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I’m sorry if the the headline freaked you out:) But really, have you looked at your site through the search engine’s eyes? Yeah, in case you didn’t figure that one out, by spider, i meant – the search engine spider. Yes, you can call it a bot too.
Anyway, the method used by search engines like Google to index your blog/site is to send out a virtual bot/spider to your blog/site. It comes and crawls all over your site content, making it’s way through the links. And after that this spider crawls back to the dark crypts within Google with what it saw when it visited your site. And, for your sake, what the spider reports back to the Dark Lord Google better be good; or else, it’s going to cost you some serious search engine rankings! And many other Dark Lords use these spiders – not only Google. MSN, Yahoo! and so on, excluding the META-Search Engines.
Search engine spiders see your page source, and page source only. They do not see the pretty graphics, neat formatting or that costly premium blog template. That is why SEO experts don’t ask you to work on graphics to develop your site’s search engine ranking.
If you really want to get a taste of what the spider see, I recommend SEO Book Search Engine Spider Test Tools. It’s a really cool tool allowing you virtually see what the search engines index. It gives you comprehensive analysis of the pages indexed, keyword density, text that the spider can see, links and so on.
Give it a try! See what your site looks like. And the Page Similarity Comparison lets you compare two sites at once. So, compare your site with one of the top-notch blogs/sites in your niche. See what they are doing to feed the spider so we can steal their recipe. Compare how their site structure, keywords, meta tags are constructed and how you improve your blog.
By now I think you have realized how important the spider can be to you. In SEO, basically, feeding the spider good is the most vital thing that should be done. So what exactly does the spider need?
A good META title
META title is what you see in your browser’s title bar when you load a web page.
In the analysis above with the SEO Book Search Engine Spider Test Tools., I think you have seen the META Title of your blog. What does it say? Just your blog name or the brand name? Well, try to make it a bit more descriptive. For an instance, my META Title is “Get FREE Blogging Tips, Tricks, Tools and Make Money Blogging – Rockfuse|MindBlogger!”. It tells the spider that I offer Blogging Tips and Tricks, and also, who I am. Now, if I just said “MindBlogger”, the spider wouldn’t have a clue!
When you’re trying to devise a title, it’s important that you try to fit most important things about your blog into 60 characters, since search engines like Google limits the heading to 60 characters when displaying search results. The trick I use it basically occupy all the 60 characters saying what my blog offers and after that, making way for the brand name. This way, search engine visitors get the clearest idea of what my blog is and I also make room for my brand name to be indexed.
Basically, the title says it all. Write a humanly understandable title, but with powerful targeted keywords to match what you’re offering. A spider may index your blog. But a vistor who’s reading it would only actually click it. Aaron Wall has a great video on YouTube on how to write great META titles.
A good META description
META Description is virtually invisible to the site visitor. I believe it’s just their for the spider’s sake.
Nevertheless, it is important to have a good META description of about 300 characters. In this META description, make sure you target specific keywords that you want you blog to be targeted to, and increase those words’ density in the description. That basically tells the spider that your blog is specifically about that niche. The key here is to, again, write a humanly understandable description, saying EXACTLY what your blog is, while not making it too long since that will dissolve the keyword density. Savvy?
Again, I recommend Aaron Wall’s video on how to construct good META Descriptions.
META keywords
I believe this is not at all important. Most of the top Search Engines do not index META keywords anymore. But back in the days, it used to be very important. You can easily skip this part, since it doesn’t help a lot in SEO. But, having it never hurts. If you choose to write it, just add some relevant keywords, and don’t take it too far. It almost doesn’t matter. As for me, if you analyse my site, I’ve been totally ignorant of it.
Content
I feel there’s nothing much a blogger can do about content, except for three things. Mainly because, we write content for readers. Not search engine spiders.
Picture ALT tags
Whenever you are inserting pictures don’t forget to give a meaningful and relevant ‘alt’ description. Spiders can’t see how cool the picture is, but they can have an idea by looking at the ‘alt’ tag. Alt is short for Alternate and it’s the text description you see when you hover a picture with your mouse. You can easily set it up in HTML with the <img> tag with <img src=”yourPicture.jpg” alt=”description goes here”> format.
Don’t write for the spider
As ironic as it may seem, this is very important. If you mess up your content trying to target keywords, and make it virtually impossible for a human to read it, your site is not going to go anywhere but down-under. People first, Spiders second. With artificial intelligence, search engine spiders are becoming smarter by the day and they tend to be less machinery when looking at sites. Just ask the guys at Google! So, it will help in the long term if you just try not to make you pages look like spam with spider-clutter, and focus on writing good content. Simply because,”spiders getting smarter” translates into “spiders are going to be more human”.
How can I edit my blog to occupy these changes?
You can use the Free Meta Tag Tool by SEO Book to generate the META Tags you want and paste them between the <HEAD> </HEAD> in you blog’s Main Page source and Post Source.
However, if you’re using Wordpress, I strongly recommend the All in One SEO plugin to do the work for you. It will automatically generate custom titles, descriptions, and keywords for you, for different pages.
For an instance, the target of my blog is to provide Blogging Resources. But this page focuses on search engine optimization. So, it’s better for me to have different Title for this post rather than my general one right? All in One SEO plugin, lets me customize it, so I can make my title more Search Engine friendly, in the terms of what I’m offering here particularly.
I hope these tips would help you out in building your own blog. Search engine traffic might not be very important for bloggers nowadays, especially taking into consideration the immense developments in Social Media. But, search engines are like the spinal cord of Internet, right?
By the way what do you think about the search engine traffic? Do you think search engine traffic is really helpful nowadays for bloggers? Please feel free to comment.
Found all these tips useful. Very informative. Not only for bloggers but for website owners too. Very well done.
@ Mick –
Yes, I do believe the SEO tips would come in handy for anyone who has got his hands on a web site for that matter. Thanks for commenting.
Well done.I love the heading.It is really attracting.I got what I needed.Thanks for that.
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