What kind of food do search engine spiders like? Similar to the traditional
arachnophobia, search engine spiders like regular meals, with fresh new
content added on a regular basis. In order to feed the search engines, you
want to provide them with tasty websites that are easy to consume. If you
satisfy their hunger, your website may perform better in organic searches.
Here are some helpful tips...
Link Depth
All important pages on a website should be accessible with 3 clicks or less.
Deep links, or links that require multiple clicks in order to access, are
often ignored by search engine spiders. The most important pages of a
website should not be buried. Be sure that critical webpages are only one or
two levels deep within a website.
Site Map
A site map is a good meal for search engines spiders. That said, site maps
should not be used as a solution to poor navigation. Attention should be
paid to both solid navigation and a functional site map, for the benefit of
your website visitors and customers! The fact that doing so will also make
search engine spiders happy is a free bonus.
RSS Feeds
Spiders just love RSS feeds. If you are serving them on your webpage and
displaying content from RSS feeds, be sure that you are using a method that
allows the contents of the RSS feed to be spidered by search engines.
Here's some help on that topic: Display RSS Feeds
Topical Forums
Active forums that contain content generated by interested customers is a
great form of organic content. Customers often use unusual phrases in
describing problems, questions, or concerns, and this is a great way to
perform well in long-tail searches.
Blogs
Very few things are tastier to search engine spiders than blogs. Blogs
contain fresh content, which is added on a regular basis. If you have a
blog, search engines may favor your website.
FAQs & How To's
Pages with FAQs (lists of Frequently Asked Questions) and detailed "How To"
instructions that relate to a websites general theme are great web content
for spiders. Often, content contained in detailed FAQs and HowTo's will
capture long-tail search phrases, and bring in additional qualified web
traffic.
Text
Each page on a website should contain at minimum 250 words of text. It is
difficult for a search spider to discern the meaning and context of a
webpage if it does not contain a fair amount of basic text.
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