A New SEO Beginning for This Blog - and lesson #1: Getting Indexed
Well whattaya want... I can't just keep looking for contests to lose, I DO have a job to do, ya know...
Anyhow part of it involves this, now, one of our new clients needing some site optimization and submission done for him.
SEO is not a science, nor is it some wizardry the gurus will have us believe... rather, it's an intuitive, creative way to get a site which otherwise may be off the mark in terms of relevancy to search engines back ON the mark...
But before i get into these soft-headed abstractions, I gotta say the deal is to get the site Indexed to begin with.
First thing to do is fill in the header tags - those things in the page code which serve a nebulous purpose on some search engines, or a specific purpose - depending on the engine.
For this reason best to keep it simple. The less the better. So what you need are: title, keyword, description, and robots tags.
I also like to add the imagetoolbar tag, set to "no", because I hate it when that little menu pops up over images offering that I can email, etc... the thing to someone. I also suspect it probably helps harvesting for hotlink bots...
If you don't know what that means, forget it... or rather, wait for later...
Then within the index page - which is the first that gets indexed - I like to add creative, descriptive body text ABOVE the warning, Enter or Exit links, copyright notices, etc....
The reason for this is that a listing in some search engines will reach for the first text on the body or human-viewable part of the page rather than the meta-description.
It's also a good idea to have part of that text in <> (not h2 or h3, but h1) - if you don't like the size of it, preformat the h1 on that page (or throughout the site via css document).
My idea is that all these elements help guide the search engine's user agent through your site page, and eventually through your site. It is basically looking for content in the form of text - which by the way is the reason to have "alt" descriptions on all your images).
The thing goes through the title, searches for relevance in the keywords, the brief description and on to the header or main element of the body of the page. Then it saunters through the body text and finally hits the links on the page to see if they're relevant... but that's it. It doesn't follow through.
The first time, SE's usually only survey the index page and then go on to other sites. But they do come back. Especially if you have links. Especially if you tell them to...
What? TELL Googlebot to come back? No, of course not, you don't tell it what to do, really (which is why all these back-dated content-expiry tags and others in the genre are a waste of time and plain dumb). What you DO tell it is in the robots tag.
The robots tag is the shortest piece of work in the headers. Basically, you just set it to "index" if you want to have your site spidered entirely. If there's anything you don't want indexed for whatever reason, that's another lesson. Suffice it to say that you have tell it to "index" and when the spider/bot returns it will first quickly check if your index page content is updated (which is a good thing) and will then follow through on the links, and on into the site.
I suspect and it's logical to assume that each visit will take the engine deeper into the page until eventually the whole site is indexed... but how do you make it index your site the FIRST TIME???
Well, if you do NOTHING you will sooner or later be indexed. But it helps to have a few things up your sleeve, a few places to submit, and a few links already on some pages which are indexed.
But... more on that next time :)
Anyhow part of it involves this, now, one of our new clients needing some site optimization and submission done for him.
SEO is not a science, nor is it some wizardry the gurus will have us believe... rather, it's an intuitive, creative way to get a site which otherwise may be off the mark in terms of relevancy to search engines back ON the mark...
But before i get into these soft-headed abstractions, I gotta say the deal is to get the site Indexed to begin with.
First thing to do is fill in the header tags - those things in the page code which serve a nebulous purpose on some search engines, or a specific purpose - depending on the engine.
For this reason best to keep it simple. The less the better. So what you need are: title, keyword, description, and robots tags.
I also like to add the imagetoolbar tag, set to "no", because I hate it when that little menu pops up over images offering that I can email, etc... the thing to someone. I also suspect it probably helps harvesting for hotlink bots...
If you don't know what that means, forget it... or rather, wait for later...
Then within the index page - which is the first that gets indexed - I like to add creative, descriptive body text ABOVE the warning, Enter or Exit links, copyright notices, etc....
The reason for this is that a listing in some search engines will reach for the first text on the body or human-viewable part of the page rather than the meta-description.
It's also a good idea to have part of that text in <> (not h2 or h3, but h1) - if you don't like the size of it, preformat the h1 on that page (or throughout the site via css document).
My idea is that all these elements help guide the search engine's user agent through your site page, and eventually through your site. It is basically looking for content in the form of text - which by the way is the reason to have "alt" descriptions on all your images).
The thing goes through the title, searches for relevance in the keywords, the brief description and on to the header or main element of the body of the page. Then it saunters through the body text and finally hits the links on the page to see if they're relevant... but that's it. It doesn't follow through.
The first time, SE's usually only survey the index page and then go on to other sites. But they do come back. Especially if you have links. Especially if you tell them to...
What? TELL Googlebot to come back? No, of course not, you don't tell it what to do, really (which is why all these back-dated content-expiry tags and others in the genre are a waste of time and plain dumb). What you DO tell it is in the robots tag.
The robots tag is the shortest piece of work in the headers. Basically, you just set it to "index" if you want to have your site spidered entirely. If there's anything you don't want indexed for whatever reason, that's another lesson. Suffice it to say that you have tell it to "index" and when the spider/bot returns it will first quickly check if your index page content is updated (which is a good thing) and will then follow through on the links, and on into the site.
I suspect and it's logical to assume that each visit will take the engine deeper into the page until eventually the whole site is indexed... but how do you make it index your site the FIRST TIME???
Well, if you do NOTHING you will sooner or later be indexed. But it helps to have a few things up your sleeve, a few places to submit, and a few links already on some pages which are indexed.
But... more on that next time :)
Labels: indexation, optimization, search engines, SEO, simple headers
posted by MediaGuy at
10:41 AM
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