How does the Search Engine Bots, Spiders and Algorithms work?
This is a very important question, especially if you want your business website’s key web pages to appear in the first page of the MAJOR three search engines; Google™, Yahoo™ and MSN™ so potential buyers and prospects find your products and services.
To understand what and how search engine bots, spiders and algorithms work in general will give you an appreciation of why search engine optimization (SEO) strategies are so important to apply to your business website.
This article will not attempt to give you a technical and comprehensive explanation but just a general idea of how search engine bots, spiders and algorithms work and how it relates to your website.
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What Is A Search Engine Bots, Spiders and Algorithms?
Search engines send out web crawlers referred to as search engine spiders or search engine bots. Search engine bot or spider is an automated process, with a complex algorithm (program) to scan web pages on the World Wide Web to gather specific information within the web page. Depending on the complexity of the search algorithm, it can extract a lot of information for the purpose of indexing the web page based on the information it gathers.
Search engines use specific algorithms to determine the relevance of your website and web pages. Search engine algorithms do complex calculations to determine where on the search engine result pages (SERP) your web page will appear on specific keywords. Major search engines regularly update their algorithms to ensure that results they provide their users are always up-to-date.
The search engine algorithms will also have commands to filter out web pages that do not pass their SEO ethical criteria. This is how they can determine sites that practice bad SEO tactics (called black hat SEO) performed on them. Performing black hat SEO can get your website banned off the search engines and you never want to be in this situation.
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What Do Search Engine Bots and Spiders Look For In Your Web Pages?
Search engines do two types of scans; a deep bot scan and a fresh bot scan. The deep bot scan looks for links. It follows the links and indexes every web page in every web site it crosses. This process is done once a month. The fresh bot scan looks for websites that have changed their content frequently and indexes their new and updated web pages. It also indexes every brand new site it finds.
Search engine bots or spiders only scan text and it follows links. Therefore, the graphics and images in your web page have no meaning to a search engines, unless you add image alt tags to the web page code (which adds text to your images).
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Search Engine Bots & Spiders Ignore Flash Technology
Because search engine bots and spiders only read text, web pages on sites that are built on pure flash technology are not indexed. Flash technology is pure graphics and do not contain text. Therefore, search engine bots or spiders can not read the content in flash websites. If your website is in this situation, you will need to invest a lot on paying for search engine traffic, which can really add up in the long term. The other alternative is to consider switching to a search engine friendly built site. This could be less costly in the long term to your business depending how many pages your site has. Consider talking to us to help you sort through a solution that best fits your business today. Call us at 647-724-6889.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) And How It Relates To Search Engine Bots and Spiders.
Search engines bots and spiders determine if your content is relevant to your keywords. If your content supports your keywords then Google™ and the rest of the search engines will track you down, index your site, and rank it well.
On-page optimization strategy balances what you need to do on your web page to help the search engine bots or spiders know what your web page is about (via your keywords) and making your web page presentable to a human visitor so they remain on your site and eventually take action (i.e. buy or contact you). Applying on-page optimization strategies to your web page content is essential and important. On page optimization is part of search engine optimization (SEO) and is a vital part of getting your web page indexed.
Don’t forget to link up to the other pages of your web site. Search engine bots will follow every link that is within a web page and index those pages, even if the pages are outside your current web site. Linking to relevant web pages from other sites is important. Search engine bots and spiders that scan web pages that have relevant back links from other sites are considered very important in their relevancy measure. This is why off-page optimization strategies are considered the most important strategies in search engine optimization (SEO). Off-page optimization strategy focuses on getting back links to your web page for the purpose of increasing the importance and value of your web page.
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Our Recommendation For Success:
If your goal is to start generating traffic to your site from the search engines, we highly recommend you read our article on “How To Get Search Engine Traffic”. It will provide two options for you.
If you would like to learn more about search engine optimization and how to apply it properly on your site, check out our “SEO Course Series".
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Have Any Questions?
Contact Us At
647-724-6889
Toronto, Canada
Toll Free
1-800-883-9032
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