Over the last several issues I have talked about setting up your Meta
Tags and submitting your site to the major search engines. Once this
has been done successfully you can expect to start receiving visits
from some of the search engine spiders.
What is a spider? Search engine spiders are small programs that are
sent out by the search engines to scurrying around the web looking
at and cataloging web sits. They go by such cryptic names as
Mozilla, Slurp, Gulliver, ArchitextSpider and so on. You can expect
these spiders to visit monthly, weekly and daily and if you are using
a good Stats program you will see them listed. It has been reported
that some search engines will give a web page that has been
"spidered" or "crawled." a higher ranking than one that has been
submitted. Here are a few tips to ensure that you get the most from
these arachnid visitors.
1. Submit your two most important pages to the major search
engines on a timely basis, usually every two weeks. Many
spiders will not visit until your site has been submitted. See last
weeks news letter for more information.
2. Ensure that all your pages are within three clicks of your home
page since many spiders will not index any further than that.
3. Update your pages often. It gives the spiders a reason to
continue indexing your site.
4. Be certain all your pages have Meta Tags and that they are
properly set up. See our previous news letters at: WebTips for
additional information on setting up your Meta Tags.
5. Avoid spam-dexing. This includes excessive repetition of
keywords, hidden text, tiny text etc.
Once your site has been catalogued, it can still take up to several
weeks before it is listed by the search engine.
"IMS Web Tips" is a weekly news letter for all web site managers regardless of experience who are looking for detailed information on
creating, maintaining and promoting their web sites.
