Are Search Engine Robots Useful?

Search engine ‘spiders’ are robots that seek out webpages to display in search engines. Below we’ll discuss how they work and why they’re important.

Robots actually have the same basic functionality that earlier browsers had. Just like these early browsers, search engine robots do not have the ability to do certain things. Robots cannot get past password protected areas. They do not understand frames, Flash movies, nor Images or JavaScript. Even if you use a robot, you have to click the buttons on your website. They can cease to function while using JavaScript navigation or when indexing a dynamically generated URL. A search engine robot retrieves data and finds information and links on the web.

The ‘submit url’ function places the url into a list of urls the robots are going to explore. Even without submitting your url directly, robots will try to find your site by following links. That’s why building visibility through a web of links is important.

Submitting a new URL to a search engine adds this URL to the queue which the spiders are due to ‘crawl’ or visit. However, even if a URL isn’t submitted directly, the spiders usually find it through links from other websites. If you build link popularity, this will help the spiders find you faster. When the robots arrive, they’ll check your site for a file called ‘robots.txt,’ which will tell them what areas of the website they are not allowed to visit. Off-limits files may include things like binaries or other information that the spiders need not report back.

Once the spider has gathered all the information it needs, and based on how the spider is set up in the search engine, it will index the site information and send it to the search engine database.

Once in the database, the information becomes part of the search engine directory and ranking process. Indexing is based on how the search engine engineers have decided to evaluate information returned by the spiders. When you enter a query into a search engine, it uses several calculations behind the scenes to determine which results you’re most likely looking for, out of the sites the spiders have returned. The database selects the best matches and displays them. The database is constantly updated by spiders crawling websites over and over again, to make sure that the most up-to-date information is available.

The search engine sorts the information that has been delivered to the databases which has become a part of the search engine and directory ranking process. This allows it to display the results. Databases are updated periodically. Robots visit you regularly to find any changes to your pages so that the latest information will be available. The way in which the search engine is set up determines how the number of visits you get is calculated. This can vary with different search engines. If your website is down or experiencing a large amount of traffic, the robot may not be able to access the page they are trying to visit. The website may not be re-indexed when this occurs. This depends on how frequently your site is visited by the robot. In the hope that your site will be accessible again, the robot will re-visit your site to see if it has become accessible.

Justin Harrison is an internationally recognised Internet Marketing expert who provides world class Search Engine Optimization to website owners. For more information visit: http://www.seorankings.co.za

SEO vs SEM: What Is It And Why Is It Important to Know?

SEO and SEM; familiar with these terms? If you?re a webmaster, you certainly are. If you spend a lot of time with a webmaster, you?ll hear the two terms tossed around so frequently they will probably seam as if the two terms are interchangeable. However, that view would be wrong, as there is a difference between the meanings of the two words.

Search Engine Optimization is what is known as SEO, while SEM stands for Search Engine Marketing. When referring to SEO, the webmaster is doing things to a webpage to make the page search engine friendly. By contrast, if the webmaster is doing things to a webpage so that its URL is optimized to get high ranks within search engines, this is SEM at work.

It?s important to know the difference between the two terms; make sure you ask for all information if your unsure before going and spending money on a SEO or SEM package. For example, a company offers you a package, if you don?t ask and get all the information, you might be buying into a package that merely is the company submitting your website URL to a few search engines, something you can easily do yourself.

Information that would be good to gain would be what they plan on doing to increase traffic to your website. So they are submitting your URL to search engines? Which ones? Have them give you a list of those search engines. What about the use of keywords? Ask about keyword optimization of the website. Ask about META and ALT tags.

Finally, it doesn’t really matter what services are offered, as long as the company uses “SEO” or “SEM”. Although, SEM will be more valuable than SEO, because SEM includes SEO as well as other marketing strategies. Even though im sure not all companies are the same in packages. Just simply put, the company could just be charging you for what you could do yourself. If shopping, look for websites with noteable backgroundsand ask about all services offered. Eventually, when you feel your research is sufficient and you know you will get the best value for your money, you can proudly make a efficiently wise decision.

How To Use Web Analytics

A website owner would know the significance of web analytics. You need to keep a track of number of people visiting your website, to do well with your website. To be able to do it, you would need a web analytics tool. One option would be to read through the log file. It is however a huge hard work to review the log book manually, for there may be so many records in it. For this reason, a web analytics tool is the right choice for you. With this tool, you would get clear and simple reports about your website traffic flow. You must know how to proceed with your web analytics and below is your guide to accomplish the same.

To start with, you must collect the data. If you have a web analytics tool installed, it may already be doing the stuff for you. You need to include all aspects of your website that collect data. Such aspects include CGI logs, Web logs, forms, and other kinds of data that your website generates.

The successfully collected data now needs to be transformed. It is certainly a huge task to review the log file manually. You are therefore required to transform the available data into user friendly data that can be manipulated at ease. You analytics tool will do this functionality as well. In case you have no web log formatted data, such as CGI; your analytic tool may not help.

Now that you have all the data available to you, in an easy to understand format; you need to start your analysis. This should be the most interesting part of your web analytics task. What you should be looking for is the trend in your web traffic. Following are some of the points to figure out the trend:

Is there a specific time when most of your visitors visit your website? What are the most visited pages of your website? How many pages does an average user view before quitting your website? On an average, how long do your visitors stay at the website? Does your traffic come from the search engines? What are the most common pages that most of visitors exit your website from? Who is linked up to your website?

After having done the data collection, and transformation of the same into reports, it is time to set new goals. Now that you know what your good and points are; you can build up on the good points and improve on the weak points. You may wish to add business links to your most visited pages, and promote the lesser visited pages. The idea should be to bank on your strengths to achieve more, and lift up your weakness to convert them into strengths.

Your potential visitors need to know what updates you have made to your website. Unless they are aware of the updates, your hard work would go in vain. This certainly calls for the promotion of your website, highlighting the newly made updates, to attract the visitors.

You would need to repeat the above discussed procedure on regular basis. This procedure is an ongoing exercise that you must do always.