How to Make Sure Your Site Gets Properly Crawled and Indexed by Robots

Search engines have robots that come to your site and grab everything there is to grab. But because competition is so fierce, there is no way to get in the search engines, unless you pay for ads or hire a SEO (Search Engine Optimization) consultant, right? Wrong!

Even if you pay big money, if your site is not properly seen by the robots used by search engines for indexing, chances are many of your pages will never make it.

In this article I will discuss the importance of having your website structured properly, the importance of using the old fashioned hyperlinks versus the modern Flash menus, scripts and extensions and provide you with a very simple and free tool that will allow you to see your site in a similar fashion most indexing robots do. But first, let's define some of the concepts.

What is a www robot?

A robot is a computer program that automatically reads web pages and goes through every link that it finds.

The first robot was developed by MIT and launched in 1993. It was named the World Wide Web Wander and its initial purpose was of a purely scientific nature, its mission was to measure the growth of the web. The index generated from the experiment's results proved to be an awesome tool and effectively became the first search engine. Most of the online stuff we can't live without today was born as a side effect of some scientific experiment.

What is a search engine?

Generically, a search engine is a program that searches through a database. In the popular sense, as referred to the web, a search engine is considered to be a system that has a user search form, which can search through a repository of web pages gathered by a robot.

What is a bot? What is a spider? What is a crawler?

Bot is just a shorter, cooler (for some) version of the word robot. Spiders and crawlers are robots, only the names sound more interesting in the press and within metro-geek circles. For reasons of consistency, I will use the term robot throughout this article, when referring to spiders, crawlers and bots.

Are there other... things that crawl out there?

Oh yeah, but these things are way beyond the scope of this article. Well, for the conspiracy theory aficionados, let's see... we have worms - self-replicating programs, webants (or ants) - distributed cooperating robots, autonomous agents, intelligent agents and many other bots and beasties.

How do robots work?

As with all other things technical, I believe that the only way you will utilize a technology to its full potential and to your best advantage is if and when you understand how that technology works. When I say how it works, I don't mean intricate technical details, but fundamental processes, big picture stuff.

Generally, robots are nothing but stripped down versions of web browsers, programmed to automatically browse and record information about web pages. There are some very specialized robots out there, some that look only for blogs, some that index nothing but images. Many (such as Google's GoogleBot) are based on one of the first popular browsers, called Lynx. Lynx was initially a pure text browser, therefore, in today's internet Lynx would be extremely robust and fast. Basically, if you can program, you can take Lynx, modify it and make a robot.

So how do these things actually work? They get a list of websites, and literally start "browsing" them. They come to your site and then start reading the pages and following every link, while storing different information, such as page titles, the actual text of the page, etc.

Based on the above, what would happen if instead of your beloved Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera or whatever browser you are attached to, you go dig on the internet and download a version of the venerable Lynx browser?

I'll tell you what would happen, and some will probably accuse me of giving away one of the secrets the SEO corporate community does not want you to know:

You will be able to see your site very close to the way a robot sees it. You will be able to look for errors in your pages and track down navigation errors that might block a robot from seeing portions of your site.

In plain English, let's say you built a great looking site. There is an index page, the first page one sees when entering your site. On that page you have the most incredible Flash navigation system, with a huge button pointing to your products and services and the rest of the site. If Lynx goes to your index page and will not see a standard link, it will not be able to see the rest of your site. There are extremely high chances that a lot of indexing robots will not see your site either.

You will then understand why your very large site, that has one of the most intricate and functional Flash based navigation systems on the planet never makes it high into the search engines, even after all your efforts of manually submitting it everywhere. It's simply because you forgot to add basic hyperlinks. It's because when you submit a site - even manually - all that really happens is you telling the search engine "hey, Mr. Search Engine, whenever you think you can find some time, please send your trusty robot to my site".

Folks, robots can't usually use a navigation menu made in Flash, Java script, PHP, etc. and will not be able to get to your pages, it's as simple as that.

How do I get Lynx?

Lynx first started life as a UNIX application, written by the University of Kansas as part of their campus-wide information system. It then became a gopher application (a pre-web search tool), then a web browser. The official page for Lynx is http://lynx.isc.org, however, if you are not a Linux geek, used to play with binary distribution files and used to compiling your own apps (don't worry about what I just said), you might want to find a version that someone else already made usable for your computer. For example, if you are a PC user running Windows, you might want to check links to "Win32 compiled versions". At the time of writing, one such site is http://csant.info/lynx.htm (called a distribution site) where you can download a version that will install onto Windows machines in a fashion that will be familiar to non-geeks. After you install the browser, you might want to read the documentation. To get you going and to alleviate your beginner frustrations, I'll tell you that you must press the G key (as in "go"), then type the complete URL of the site you want to browse (starting with "http://"), then hit Enter. Use the arrows to navigate.

Bottom line, use Lynx to verify that every page of site is accessible and let the robots do all the work for you. You'll save yourself a lot of aggravation and maybe some money that you would waste on advertising your otherwise non-indexable site.

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Andrei co-owns Bsleek - a company that specializes in web design, hosting, promotional items, printing, tradeshow displays, logos, CD presentations, SEO and more. Andrei has amassed an extensive technical knowledge and experience through his career as the CIO for a major travel management company and through his past careers in military research, data acquisition and airspace engineering. He also consults for Trinity Investigations, a New York based PI firm.

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Bsleek - Redefining cheap web hosting [http://www.bsleek.com/hosting/]

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What is Organic SEO?

Organic SEO Rankings Can Increase Web Visibility by 67%

Organic SEO is the procedure of getting your website ranked high in the Search Engine 1-10 positions on Google, Yahoo, AOL, & now Bing. Each Search Engine calls for a different SEO Process, but if you Optimize your website for Google, then that is a great start.

SEO / Search Engine Optimization can be very complex and will involve many fundamentals for good rankings on the Search Engines. We have outlined a few. Each Optimization process ties into each other. One of the most important factors that we have found as an SEO company is doing the correct research on the company we take on, such as knowing their industry, competing companies, location, target market, and the correct layout of our clients website, which plays a major role in how we Optimize their website.

Once we have ran a few SEO Stress Test on our clients website then we will proceed with the research and begin to build a SEO Blue Print with a some basic steps that we have follow to obtain high Organic Rankings via the Search Engines. Below are some basics and a brief explanation of what they mean, without getting into to much SEO jargon.

Search Engines will look for these pieces of information located in the websites source coding. Since Search Engine Robots/Spiders can not read images they follow html code.

Keywords- Are what you would like your website to rank on the Search Engines when a prospect types in a word or a long-tail stream of words. Looking and adding the right keywords to your website source code calls for extensive research on your competition, GEO targeting your prospects, and what a prospect will type in. There are may elements to keyword research, it used to be a 1 to 3 keyword term was the best now studies show 3 to 6 words per keyword is the best option now. Most Searchers are starting to use Questions, Area Codes, Zip Codes, Cities, Counties, States, and then some. Selecting the right terms for your website will make or break your SEO Process.

Meta Tags- Meta elements provide information about a given Web page, most often to help search engines categorize them correctly. They are inserted into the HTML document, but are often not directly visible to a user visiting the site. Typical Meta info is Title, Keywords, & Description. Since the Search Engines do not weight results completely on Meta Tags because of the abuse from some SEO Companies, you have to add other Optimization procedures to the SEO process.

Website Content- Well looks pretty self explanatory, on the other hand it is not. Search Engines do require good and precise content that is written for the end user which is a prospect for you. Most Search Engines will ask that a web page consist of about 1000 words. Now here is the tricky part, how do you develop keyword density that is written for the Search Engines but also for the prospect. Search Engines have become smarter than most SEO Companies would like to thing. If SEO Companies had content that was not keyword stuffed or with hidden keywords on the web page then we would not have this problem. There is a formula that calls for keyword density that depends on the amount of content VS. how much value a keyword has. This means that keywords have to be used a certain amount within the content and placed in the right spots located n the web page. Not as simple as just writin content for your website.

Header Tags- The to tags are used to define HTML headings. defines the largest heading and defines the smallest heading. Header tags are the outlines of the web pages which portrays the attention of the significant information to the users. Are those areas on a web page enclosed by heading tags. example: Position Masters (heading tags vary in weight (size & density) depending on the status of the heading or sub-heading, ie, H1,2,3,4. They are part of HTML language.

Alt Tags -Text that accompanies an image. If a user has the browser set not to display images, or is using a screen reader, they will rely on this text to tell them what the image is. The text can be seen when hovering the mouse over the image, or is read out in the case of a screen reader. This is very important is you have a website that has a lot of images. Since Search Engines read text and code having Alt Tags are essential so the Search Engines can pick up what the image is and also will add to keyword density in the source code.

Above are just a VERY FEW basic steps to follow. Search Engine Algorithms are very tricky and constantly changing. We have done Organic SEO for many different types of companies and we have successfully Organically Ranked them all.

SEO / Organic SEO is an Art and a Process that we take pride in. Once we have Optimized your website the fun starts. The purpose of you have a website is so that many prospects see & use your services or buy your products. I hope that this has shed a little light on a subject many do not understand

Lyle Hawkins

Organic SEO Professional & Social Media Consultant

Owner http://www.Searchenginesurgeon.com

Lyle@Searchenginesurgeon.com

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What Is Google Plus 1 and How Will It Boost Your Rankings?

Google Plus 1 has been in the experimental stages for some time now but it's finally available and in effect. Google Plus 1 is in many ways Google's answer to Facebook's "Like" feature; it's their way of keeping up with the social search direction which search engines are taking.

How it works on the search engine level is that the Google Plus 1 button appears along every web page in the Google search results ONLY when you are signed in to a Google account. You can click on the plus 1 button is added to all web pages in the search results

Additionally, you can add the Google Plus 1 button to your website so that it appears on every post and page which you create. I recommend that you go ahead and do this because you'll accumulate many more pluses this way.

Think about it, if someone sees your web page in the SERPs, they're not going to give you a plus before they read your content. And if they like your content and you don't have the plus button installed on your page, they're likely not going to click the back button on their web browser so they can give your page a plus back in the SERPs. They're going to give you the plus after reading your content, so your plus button should be visible ideally at the bottom of your post/page or at the top.

Furthermore, don't forget about all of the people who don't find your web page/post through the search engines. What if they get redirected through a link from a referring site? In this case you definitely need that Google Plus 1 button on your individual page.

There are two obvious benefits of the Google Plus 1 button. One is that it will boost your rankings (assuming you have received pluses) as Google sees this as firsthand proof that a real and actual person has given a personal thumbs up approval of your content, thus making their job in determining what web pages should rank well for keywords that much easier. Keep in mind that while this is important, it's still just another piece of their multiple piece pie which is their ranking algorithm.

Secondly is that it will boost your traffic. Social proof can motivate people to check out a web page online, and the beauty of Google Plus 1 (especially while it's still in the early stages) is that not many people are using it effectively yet, so even just a few pluses of your web page can persuade someone to check out your web page, especially next to another web page on the same content which does not have any pluses.

It's very easy to add the Google Plus 1 button to your page. You can check out Google's page on it, or if you're using WordPress then you can just use one of the many plugins for adding it to your site which is what I do. I just added this plugin/button to my site, so I don't have enough experience with the particular plugin which I'm using to recommend it to you all or not, but just do a search for "Google Plus 1" from your plugins tab and you'll find a number of free options which will make it simple to add it to your site.

Google Plus 1 can help you rank, but so can getting Facebook likes on your pages, so check out these 8 ways to get more likes right now by clicking on this link for how to get Facebook likes.

OR you can sign up for my free 10 Day Fast Track Training Course which is a completely free email/video based course designed to teach anyone how to make serious money through affiliate marketing. Check out this video to see how quick and easy it is to make money in affiliate marketing when the path is laid out clearly right in front of you without costing you a dime.

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The Truth About Backlinks and Getting on the First Page of Google

Those of us that make our living on the internet know that page rank in the major search engines are important. We also know that Google is the king of all search engines and getting on the first page of Google increases your chances of getting targeted visitors to your web sites.

Search engine optimization is something that should be balanced and you should have many different avenues for Google and the other search engines to find you. I'd like to cover the backlink theories.

Many people think that the more backlinks you have, the higher in the rankings you will be and the search engines will eat that up. In a sense, that is true and in another sense that is false. I own about 15 sites and one has about 33,000 backlinks. No kidding, it's got more backlinks than Bill Gates has dollars but it's not on the first page of Google.

In this particular instance, that's not much of an issue for me because I get about 400 unique visitors daily and the site generates a nice little revenue stream for me and it only takes about 20 minutes a day to maintain.

I have another site that has only about 800 backlinks and it's on the first page of Google for several keywords. It's a competitive niche and this site makes me some real nice money... time to manage about an hour a week.

What's the difference? The quality of the backlinks. The first site I talked about was one I bought all set up and the previous owner thought that all those back links would get him rankings. Not.

The second site I set up and developed... it's less than 5 months old, is a PR2 and is on the first page of Google for 8 different keywords because of the quality of the backlinks. I have it linked to high PR sites using those competitive keywords and my url imbedded in the keywords.

Much less work, much better ranking on Google and much more revenue because of the quality of the backlinks, not the quantity.

Want your site on the first page of Google?

Be willing to spend about 15 - 20 minutes a day putting your information on PR5 sites and next thing you know, you'll be ranked on the first page of Google!

Will Stone owns and runs several web sites and has been involved in helping others get highly ranked with the search engines. Click here for a High PR Backlinks [http://backlinks.theleadsource.net] or to learn more about what Will Stone offers take a look at his Search Engine Optimization [http://theleadsource.net] site. It has always been important for one to optimize your site and although there are many ways to get highly ranked with the search engines, Will's techniques are second to none.

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