2. How to disallow all spiders to index any file

If you don’t want search engines to index any file of your web site, use the following:

 3. Where to find more complex examples.

If you want to see more complex examples, of robots.txt files, view the robots.txt files of big web sites:

•  
  • http://www.cnn.com/robots.txt
  • http://www.nytimes.com/robots.txt
  • http://www.spiegel.com/robots.txt
  • http://www.ebay.com/robots.txt

Your web site should have a proper robots.txt file if you want to have good rankings on search engines. Only if search engines know what to do with your pages, they can give you a good ranking.

How do I create a robots.txt file?

As mentioned above, the robots.txt file is a simple text file. Open a simple text editor to create it. The content of a robots.txt file consists of so-called “records”. Read the rest of this entry »

Always find a professional web site promotion company that helps you to achieve high search engine rankings for your web pages. High search engine rankings result in more visitors, more customers and more sales.

Many webmasters overlook a very important aspect of web site promotion: the validity of the HTML code.

Leeson 13
 

What is valid HTML code?

Most web pages are written in HTML. As for every language, HTML has its own grammar, vocabulary and syntax, and every document written in HTML is supposed to follow these rules.

Like any language, HTML is constantly changing. As HTML has become a relative complex language, it’s very easy to make mistakes. HTML code that is not following the official rules is called invalid HTML code.

Why is valid HTML code important?

Search engines have to parse the HTML code of your web site to find the relevant content. If your HTML code contains errors, search engines might not be able to find everything on the page.

Search engine crawler programs obey the HTML standard. They only can index your web site if it is compliant to the HTML standard. If there’s a mistake in your web page code, they might stop crawling your web site and they might lose what they’ve collected so far because of the error.

Although most major search engines can deal with minor errors in HTML code, a single missing bracket in your HTML code can be the reason if your web page cannot be found in search engines.

If you don’t close some tags properly, or if some important tags are missing, search engines might ignore the complete content of that page.

How can you check the validity of your HTML code?

Select the “HTML validator” in IBP’s main window. IBP will connect you to an offical HTML validator that will check the code of your web pages.

Although not all HTML errors will cause problems for your search engine rankings, some of them can keep web spiders from indexing your web pages.

Valid HTML code makes it easier for search engine spiders to index your site so you should make sure that at least the biggest mistakes in your HTML code are corrected.

Are you sure that search engines understand your web site? Search engines see your web pages with different eyes than web surfers.

Lesson 12

A web page that looks great to the human eye can be totally meaningless to search engines. For example, search engines cannot read the text on the images of your web site, and many don’t understand web languages such as JavaScript or CSS.

If you have a great looking web site that is meaningless to search engines, you won’t be able to achieve high search engine rankings with that web site - no matter how good and interesting your web site content is.

In general, search engines cannot see content that is presented in the following file formats:

• images (GIF, JPEG, PNG, etc.)
• Flash movies, flash banners, etc.
• JavaScript and other script languages
• other multimedia file formats

Some search engines can index some of these file formats but in general, it’s very difficult to obtain high search engine rankings if your main web site content is presented only in these formats.

Search engines need text to index your web site. They cannot know what’s written on your GIF or JPEG images or in your Flash movies. If you use a lot of images on your web site, you should also create some web pages that contain a lot of text.

If you want to find out how search engines see your web site, you have to use a search engine spider simulator tool. A search engine spider simulator tool emulates the software programs search engines use to index your web site. They show you what elements of your web site are visible to search engines.

IBP’s search engine spider simulator helps you to find out how search engines see your web site. IBP’s spider simulator even allows you to emulate special search engines spider names so that you can find out if your competitors send different pages to search engine spiders.

Just enter the URL of your web site and IBP will tell you what text and which links search engines can find on your site.

That allows you to quickly find out whether your web site lacks information that search engines need to properly index your web site.

If you have optimized your web page for high search engine rankings and it still doesn’t get better listings, it is very likely that your web site has low link popularity.

Lesson 11
Link popularity is a very important factor for all major search engines. If your web site doesn’t have good link popularity, it is very difficult to get good search engine rankings.
Note that link popularity alone is not enough. The content of your web site is also important so that search engines know what your web site is about.

A combination of optimized pages and high link popularity will bring your web site to the top of the search engine results.
What exactly is link popularity?

Link popularity refers to the total number of links that a search engine has found for your web page. The more web sites link to your web page, the higher the link popularity of your page. High link popularity contributes to a high search engine ranking.

The idea behind the link popularity concept is simple. The more other web sites link to your web site, the more important your site must be. Other sites wouldn’t link to your site if there wasn’t something interesting on your site or if your web site didn’t contain any special content. Read the rest of this entry »

You’ve probably seen many “404 not found” pages when surfing the web. A “404 not found” page is the page that comes up when someone tries to access a web page that doesn’t exist.

Lesson 10
This usually happens when someone types a wrong URL or follows a link to a page that does not exist. A typical 404 error page looks like this:

The exact wording of this error may vary, but it is normally unintuitive and unfriendly. It is unlikely that the person explores your site further.

People who come to a “404 not found” web page are usually lost visitors. These visitors don’t see your web site information and they cannot buy your products.
A custom 404 error page keeps visitors on your web site

Most web hosts allow you to create a custom “404 not found” page. If you haven’t done it yet, you should create a custom 404 error page now.

A custom 404 error page is an easy way to keep visitors on your web site. It also allows you to redirect your visitors to the pages of your choice.

For example, you could use the following HTML code for your own 404 error page:

This HTML code simply redirects people to the index page of your web site so that they can find what they’re looking for (replace “www.YourWebSiteName.com with the URL of your own web site).

You could also create a custom 404 page that tells your visitors that the page is not available anymore. It also makes sense to give your visitors some choices. Here’s an example of such a 404 error page.
A custom 404 error page is important to the success of your web site

People often mistype URLs and some web sites have links to non-existent pages. This can happen when redesigning a web site or just through typographical errors.

With a custom 404 error page, you make it easier for end users to find where they want to go on your web site.

Most web space providers allow custom 404 error pages. Ask your web space provider how you can create a 404 error page for your web site.  If you webhost don’t allow this please visit http://www.arlance.biz to select your package.

Flash movies are a popular way to make web sites more compelling. They are useful if you want to impress your web site visitors or if you offer web design services.

Lesson 9
Unfortunately, if you use Flash movies, or if you even design your complete web site based on the Flash technology, your odds of getting listed in the search engines are greatly reduced.

Search engines can only “see” pure text. They are not able to recognize text on an image or text that appears as a graphic in a Flash movie.

Google advises on its webmaster guidelines page: “If fancy features such as [...] Flash keep you from seeing all of your site in a text browser, then search engine spiders may have trouble crawling your site.”.

So how can you achieve high search engine rankings in spite of Flash contents?

First of all, you should re-consider using Flash on your web site. Keep in mind that many visitors still use slow dial-up connections to access web pages. They don’t like to wait 1-2 minutes only to see your company logo fancy animated. Your Flash movies must carry invaluable information to the visitors, otherwise they will be disappointed. Read the rest of this entry »

Even if you have obtained high search engine rankings for your web site under your important keywords, and even if you have hundreds of visitors per day, web surfers still might not purchase something on your web site.

Lesson 8 

Why do visitors sometimes don’t convert into sales? We’ll give you several reasons that can prevent surfers from buying on your web site.

Reason 1: Your web pages don’t load fast enough

Web surfers hate to wait for slow loading web pages. If your web pages don’t load fast enough, many web surfers will go away without taking a look at them.

No matter how great your product is: if your web site is not fast enough, web surfers won’t see it. Fast loading web pages are crucial if you want to sell something on the Internet.

There are several things you can do to speed up your site. Read the rest of this entry »

The title of a web page is one of the most important elements. Good web page titles can remarkably increase the effectiveness of your web site.

Lesson 7 

The title of a web page is the text that is written between the <TITLE> and </TITLE> tag in the HTML code of a web page. If you write the right text between these tags, your web site can get more targeted visitors.

Why are web page titles so important for your web site success?

1. The titles of your web pages are important for search engines

   To many search engine spiders the title of a web page is more important than other web page elements. If your web page title contains your most important keywords, it’s likely that the web page will have a good search engine ranking for these keywords.

2. The titles of your web pages are important for web surfers

   The title of your web site is the first thing web surfers will see from your web site. Many search engines display the title of a web page as the main link to a web site in the search engine result pages.

   In addition, the web page title is used when a web surfers bookmarks your web site.

While most search engines don’t allow you to influence the description of your web site, the title of your web site is often listed without any changes.

What does this mean to you?

It’s important that your web pages have compelling titles that are compelling to web surfers and that contain your most important keywords.

For example, if you have a sports shoe shop in London, don’t use this title tag:

Welcome to Smith & SonPeople probably won’t click on that link because they don’t know who you are. That web page title doesn’t look very attractive to the average surfer. Better use this title:

Buy sneakers and sports shoes at competitive prices in our shop in London. Nike, Adidas, Reebok and all other major sports shoe brands.Why is the second title better than the first one?

The second title has many advantages over the first title.

1. The second title contains keywords that are important for a sports shoe business: sports shoes, sports shoe, sneakers and several brand names.

   The inclusion of these words in the title increase the change of good search engine rankings for these keywords.

2. The second title informs web surfers about the purpose of the web site and it gives them a reason to click: Buy sneakers and sports shoes at competitive prices.
3. The second title includes geographical information: …in our shop in London. People who live in Chicago are probably not interested in a shop that’s based in London.

   The inclusion of “London” in the web page title allows people to quickly find out if it’s worth to visit the web site. In addition, it’s more likely that the web site will be found for a search term such as “shoe shop London“.

Good web page titles can help you to increase your search engine rankings and to get more people to click on your link.

Lesson 6

You’ve probably seen them on the web and you’ve probably received many spam email messages from them: services that promise you to submit your web site to thousands of search engines and that tell you that your web site will get high search engine rankings if you just submit your web site often enough.

The frequency of your search engine submission is not important

When you submit your web site URL to a search engines, you basically ask the search engine spiders to visit your web site and to evaluate it. If the search engine spiders cannot find anything useful on your site, they won’t list your web site. It doesn’t make sense to submit your web site again and again if it isn’t search engine ready.

Read the rest of this entry »