|
Search
Engine Optimisation Sydney > Optimisation
 Article
on Optimisation
More common mistakes that prevent your Web site from showing up
on search engines.
Reason #13: Your Web pages require a full-fledged browser.
When search engines crawl the Web to find new Web pages, they use
special software for it, called "spiders", "robots"
or "crawlers".
These crawler programs don't have the functionality of full-fledged
Web browsers such as Microsoft Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator.
In fact, search engine robot programs look at your Web pages like
a text browser does. They like text, text, and more text. They ignore
information contained in graphic images but they can read <IMG
ALT> text descriptions.
This means that search engine spider programs are not able to use
Web browser technology to access your site. If your Web pages require
Flash, DHTML, cookies, JavaScript, Java or passwords to access the
page, then search engine spiders might not be able to index your
Web site.
Therefore, it might be a good idea to test your Web pages with
very old versions of Web browser applications or with the software
program "Lynx", a text-only browser.
Lynx is available for download here . Here's an online version
of Lynx that allows you test your Web pages with a text-only browser
quickly and easily: http://www.delorie.com/web/lynxview.html
.
"Simulation of a search engine spider", see how search
engines see your Web site:
http://www.delorie.com/web/ses.cgi
Reason #14: Search engines could not resolve your DNS name.
There's a mistake that novice users often do. They register a domain
name (for example, www.my-great-site.com), and they immediately
submit the Web site URL to the search engines.
Then they wonder why the search engines didn't index their site.
The answer is, they weren't able to do it.
It takes approximately 2-4 days until a domain name becomes active.
All Internet access providers must update their records (DNS tables)
to reflect new site locations. The process of updating DNS tables
is called propagation.
Search engines must also update their DNS tables and until then,
the new domain name www.my-great-site.com doesn't work.
So when you register a new domain name, you must wait about 48-72
hours until you can submit the domain name to the search engines.
If you're interested in other factors that might prevent your Web
site from getting top rankings on search engines, visit our newsletter
archive:
http://www.Axandra.com/news/index.htm
Reason #15: Your Web site has a low link popularity.
Link popularity is becoming _the_ determining factor for a top
search engine ranking.
Link popularity means the number of Web sites linking to your site.
However, the quality of links is more important than the quantity
of links. For instance, if the New York Times links to your site,
their single link might count a lot more than 30 links from your
friends' personal homepage.
By now, all top search engines use link popularity in their ranking
formulas: AltaVista, Inktomi, MSN Search, HotBot. For Google, it's
even the most important factor in ranking sites.
The idea behind link popularity is that other Web sites will link
to your site only if you are a quality site offering quality resources.
So if many Web sites link to your site, search engines come to the
conclusion that your site must be very popular and deserves a high
ranking.
As Google co-founder Sergey Brin said in an interview: "...a
page that is pointed to by many other sites is important. In other
words, external approval raises a page's ranking."
Link popularity can do a lot for your site. Not only will the most
important search engines rank you higher, but links from other sites
will also drive more traffic to you.
In addition, as more sites link to you, the odds increase that
search engine spider programs will encounter your site more regularly
so that it's less likely that they drop your site from their index.
What's the link popularity of your site?
The freeware Windows program Link Popularity Check tells you the
link popularity of your Web site is and compares it with competitor
sites.
Link Popularity Check is a classic freeware application: it has
no nag screens, it doesn't change the system registry, it makes
no unauthorized connections to the Internet and it comes with a
hands-free uninstaller.
Download
Link Popularity Check (freeware).
How to improve the link popularity of your Web site:
You can search the search engines for Web sites that are related
to your business, find the webmaster's contact information and then
solicit a reciprocal link. Do this every day and your link popularity
will climb steadily but slowly. And it's very time-consuming.
That's why we created ARELIS,
which automates most of the time-consuming tasks. Read the interesting
comparison of the old-fashioned way of improving link popularity
versus ARELIS , the new way.
Reason #16: Your Web page URL contains special characters.
Most search engines have problems indexing Web pages when their
URLs contain special characters. The following special characters
are known to be "search-engine-spider-stoppers":
ampersand (&)
dollar sign ($)
equals sign (=)
percent sign (%)
question mark (?)
These characters are often found in dynamically generated Web pages.
They signal the search engine crawler program that there could be
an infinite loop of possibilities for that page. That's why they
ignore Web page URLs with the above characters.
AltaVista and Lycos explain on their help pages why they cannot
index such Web pages:
http://us.altavista.com/help/search/faq_web#13
http://insite.lycos.com/searchservices/
frequently_asked_questions.asp?b=n#10
HotBot recommends that you submit your dynamic Web pages with all
parameters added onto the URL (for example, "www.site.com/articles/query.asp?article=83").
Google and Inktomi utilize crawler programs that are able to index
dynamically generated Web pages, even those that use question marks.
So what can you do if you have dynamically generated Web pages
with special characters? If you use the Apache Server, ASP, CGI/Perl
or ColdFusion, the following Web page provides some solutions:
http://spider-food.net/dynamic-page-optimization-b.html
Reason #17: Your Web site has a slow host server.
Search engine crawler programs that index Web pages don't have
much time. There are approximately 2-4 billion Web pages all over
the world and search engines want to index all of them.
So if the host server of your Web site has a slow connection to
the Internet, you may experience that your Web site will not be
indexed by the major search engines at all.
AltaVista and Google specifically mention the problem on their
Web sites.
AltaVista: "If a site has a slow connection or the pages are
very complex, it might time out before the crawler can index all
the text."
Found at:
http://help.Altavista.com/adv_search/ast_haw_wellindexed
Google: "Your site may not have been reachable when we tried
to crawl it because of network or hosting problems. When this happens,
we retry multiple times, but if the site cannot be crawled, it will
not be listed in our current index."
Found at:
http://www.Google.com/webmasters/2.html#A3
You may also want to limit the size of your homepage to less than
60K. It'd also benefit the still numerous users that connect to
the Internet with a slow modem. For even the casual Internet user,
the performance of a Web site can make the difference between pleasure
and frustration.
How you can test the speed of your server:
http://web-hosting.candidinfo.com/site-response-speed.asp
Reason #18: Do you use the right keywords? It's important that
you use the keywords on which you want to be found in the right
places on your Web pages.
Imagine your Web site sells garden flowers. Your HTML source might
look like this:
---
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Garden Flowers at Flower Garden Farm</TITLE>
<META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="garden flowers,
flower arrangements, wildflower seeds, seed mixes">
<META NAME="description" CONTENT="Many different
garden flowers available for your home, yard, garden and patio.">
</HEAD>
---
Some search engines (AltaVista, Inktomi) index the META Keywords
tag, some (Google, AllTheWeb/FAST) don't.
For the search engines that index the META Keywords tag, it's important
that you actually use the keywords of your META Keywords tag on
your Web pages.
Some search engines nowadays consider it spam if the keywords of
your META Keywords tag don't appear in the body text on your page.
Of course, you know that the most important thing for a good search
engine listing is content on your Web site. Search engines need
text, text and even more text to index your Web site.
For example, if you sell cars, have articles about cars on your
Web site. If you offer package holidays, provide some tourist information
about your destinations. Build this content and optimize the text
for your target search terms.
In other words, make sure that the content on your Web pages contains
the keywords that are important for your site.
And don't forget to use only those words in your META Keywords
tag that appear on your Web page.
Now make the test with your homepage:
Go to "http://www.live-keyword-analysis.com".
Enter three of your META keywords in the three keyword fields.
Leave the ratio fields empty.
Copy and paste the body text of your homepage into the big edit
field.
Click the "Update" button.
Now look at the ratio fields. If a keyword has a ratio of 0%, consider
adding contents about that keyword on your Web page.
Reason #19: Have you waited long enough?
The Internet is growing rapidly. According to a study of the NEC
Research Institute, most search engines need about 6 months to index
a Web site.
Source: NUA Internet Surveys
http://www.nua.com/surveys/index.cgi?f=VS&art_id=905355013&rel=true
The data was collected when there were by far fewer Web sites than
today. With todays number of Web sites, it might take even longer
(although many search engines have also improved their equipment).
That means that your Web site submissions may need up to half a
year until they appear in search engine listings.
The result of the study shows that it's important that you submit
your Web pages the right way, right from the start. When search
engines need six months to index your Web site, you should make
sure that they'll index your pages correctly.
No one can guarantee a good search engine ranking. However, if
you don't make the mistakes which we outlined in our 19-part series,
a good ranking is much more likely.
Copyright by Axandra.com
Internet
marketing and search engine ranking software
Optimisation Article
Get Your Site To The Top of the Search Engines!
Find out how Seo-Xpress can get your site into the top results when someone searches for your keywords |
| If you are serious about improving your sites' web position in Google, Yahoo & MSN by Search Engine Optimisation, simply submit your first name and email address in the form below to receive further information RIGHT NOW. (Check your email in a few seconds) |
| |
|
Latest Services 
Learn how search engine optimization can get your website to the top of Google, Yahoo and MSN.
