’s a bad idea. However, if the redirect stays true to the site text, it’s an acceptable practice by consensus of SEO professionals.
2. Embed text links.
One of the most difficult things for a new site owner to do is to get all site pages indexed. You may have 200 pages on your site, but if only five of them have actually made it into the search engine index, you aren’t getting your due.
Easy to fix if you don’t abuse the practice. Bots follow links. Keeps ‘em moving forward instead of spidering the same page in perpetuity. You don’t think bots are smart do you? They follow links.
Create an intra-site link structure that will lead the spider deeper and deeper into your site, but be careful. An overabundance of these embedded text links is confusing to humans.
3. Use your prime keywords in headers.
HTML code offers a range of type sizes from <header 1> to <header 7> which is like 20-point type in the real world. Any way, sprinkle your top five keywords in headers. This gives more weight to the keyword and makes it easier for bots to decide what your site is all about.
Word of caution: Everything in moderation. There’s a debate raging (okay, it’s not raging) among SEOs about the use of this tactic. If overused, it’s called header stuffing and it’s as bad as body text with a 10% keyword density.
4. Italicize, underline and bold keywords.
Yep, it’s a little thing but spiders do give more weight to these indications of content value or differentiation. Quirky, incremental and free. And while a step like this won’t set your site on a jet-fuelled rocket ride to page 1 of search engine SERPs, it’s the compilation of these little things that do have an impact on site performance with both SE spiders and site visitors.
5. Do NOT use the same keywords as the stiffer competition.
Yes, this runs counter to every SEO download e-book you read. All the SEO pros tell you to go with the keywords that work for successful sites. But consider the logic behind that strategy.
Let’s say you’re a car dealer – a regional business trying to reach a geo-specific demographic. If you use the same keywords as CarMax and all of the other leaders in this market segment, your site will be buried under dozens of links to bigger and better known competitors.
Instead, employ “second tier” keywords – lesser used keywords. They won’t be used as often by search engine users but when they are, your site, optimized for these second tier keywords, show up on page 1 of Google’s SERPs. You can even use Google’s Keyword Generator to develop a list of lesser-used keywords. You eliminate the bigger competition. The trade-off is fewer search engine users entering the magical combination of keywords to bring your site to the top.
Another tactic is to employ “long-tail” keywords – keyword phrases. In the case of our car dealer above, a keyword phrase like “quality used cars Portland Oregon” will deliver local traffic to both the dealer’s site and to the dealership.
Conclusion? Don’t follow the conventional wisdom. It’s so…so conventional. Be creative. Don’t think outside the box – eliminate the box completely.
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You don't need a big budget or be an SEO to rank highly on local searches explains web hosting provider.
Local Site SEO/SEM: Think Small. Win BIG.
Local SEO Explained by Web Hosting Provider
Of course GE has a huge website and Microsoft’s digital space is the size of a couple of football fields – everything from download patches to sales to rights-free clip art. A web site, for any well-known business, is a must. So is a HUGE web presence. That’s why these global conglomerates have SEO professionals on staff. It’s also why these sites rank so highly on Google. They’re enormous and optimized to the nth degree.
But what about your little boutique on Main Street, Anytown, USA. Or your car dealership out on Route 81? Can you compete with the big guys and if so, how? Here’s a quick primer on SEO for local businesses looking for traffic within a 40 mile radius of the business’ brick-and-mortar storefront or office building as explained by your web hosting provider.
You don’t need a big budget and you don’t have to be an SEO to rank highly on local searches. But you do have to design your site for local search and optimize the site skin for the highest conversion ratios. So, here’s how to put your little hometown business on the web map – and actually drive traffic.
Google Webmaster
Google Webmaster Central is a treasure trove of Google-based tools designed to provide data and tips on improving your site’s page rank (PR) on Google’s search engine results pages or SERPs.
Google provides tools to improve local site traffic with its Keyword Generator, its Diagnostics that identify problems encountered during the last Googlebot visit – everything from an old home page still on your server to broken links. If bots have a problem, you have a problem.
This site also provides analytics: what does your site look like to a Googlebot (remember bots never see the site skin, just the HTML code under the site), there’s a Site Status Wizard to determine how many pages of your site are actually indexed in Google’s database of over 100 billion web pages. Google Analytics provides a breakdown of visitor traffic – who, what where, when and sometimes even why – all in one place.
Google Gadgets
Free stuff and especially useful for two purposes: (1) site stickiness and (2) local search. These doo-dads and gizmos keep visitors coming back and customers walking through your front doors. So what can you get from the Google Gadget goodie bag? Local weather, calendars and local time, all perfect for local search for local businesses. These Google gadgets enhance the visitor’s perception that you really are local and that’s a very good thing.
Google Gadgets also includes an online to-do list function. Ideal for local search. TO DO: go to dry cleaners – your dry cleaners. You can also pick up complete mapping functions – another must have for site localization. How do people get to your outlet?
Google’s To-Do List
Using Google maps, you can provide written directions and even a printable map. And all of these features are free when you open a Google account – which you should do ASAP.
“Hey, we’re right at the intersection of Maple and Main!”
Google-Generated Map
Local SEO
You don’t want business 400 miles away from your shop. You want people who live in your area to stop by to make a purchase (unless you want to go global and get into drop shipping, which is another topic altogether). Adding gadgets like maps and local weather help convert visitors and lower your cost-per-acquisition (CPA) by delivering highly-qualified local buyers – web users who have located your store or office through a local search.
To improve the likelihood of being found locally, here are some tips to ensure that Googlebots and other crawlers get it right. Oh, and btw, if you don’t think this is critical to the long-term success of your business, check out these stats:
Seven out of 10 web users employ local search, aka 70% of potential prospects!
68% of surfers call the telephone number provided by a local business to ask questions about product availability, directions, questions when “Some assembly required” and so on. People like searching globally but they love buying locally. It’s so much more personal.
One-half of search engine users add a geographic modifier to their query words, aka, certified public account dallas texas. It’s easy to understand why. There are some things (like a tax audit) that you want to deal with face-to-face so you call a local CPA – or at least 50% of web users do.
So, in no particular order of effectiveness (do them all) here are some suggestions for upping local traffic through local search:
- Add the name of your community to HTML tags – keyword tag, title tag, description tag and other HTML code. Remember, this is what spiders spider – not the site skin – so SEO is all about optimizing your code, NOT the site skin. However, you should also add local contact information on the site itself. This text synchs up with tag content, adding validity to the site’s code. (No funny stuff goin’ on.)
- Make your URL visible within the local community. If your business advertises in the local newspaper, make sure the site URL is prominently displayed. Think of your web site as an opportunity to tell local buyers why they should by locally and, more germane, why they should buy from you.
- List your business with Google Maps. When visitors access mapping from Google, Google Earth or MapQuest, your little business shows up as a push-pin online and in a printable format.
- Develop a list of long-tail keywords that would be used by local search engine users. If you go with the top-used keywords, you’ll get buried in Google’s SERPs. How well will “Bonnie’s Art Supplies” stand out against Dick Blick and the hundreds of other mega-crafts stores that sell art supplies? Bonnie will be lucky if her site ever sees the light of day using the most popular keywords.
- Instead, create a list of long-tail keywords – keyword phrases that locals would use, e.g., restaurants boothbay harbor maine or tourist information boothbay harbor maine. This narrows the number of search engine users who actually employ these long-tails, but moves your site to page one of the SERPs when a user does employ one of your localized, long-tail keywords. Make sure these keywords are topic-city specific.
- In your site text (which will be part of the site’s code and, therefore, spidered) use words that describe your service region. Words like “near,” “around,” and “vicinity of” can be used to expand or contract your service area.
- Some SEO experts claim that people don’t search by zip code. I do. And it doesn’t hurt to have your zip in your body text a bunch of times.
- When creating long-tail, region-specific keywords, spell out the name of the state and avoid abbreviations, e.g. Boothbay Harbor Maine, not Boothbay Harbor ME.
- Link to other businesses maintaining websites within your service community. This includes community sites, tourism sites and local business directory sites. Also, privately-owned sites specifically targeted at a local community are popping up like weeds. They provide local news, weather, some local reporting and links to local businesses – hey, like yours!
- Post informational content on local blogs. Many communities maintain blogs – places where people can sell an old couch or ask for volunteers for the upcoming May Fest. These “local spots” are fast turning into the web log-on page – the place to get the local news and download a coupon for a free pizza when you buy eight. (Good deal.)
- Don’t fool with Google. You can try multi-listing under different names when you register with Google Maps, but if you get caught employing this gray-hat tactic, your site can be sanctioned – sent to the back of the line – or banned altogether.
Local search is here to stay and more and more web users are employing the local search options now offered by the big search engines. Locals don’t want their eyes tested by someone 3,000 miles away. They want your eyeglass emporium. The want to make an appointment by telephone, print out a map to your specs store, and they want the personalized service they only get locally.
Optimize your site for local search and the local community. Who knows? If you supply enough good, local information, your home page may become the log-on for hundreds, even thousands of local prospects.
And you know that’s going to be good for business.
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The HTML syntax for a Meta description tag explained by web hosting provider
HTML Description Tags: Do You Use Them to Best Advantage?
Meta Description Tags Explained by Web Hosting Provider
Let’s start at the beginning. A conversion is a sale. You, the web site owner, convert a visitor to a buyer. Point one.
Point two: Conversion rate or conversion ratio (same difference) are measures of the percentage of total visitors who actually make a purchase, opt in, request sales information of perform some other desired action from the total pool of visitors who reach your site.
The whole objective of a website is to convert and site owners spend hours and days tweaking their sites to optimize for conversion - web hosting provider explains. Ahh, but are they using all of the conversion opportunities available to them. Many aren’t.
Your First Chance to Convert is the Search Engine Results Page
A lot of marketers believe that the first chance to convert is the access page the visitor reaches via SERPs or links. Not true. If there’s a link on the SERPs to your site, and the search engine user didn’t click on it, you didn’t convert. Heck, the visitor never even saw your site.
There are a couple of suggestions for improving SERPs conversion, i.e. getting more people to click on your organic links. One is your site’s HTML <description> tag. This tag is part of a site’s Meta data and usually appears between the <Head> tag and the </Head> tag, though the actual placement is less important than what the tag contains.
The HTML syntax for creating a Meta description tag is:
<META NAME=”Description” CONTENT= “A great site to learn all about the fine art of beading. Beads from around the world.”>
Why the sales pitch? Because the content in your description tag is what appears below the SERPs link on Google, Yahoo or other search engines. Now, you’ll see some web owners stuff these description tags with keywords. Which link would you click on?
<META NAME=”Description” CONTENT= “A great site to learn all about the fine art of beading. Beads from around the world.”>
Or
<META NAME=”Description” CONTENT= “beads, bead, beading, beading supplies, beading materials, beading hobby, beading store.”>
Stuffing description tags doesn’t make a sale. In fact, most smart web shoppers avoid these links because of the gibberish contained below the SERPs link.
The Real Functions of Description Tags…
…and how to use them to best advantage.
There’s disagreement within the SEO ranks on everything. Part of it is due to a lack of reliable science. Sure you can test, but the rules of the game change every time Google tweaks its SERPs.
One point SEOs disagree on is whether search engines give any credence to the content of description tags. In an excellent, un-cited post on HighRankings.com, the writer states:
“I used to believe that the purpose of the Meta description tag was twofold: to help the page rank highly for the words that were contained within it, as well as to provide a nice description in the search engine results pages (SERPs). However, today it appears that, similar to the Meta keywords tag, the information you place in this tag is *not* given any weight in the ranking algorithms of Google, and only a tiny amount of weight in Yahoo's.”
Conversely, Danny Sullivan posts on Search Engine Watch:
“The meta description tag allows you to influence the description of your page in the crawlers that support the tag…”
Two SEO professionals with polar views. And, if you want to take the time, you can find divergent opinions on virtually every SEO topic, despite the desire of many SEOs to create a science out of something as amorphous as search engine optimization.
However, the point isn’t which SEO is right and which is wrong. The point is that there is little hard science to back up any aspect of SEO. The best way to determine the effectiveness of description tags is to conduct simple, single-variable testing that will deliver empirical results – irrefutable metrics. Something you can rely on.
Simple A/B Testing
While the focus of this post is description tags, the application of A/B testing is useful in determining which tactics and strategies work and which don’t. There are means for multi-variant testing in which several variables are changed, but if you’re just starting out and metrics analysis isn’t all the fun you thought it would be, stick with single-variant, A/B tests on any changes to your web site. You’ll get understandable, utile results and you’ll get them quickly.
Start by using a couple of top tier keywords in your description tag. These will be highlighted on the SERPs pages as a direct hit. However, avoid description tag stuffing. Bots don’t much care for any kind of keyword stuffing because it dilutes the relevance and usefulness of the SERPs. Still, you see lots of site owners who use their description tag to stuff with keywords. (See beading examples above.)
There’s Bot Territory and Human Territory
Bots crawl the HTML or XML code used to create a web site. It’s all letter strings to these data collector agents. This is where search optimization (designed for search engine bots as the name suggests) takes place. Below anything that will be seen by a human.
Humans only see the description tag on SERPs – but they do see it. Yes, the SERPs were machine generated, but a human is looking over those links now. An attractive, two-line description and welcome will draw many more site visitors than a tag filled with keywords.
Want proof? Don’t take my word for it. A/B test it.
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Your HTML Code is What Spiders See - Web Hosting Provider Explains
Bots or Bodies: Sometimes It’s Hard to Choose
Search Engine Crawlers and Bots - Explained by Web Hosting Provider
Any well SEO-optimized site is going to make it easy to get spidered and indexed into the critical search engines fast – first time through - let your web hosting provider explain how. However, Googlebots and other crawlers have no brain, no soul, no conscience, they feel no pain and they never give up – ever! (Sounds a lot like The Terminator), not a bad comparison, actually.
Bots and spiders (same thing) see one thing. Humans see something different. And the features you develop and add to your site to appeal to human thoughts and emotions may totally confuse a spider, creating chaos back at search engine headquarters.
On the other hand, the clever site owner can use the mindlessness of letter-string gobbling bots to some advantage, delivering content visible to humans, but unreadable by bots. So there are pluses and minuses to any decision you make in the design of your site. Bots or bodies? Let your web hosting provider explain.
What Humans See Isn’t What Spiders See
When you visit a web site, you see the site skin, sometimes called the presentation layer. This is all “front of the curtain” stuff designed specifically to appeal to human visitors. Color and design motifs, placement of content, graphics elements and other stylistic considerations are all for human consumption. Bots wouldn’t know a good-looking site from one that’s uglier than a mud fence. And they don’t even care!
Your HTML Code - Get Your Website Ready!
Look at your HTML code. The boring sub-structure made up of meta data, line after line of code, <br> strange glyphs and indecipherable computer-speak. This is what bots see. This is what spiders spider. The underbelly of your drop-dead-gorgeous website. And, if you print out the HTML, XML and CSS programming in place, it’s not the least bit pleasing to the human eye. In fact, it’s black and white text. But spiders love it.
Using The Work Habits of an SEO Spider to Your Advantage
If you know what a spider knows about your site, you can take advantage of the crawler’s significant intellectual limitations.
Spiders crawl the underlying code of a web site. In doing so, they follow links. Their movements aren’t random. They’re directed. So how can you use this to your advantage? Your web hosting provider has tips to help.
Embed text links throughout the site body text – the text meant for human consumption. These embedded links should take spiders and humans to other relevant information on the site. Using these embedded text links ensures that spiders stick around longer, index more site pages and accurately assess the scope and value of your site to search engine users.
The down side of using embedded text links is that, if the content to which the spider is sent doesn’t synch up with the text in the link, the spider is easily confused. It may determine that you’re intentionally misdirecting site traffic and slam you. Thus, it’s important that embedded links actually lead to more expansive, albeit related, content. It’s equally important that spiders get the connection, something that can be handled on the coding side through the use of title tags and other individual page descriptors.
Another means of licitly exploiting the limitations of search engine spiders is to identify pages that should not be crawled. You don’t want spiders crawling the back office and posting your payroll records as part of the presentation layer so you put up a “KEEP OUT” sign on those pages you want left uncrawled and consequently unindexed within the search engine.
Now, spiders are programmed to be suspicious and too many ‘Keep Out’ signs will set off alarm bells. Unscrupulous site owners employ this tactic to hype a product or service that’s not exactly on-target with how spiders “see” things. Those obnoxious, long-form sales letters, for example, can be excluded from a spider’s view simply by informing the passing crawler that this page is off limits.
Bots never see the site skin. They’re incapable of ‘reading’ or indexing graphic elements including pictures, charts, graphs, Flash animations and other non-text elements. Further, search engine bots won’t know that this body of text is associated with the picture next to it, i.e. product descriptions and product pictures. (Bots are utterly without nuance or guile. They’re more like sledgehammers than calculators.)
You can use this limitation of spiders to your advantage by uploading text in a graphics format that you don’t want spidered. For example, if you want to launch a trial balloon by testing a new product, you might not want that new product spidered until your market testing was complete.
No problem. Create the text in Flash and upload it as a Flash file. Any graphics format can be used – gif, jpg, etc. Visitors will see the text but spiders will just “know” there’s some kind of graphic in that location.
A couple of cautions here. First, even though bots can’t read graphics files, that doesn’t mean you can or should mis-lead site visitors with useless or deceitful information disguised as a graphic. These “black hat” tactics will eventually catch up with site owners who are less than straightforward with visitors and spiders.
Caution number two: Because bots can’t assess graphics, any text in a graphic format is invisible to spiders. That means that information critical to accurate search engine indexing may be unreadable by spiders. This can lead to a site that is only partially indexed, mis-classified within the index and, worst-case-scenario, banned from the search engine for perceived infractions. The only thing you’ll see coming through your site are tumbleweeds. This web hosting blogger recommends only "white hat" tactics when preparting your site for search engine spiders. Play it safe!
Structure your site skin for humans and your site code for spiders.
Functionally, that’s the difference between SEO (search engine optimization) and SEM (search engine marketing). But, to achieve online commercial success, you need to know your buyers, their likes and dislikes, and spiders and what they look for crawling through the code underlying your site.
Even though this may sound like a simple task, it isn’t always the case. For example, web frames are useful to humans in speeding up interactivity but frames can also corral spiders, trapping them and preventing them from reporting back to home base with your site data accurately in place.
In an ideal, digital world, spiders would be more intuitive, more refined in their search and indexing skills, and able to distinguish honest site owners who use the limitations of bots from the scammers who abuse these same limitations.
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