Do the search engines know about all of your pages?

You can uncover out which pages on your site the search engines know about via a special search. If you search for ‘site:’ and your Web site address, the search engine will tell you all of the pages on your Web site it know about. For example, search for: site:itmentality.com.au in Google, Yahoo or MSN Search, and it will tell you how many pages they know about.

If the search engines haven’t found some of the pages on your Web site, it is probably because they are having trouble indexing them with spiders. (’Spidering’ is when the search engine uses an automated robot to read your Web pages.)

Spiders work by starting off on a page which has been linked to by another Web site, or that has been submitted to the search engine. They then record and follow any links they find on the page, gradually working their way through your whole Web site.

At least, that’s the theory. The problem is, it’s easy to confuse the spiders – especially as they are designed to be wary of following certain kinds of link.

Links which confuse spiders

If your links are within a large chunk of JavaScript code, the spider may not be able to find them, and will not be able to follow the links to your other pages.

This can happen if you have ‘rollovers’ as your navigation – for example, images that change colour or appearance when hovering your mouse pointer over it. The JavaScript code that makes this happen can be convoluted enough for the spiders to ignore it rather than try to find links inside.

If you think your rollovers are blocking your site from being spidered, you will need to talk to your Web designers about changing the code in to a ‘clean link’ – a standard HTML link, with no extra code around it – that is much easier for the spiders to follow.

Spiders will also ignore pages if they don’t like the URL (the address needed to find the page).
For example, a Web site that has URLs containing several variables can cause spiders to ignore the page content. You can spot pages like these as they have a ? in them, and &, for instance:

http://itmentality.com.au/index.php?page=10&cat=21&num=c

This URL has three variables, the parts with the = in them, between the ? and &s. We find that if a page has one variable, or even two, the top search engines will spider them without any problems. But if a URL has more than that, often the search engines will not spider them.

Spiders particularly steer clear of URLs that look like they have ’session IDs’ in them. They look something like this:

http://itmentality.com.au/index.php?page=10&id=98c542cde885412e8c

The group of numbers and letters do not make much sense to humans, but some Web sites use them to keep track of who you are, as you click through their Web site.

Spiders will generally avoid URLs with Session IDs in them, so if your Web site has them, you need to talk to the people who developed the site about re-writing it so they do not use these IDs, or at least that you can get around the Web site without them.

Clean links = happy spiders

If you use clean, easy to follow links without several variables in them, your Web site should be spidered without problem. There are, of course, many other facets to successful Search Engine Optimization, but if the search engines can’t spider your content, your site will fall at the first hurdle.

However, you don’t have to invest hundreds of hours to writing just to increase your web traffic. You can hire a ghostwriting service to come up with fresh articles for you. You also have the option of hiring an SEO service to perform Search Engine Optimization for you in HTML programming. (Some companies offer both SEO and article writing) When you have original and helpful content, the search engines notice, and in the end your public notices that you are the “authority” on your chosen keyword. This is what’s going to bring you higher rankings in searches and better conversion rates. The best part of it is that you can delegate this writing duty to someone else, while you concentrate on more important webhosting endeavors.

What should you look for in a ghostwriting service? For one, try and find a company that offers a turnkey style solution to all of your traffic needs. If you want to increase web traffic then you need to optimize your web pages, submit your site to important article directories, produce appropriate and objective content on your pages, and format each page for optimal search performance.

Second, you want to make sure that the company you work with is reliable, both in the quality of their writing, as well as their technical expertise. Of course, no company can guarantee a #1 search ranking. (And if they are promising to do that for you, then you can see they’re already bluffing) However, a good SEO company can always land you in the top ten, and depending on how committed you are to being #1, they can work with you to achieve your goal.

When you increase the quality and quantity of your content you increase web traffic. Simply put, you must give your audience a reason to come back. Give them something to read, and they will return to you, just as a magazine subscriber looks forward to every new issue. For more information on how to increase web traffic explore search engine optimization solutions.