Organic Farming: Search Engine Spiders are Getting Smarter, are You?
posted on: October 16, 2006
We have two audiences we try to reach as Internet marketers. We want our customers to notice us. But increasing success online means being noticed by the search engines customers use to find us.
SEM— The Overall Game Plan
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) refers to all of the different ways a website owner can promote different services or products. They include banner advertisements, pay per click advertising and affiliate marketing. These are processes which appeal mostly to people. But many are aimed directly at the search engines.
Popularity Rankings
One term widely used in SEM is Page Rank (PR). It is a formula created by Google to determine a web page’s popularity. Google page rank used to be primarily based on the page’s link popularity, but changes to their algorithm have adjusted the way page rank works. Page rank still uses a formula but it also takes relevancy into consideration as well as link quality.
SEO—Learning to Think Like a Spider
Smart Machine
Search engines have gotten smarter. As they have evolved, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has become increasingly important and increasingly subtle. In the past you could improve your ranking by the use of “spamming” keywords. That is, loading a site with words which are meaningless but registered with search engines. That doesn’t work anymore. Search engines today are more sophisticated, and so is the process to get them to notice your site.
Tags as Flags for Spiders
SEO is the process by which you view a site as if you were a search engine spider. You want to include flags which will get search engines to list you. To insure that happens, make sure that you have a good page title, Meta keywords, and Meta description for the spiders to see. These are commonly referred to the name Meta tags. If you are missing one of these, check to make sure you are not overriding the fields. The Meta tags are a great way to place keywords and optimized descriptions for any given page on your site. This helps in increasing the relevancy for the items or information you have on the given page.
Content Counts
As search engines have evolved, they are increasingly able to review site content to ensure the keywords or descriptions you are using are relevant. What exactly is content? It can include the names of the products listed on the page, and the text or description on the webpage. The description of the page is most commonly pulled from the caption field in your Yahoo! Store.
Be Original!
Duplicate content is definitely not a friend of search engines. If you have the same content and wording that can be found on another website you receive no extra credit from the search engines for unique content. This can adversely affect your rankings. Make sure that you have unique content on your site. Don’t simply grab the text description for a product from the manufacturer’s website. Use the specific facts, but be sure to take the manufacturer’s description and thoroughly rewrite it in your own words. This will add some unique content to your site and will make you more attractive to the search engines. As the saying goes, “when in Rome, speak Italian.” When in e-commerce, speak to the spiders.
