Your Site Map: Spider Food or Just A Light Snack?

by Karon Thackston © 2005
http://www.copywritingcourse.com

Mechanical spiders have to eat. In fact, they usually have bigger appetites than the real-life spiders you squish under your shoe. What spiders am I talking about? The automated programs sent out by search engines to review and index websites. These “spiders” (sometimes called “bots”) are looking for a reason to list your site within the database of their particular search engine. It’s hard work roaming around the ‘Net non-stop, and these little guys need some nourishment from time-to-time. In fact, when spiders find some hearty “spider food” (a.k.a. a site map with some meat to it), they sit down to stay a while. That’s a good thing!

You’ve probably seen many site maps. The standard ones look like the example below with each phrase being linked to the page of the same (or similar) name.

Site maps are deemed “spider food” because they can be the perfect place for search engine spiders and bots to crawl your site. Because a site map has links to every page of your site (and those link names or page descriptions often include keywords), it is extremely easy for the search engine spider to access each publicly accessible area with no obstacles and relate it to a given subject matter. (For example, a page labeled “microwave ovens” is most likely about microwave ovens.)

Some site owners think that’s enough. They think a page with keyword-rich titles and links is plenty for a hungry little spider to munch on. Not hardly! That’s not a meal. it’s just a light snack.

Give Spiders A Tasty Treat

If you really want to fill the spiders’ bellies, you’ll want to take your site map page to the max with a descriptive site map (as I like to call them). Descriptive site maps go beyond the simple list of links to pages. These special versions of the traditional maps also include a short, keyword-rich description of each page. The text only needs to be a sentence or two in length. An example is below. This is certainly not the only way to layout or design your site map. Get creative and use columns, bullets or other formatting to make it look the way you like. (The links would remain the same as in the previous example.)

Descriptive site maps work well in attracting and satisfying spiders because they include naturally occurring keywords. They also place keywords in the vicinity of a link that points to the associated page. Add these advantages to those that already exist, including:

• having links in the body copy of the page
• overcoming complex navigation such as DHTML or Java
• lending quick access to pages located several layers deep within the site
• assisting with usability for visitors (especially disabled visitors)
• and others

and you have prepared a huge feast for the search engine spiders that is almost guaranteed to entice those hungry little critters to crawl through every available page of your site.

Does every site need a site map? It certainly wouldn’t hurt. Sites with less than 20 pages or sites where most or all the pages have links directly from the home page generally don’t “need” a site map, per se. However, practically every site of every size can reap benefits from including a map on their site.

If you’re creating a site map for your site, don’t stop with the basics. With just a little added effort, you’ll have a four-course meal to serve the spiders that will keep them happy and satisfied and that will help get you exceptional rankings.

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Blocking The Search Engine Spiders From Indexing Specific Pages

Dylan Downhill
© 2005 Elixir Systems

The best way to ensure content is not indexed by the search engines is to not put it on the publicly accessible web in the first place. If you don’t want personal details of your love life to be found then don’t put them on the internet!

If you want to publish information for a select group (perhaps a new design) then if you don’t link to the new pages from anywhere then the spiders will not be able to find them.

You can put password protection on the pages - the search engines will not enter passwords and so not index the pages.

You can add a line to the robots.txt file blocking access to these pages (a good tutorial is here). This allows visitors to read the pages but will block spiders from reading them. This is also probably the best way to block whole directories. One down side is it makes it clear to anyone where your protected content is.

The robots meta tag is also available, just put the following line in the <head> section of each page:
<META NAME=”ROBOTS” CONTENT=”NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW”>
The spiders will download the page, but upon finding the meta tag will ignore the page. This should be avoided where you don’t want the spiders to download the page - due to resource usage issues for example.
Click for more information on the robots meta tag

The ‘rel=”nofollow”‘ tag is only supported by Google at present and so doesn’t help protect content as well as the methods above. I mainly use it to block text links I don’t want to be found for (links saying ‘home’ for example).

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Enough With the Upsells Already!

by Karon Thackston © 2005
http://www.learn-copywriting.com

It happened twice during the same week. All I wanted to do was make a purchase, and they were making every effort to keep me from it (or so it seemed). Why would a business who wanted me to buy from them so badly put enough roadblocks in my path to make me want to click off the site and go someplace else?

The roadblocks that almost kept me from purchasing were repeated upsells. You know the kind. You go to a site and add something to your cart or speak with a person on the phone and tell him/her you want to buy. Then it starts. The upsells.

But Wait. There’s More

“As a special offer - only for people who buy today - you can also get.” I’m a copywriter so I understand the power of upsells, and one, maybe even two, is a good thing. Lots and lots of people will add more to their carts (or agree via telephone to buy more) when given the chance to upgrade or buy exclusive offers at the same time. But there is such a thing as overdoing it.

The robot-like sales clerk just about blew the order! I called to buy a book I’d seen advertised. As soon as the salesperson said, “I’ve got you down for one copy of the book, but - just for people who call today.” I knew I was in trouble. One upsell offer came. Then another. “We have a special bonus for you, too” followed by “Because you’re a health-conscious person, we’d like to give you this special surprise for 30 days absolutely free.” I am not exaggerating when I say there were 10 upsells in a row.

Stop It Right Now or I’m Leaving

I finally couldn’t take it anymore. I interrupted and told the clerk that I wanted the book and only the book. If he was able to stop reading from his script and process the order for my book, I’d still like to buy it. If he was not able to do that, I would hang up the phone.

He couldn’t do it! He floundered around, flipping through the pages, trying to think of what came at the end of all the upsells. I guess he’d never gotten that far before. The sale was stopped. I didn’t order the book after all. I was so frustrated and aggravated by the time I hung up the phone I could have screamed!

A few days later, it happened again. I was at a website, transferring a few domain names. After I added the transfer service to my cart, the upsells started. Page after page came for hosting; domain parking; useless, mass search engine optimization; anonymous WhoIs registration - you name it! Did I buy any of the offers? No. After reading the first one or two, I scrolled - without reading a word - through FOUR more pages of upsells before reaching the final order page.

Don’t Abuse Upsells

What happened here? Like so many other good things, the upsell is being badly abused. What started out as a wonderful marketing tool has ended up on what seems to be a drug-induced rage. Do upsells still work? Yes. If they are handled properly.

When someone adds something to their shopping basket or calls to place an order, by all means offer them special deals to increase sales. This strategy has worked to bring in additional revenue for decades. Don’t, however, bombard the customer with upsell after upsell. Not only will the effect be completely lost after three or four attempts to make additional sales, but customers will also quickly become irritated. They may even hang up or click away to another site.

Use common sense when adding upsells to your marketing mix. If you, personally, wouldn’t want to sit through an additional 20 minutes of sales pitches on the phone, don’t make your customers. If you wouldn’t want to scroll through page after page of bonuses and specials, your customers won’t want to either.

The greed involved with hounding people to buy additional items or services can very often have the reverse effect. Instead of adding more to their shopping carts, your customers may decide to avoid the aggravation altogether and leave. Keep your upsells focused and to a minimum for the best results.

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Link Building for a New Web Site

© 2005 Elixir Systems

Link building is such an important area of owning a business website. It’s a great way to promote your site and your business. And it is also critical for search engine rankings. Think of link building as networking for your site. The more people that know about your site and can find it the better.

Like networking, link building is fairly simple. It’s all about communication. The drawback - you have to invest a lot of time. Here is the basic process of link building. You need to find websites that you would like to link with. You have to make a request to get a link from theses sites. Then you have to wait for an answer to your request. You have to manage the links on your site. Finally you have to make sure that the link is actually in place. As you can see from this process it relies to a great deal on other people’s participation. This is where it gets tricky as there are no guarantees that people will work with you or help you.

The easiest way to build links for a new site is through a directory submission program. The best links for your site are one way non-reciprocated links; in other words a vote for your site from another site that you haven’t paid for through a reciprocated link. Directories are ideal for this as they are authority sites that will hand non-reciprocated links to websites. Not only this, but directories are still used extensively by searchers due to the way the data is presented.

Unscrupulous people have come up with ways to artificially build links without all this work. These link packages or link ‘farms’ can get you a lot of links quickly, but they can also get your site banned by the search engines. It is suspected that Google also have a link filter in operation as part of their current algorithm. It looks like this penalizes any sites that build links too quickly or if these links seems unnatural. This type of link building campaign is to be avoided.

As you have probably observed in life there are not many ‘get rich quick’ systems that really work. The same holds for link building. The truth of the matter is that you get out of it what you put into it. There is no getting around putting in hard work and time to link building. The good news is that this effort pays real dividends for your business as the links you build will be natural, long lasting and of value to you.

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Help Visually Impaired Visitors to ‘View’ Your Site

© Elixir Systems 2005
http://www.elixirsystems.com

The Internet offers freedom for visually impaired people and people with other types of disabilities. It offers them the opportunity to go shopping, talk with friends, run a business, and generally stay informed. This is something that many people do not consider. For an experience that many of us view as primarily visual it is hard to grasp the importance of good content and a well designed site for people with these types of disabilities. However for web designers and SEO practitioners this should be of prime importance. Unfortunately, often it is not.

There has been great advanced in assistive technology recently for the 10+ million of Americans who are visually impaired. This includes screen readers and Braille devices which give them an alternative way to view a site. I was involved in a demonstration of this technology recently which is very impressive. Unfortunately the results from badly designed sites or poorly optimized sites greatly reduce the user experience of the visually impaired. Keyword stuffing, poorly written content, gibberish alt tags, stuffer anchor text, and graphical designs all weigh in to reduce the experience and make web sites, in some cases, almost impossible to understand.

Many web designers and SEO practitioners are not supportive of these groups needs. They have been slowly coming around to the fact that great content offers an enhanced experience for the human visitor and for the search engine spiders. However by taking this a step further and incorporating techniques that aid assistive technology, rather than bog it down, they will be on their way to offering a first rate experience for all groups of Internet users.

Let’s make a stand to help the quality of life for people with disabilities. Whether you are a site owner, web designer or SEO practitioner become informed of the needs of ALL of your user groups. Work to raise the awareness of their needs in your community and your industry. By making these efforts we will be doing our part help to improve the quality of life for disabled users. Is there any more noble cause?

Posted in Search Engine Marketing (SEM) | No Comments »