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Get indexed by Google's Googlebot right away, the right way
Everyone in the online world knows extremely well that the most
sought after traffic to one's site comes from a Google search.
Folks, 80% of searches on the internet are done in Google.
In theory, it is simple - if you have something interesting to
someone else, if you build a website with the honest to goodness
goal to provide something useful for someone else, that someone
else will find you. That is also how the creators of Google
describe their main goal, to more or less have a great
repository of information, and help people of our planet find
useful stuff.
In practice, it is not that simple. It is not that simple
because there are thousands, possibly even millions of sites
like yours, because you might be running a very honest online
business, selling some very useful product, but do not have
unheard of, exceptionally grand 'content'. If your site is
listed on page 265 of a search results set, be sure you will
never get any visitors that way.
Unlike Yahoo and others, who rely on human involvement, Google
does everything through automation. Websites are indexed (or
crawled, or spidered - all terms refer to the same process) by
their indexing software called Googlebot. Googlebot looks at
websites daily, and rules programmed into the software decide
which of your pages make it into the main Google index and which
don't. After your site was indexed, whether it was submitted for
indexing by a human or the robot just stumbled upon it, your
pages are ranked, so Google knows on which page of a search to
put your site on, and on what search phrases should your site
even be part of the result search.
The Googlebot is very smart and works really well. Keep in mind
however, that is just a piece of software, a very sophisticated
one, but it's just a computer program. Consequently, it has a
set of algorithms (rules) it uses to index web site content
(information), a set of capabilities (as I said before,
Googlebot is really intelligent) and a set of limitations. As
such, there is an impressive number of ways in which one can
trip up the Googlebot and make it impossible for it to index
your content. Alternately, the Googlebot can index your site
well, and then people will find it when searching for words it
contains.
This article will try to teach you all the basics necessary to
achieve consistency and persistency in Google, starting with the
very basic step: getting indexed by Googlebot, Google's indexing
robot.
1. Read Google's own Webmaster Guidelines
The people behind Google seem to have two main things down to a
science: One, most of their algorithms (rules) are so secret,
that all us non-Google employees do is speculate. Two, their
guidelines are very simple, direct and precise. Following their
guidelines will never hurt your site's ranking. Disregarding
their guidelines can and probably will hurt you in the long run.
So go to http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html and
read what Google has to say about itself.
2. Have text links.
Make every single page on your site accessible via a text-based
link, as opposed to Javascript, Flash, DHTML (Dynamic HTML),
etc. Googlebot's native language is text. Google says: "Make a
site with a clear hierarchy and text links. Every page should be
reachable from at least one static text link."
This is probably the number one key to your site's existence in
Google. Googlebot is actually a robotic, browser-like software,
based on the venerable Lynx browser. The reasoning behind this
approach is that the creators are trying to get as close as
possible to emulating human browsing, making sure your website
is actually human friendly. Consequently, by downloading Lynx on
your computer and looking at your site through Lynx
(http://lynx.isc.org), you will see more or less exactly the
information Googlebot can read and index and the links Googlebot
can follow. You will also see HTML errors on your pages and
places where a robot would be stuck and could not reach the rest
of your site. I know it is very unfair to those of us who
understand and love the potential of websites built completely
in Flash, or other engines. However, until the nice folks who
run Google figure out a good way to crawl inside a Flash file
and extract the appropriate information, we are stuck with
standard HTML.
This is not to say that you cannot make your site really pretty
and fill it with Java Script and Flash eye candy. But you must
have regular text and standard text links. Usually you can
achieve the desired effect by having extra navigation menus
based on standard text links.
3. Avoid frames.
Avoid frames at all cost. If you must use them (for example to
make someone else's page look like it's part of your site), do
not use them on your front page.
Frames are like the plague, they sneak up on you. It is
incredibly easy to lose Googlebot's tracks inside a badly
formatted frameset. You might hear that some of the robots,
including Google's Googlebot and Yahoo's Slurp are quickly
gaining capabilities to go inside frames properly. My philosophy
is, until a feature becomes ubiquitous, if you're uncertain,
leave it in the closet.
4. Keep the number of links on a given page less than 100.
This comes straight from Google's Webmaster Guidelines: "Keep
the links on a given page to a reasonable number (fewer than
100)."
This looks more like a suggestion and I am not 100% sure if you
get penalized in any way or if Googlebot just stops reading your
links after 100. I can however tell you from personal experience
that I tried a page with 700 links and it seemed fine. Then one
day I tried to view the page from my Blackberry PDA and I got
this strange error message saying my page is illegally
formatted. After I split the page into several ones with 80
links each, the pages worked on the PDA also.
Who cares about the Blackberry? Well, if you're reading this and
your goal is to get visitors, then your main concern should be
not to alienate anyone. Remember, today more than ever, people
use different devices and different software to access the web.
Every visitor is a potential customer. Every employee at a major
US lawfirm and many other corporate people use a Blackberry.
Lastly, why would you need that many links on one page anyway?
Let's say, for example, that you specialize in promotional
products - corporate branded gifts, such as pens, caps, mints
and other products (called sometimes 'premiums') imprinted with
one's logo. Your name is John Doe, and you decided to name your
company JDPromos (not very imaginative, but will do for our
examples). You would want to have every item in your catalog as
a text link, so every item gets indexed as a link and as a
keyword. Also, those who run forums, ezines, blogs, might want
to have standard links to their articles, as the software they
use might create dynamic links, invisible to certain robots.
5. Give every page a meaningful title.
Give every single page on the site a complete and meaningful
. This is also directly from Google's Webmaster
Guidelines. See Rule #1.
Incidentally, for those who are fascinated by the debates on the
death of the Meta Tags, the tag is not a Meta Tag, but a
required element for every page.
The tag is supported by every web creation tool out
there, and goes in the header of a web page (between the
and the tags).
Google offers the 'allintitle' syntax, which lets users search
only text that appears in a page title. A lot of people who
integrate a Google bar into their websites allow users
to get
results only by title. There are over 29 million results
returned for Untitled Document.
Most of us - myself included - copy and paste template pages,
out of the convenience of not having to recreate all design
elements from scratch. If you do so, do not forget to change the
title.
Make sure your title is not just a list of keywords and that it
is related to the actual content of the page. Google can and
will check that, before deciding on your page's 'relevance'.
6. Do not place important text inside images.
Google says: "Try to use text instead of images to display
important names, content, or links. The Google crawler doesn't
recognize text contained in images."
It is very tempting to create images with text inside them, for
the very simple reason that as designers, we are not limited to
the very few font (type) options that basic HTML allows. Also,
different browsers tend to display things differently nowadays,
so it is much easier to create a text image, which will be shown
consistently and not worry about styles, operating systems, etc.
7. Use descriptive tags.
The tag is used as a text alternative (hence the name) for
images and image links and was designed so that text browsers
(such as Lynx) do not just display a generic 'Image' for every
picture link you might have. If all your links say 'Image', how
would a potential visitor know what they are?
Make sure that the text description is meaningful and accurate.
Take our promotional items company as an example. Let's say they
have a picture of a tradeshow display, as an example of a
service they provide outside the ordinary imprinted mint boxes,
calculators and keychains. If the tag only says "display",
that is what Googlebot will see and index. If the tag says
something like "example of a tradeshow display design", that is
certainly more useful and more Googlebot friendly.
Please note that although the tag does count and Google
seems to put a high price on this tag, it ranks lower than plain
text.
8. Use meaningful descriptions for links
With the risk of sounding like a scratched CD, I'll have to say
this again: Whether you use picture links or text links, please
use meaningful text inside your tags so that Googlebot can
associate that text with that href link.
In other words, let's pretend again that we are designing that
website for that imaginary promotional items company we called
JDPromos. If you intend to put a link to a set of sample coffee
mugs promos, say something like "link to JDPromos samples of
branded coffee mugs", not just "coffee mugs", or even worse,
"click here for pictures". Never use link text like "read more"
or "go here" or "download it", "click here", "don't click here",
you get the picture - I hope.
Don't try to fool the Googlebot with hidden links or duplicate
content or irrelevant pages of words like "sex" and "hot girls."
The Googlebot doesn't like being played and you will be
penalized, one way or another, in the long run.
9. Use a "description" tag for every page
Include a tag in your page header to summarize your
site. Use a meaningful one or two sentence description, do not
keyword spam.
Even better, include descriptive text on the site's front page
where users can actually read it. This text will appear as the
description for your site in Google results.
Place more important content higher in the page than less
important content in a page, Google does categorize text on a
page based on it's position, text at the bottom of a page is
considered less important, or 'relevant', to use one of Google's
own terms.
10. Use short query strings
Use URLs with query strings sparingly, if at all possible. Query
strings are also called dynamic pages. You can usually recognize
dynamic pages by the presence of the "?" character. Keep in mind
that the shorter the list of query string parameters, the
better. Be aware that not every search engine robot can crawl
dynamic pages as well as static pages. It helps to keep the
parameters short and the number of them few.
11. Never use the "&id=" parameter
If you must use query strings, or dynamic pages, never use the
"&id=" parameter as part of the string.
I know this might sound ridiculous, as it might be hard or
impossible for you not to use the "&id=" parameter, but if you
are a programmer and you can change the variable's name, replace
"id" with something else. Otherwise, Googlebot will just skip
that page.
Google says: "Don't use "&id=" as a parameter in your URLs, as
we don't include these pages in our index."
12. Use robots.txt
Use robots.txt to show the Googlebot around your site. This
ancient and very standard mechanism for directing well-behaved
robots like the Googlebot will allow you to specify places where
the robot is not welcome, whether for privacy reasons, or for
reasons of avoiding Google penalties. You might want to keep the
robot away from your cgi-bin directory and other places you
maybe don't want available to the entire searching population of
the globe. Remember this is a guideline, not a barrier, robots
that are not programmed to comply, will disregard. Bottom line,
use the robots.txt to guide Googlebot, but not to enforce strict
security.
Google says: "Make use of the robots.txt file on your web
server. This file tells crawlers which directories can or cannot
be crawled."
13. Make a sitemap
A site map is just a page on your website where you guide your
users through the structure of your site. The most basic form of
sitemap is a page that lists all of your pages, with a brief
description and a link - all text, of course. When you make the
sitemap, follow all the rules above and don't forget that the
purpose of the sitemap is to guide your human visitor.
Google says: "Offer a site map to your users with links that
point to the important parts of your site. If the site map is
larger than 100 or so links, you may want to break the site map
into separate pages."
14. Use the Google Sitemaps project
At the time of this writing, the fastest, best and most accurate
way to make sure your site is properly crawled and indexed by
Googlebot is to participate in the Google Sitemaps project.
In a nutshell, you make a sitemap as an XML page and submit it
directly to Google. Google then sends Googlebot to index your
site. Besides the speedy free submission, you also get a good
amount of statistics and the opportunity to fix potential errors
in your site.
Please note that the XML sitemap needed for the Google Sitemap
project is intended specifically for Googlebot, and is different
from the sitemap described in the previous Rule, which is
intended solely for human users.
Also, do not be afraid of XML, Google's sitemap is a very simple
text file and they give you all the necessary information and
directions at: https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps
Good luck!
About the author:
Andrei co-owns bsleek ( http://www.bsleek.com ) - a site that
specializes in web hosting, design, promotional items, printing,
CD Presentations and more. Andrei is on the Board of Consultants
for Daterade.com and has amassed an extensive technical
knowledge and experience through his career as the CIO for a
major travel management company and through his past careers in
military research, data acquisition and aerospace engineering.
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