Dissecting the Search Engine Spider

Understanding Spiders
If you’ve ever asked yourself  "How do I get #1 listings on search engines," one of the right answers is this: make spiders happy.

What is a Spider?
Search engine spiders are automated software agents, or programs, sent out by search engines to review and index websites. They are named "spiders" or "crawlers" because, in essence, that's what they do: they crawl around the web (get it?) and feverishly index webpages. The info they dig up is then stored in a central database where it's indexed based on ranking, relevancy, and other variables. In other words, as far as the World Wide Web goes, search engine spiders are at the top of the ecosystem.

How Spiders See Your Website
Spiders, by nature, are driven to seek out certain forms of information. While each search engine uses its own formula (aka algorithm) to score pages, there are specific things search engine spiders like and specific things they don't. Here are a couple of bits spiders don't fancy:

• Flash, JavaScript, and Text in Images - Not only are these invisible to search engine spiders, they do nothing for SEO rankings. Basically, if it's not "text," spiders don't find it the least bit appetizing.


• Dynamic Pages - If it's got some of these symbols (#, &, ?, =) in the URL, it's like bug spray to a spider and they might not crawl that particular page of the site.

That said, adding ALT text descriptions to whatever images you have would go a long way to satisfying a spider's hunger for information. And, needless to say, the longer a spider "nests" on your site, the more attractive you'll be to search engines.

How to Catch a Spider
While some search engine spiders like to hangout and "dig down deep," others scurry along before they index more than a couple of pages. So what do spiders like? Though search engines often change their algorithm formulas to ensure they're displaying the best possible results for visitors while also keeping spammers from diluting those results, the most spider-friendly webpages/websites will always contain the following, which to a spider is like a five-course meal:

• TITLE tags


• META tags


• Heading tags


• Relevant content with good Keyword phrases


• Credible and relevant Links

Because search engine spiders prefer keyword-rich pages, it's important to "seed" your "deep pages" with appropriately themed keywords and phrases.

Parting Thought
Whichever way you look at it, your website has to be attractive to spiders and humans. Though we've focused on the search engine spider here, there's a harmony that needs to be achieved to be truly successful online. After all, it's great that someone gets to your site thanks to our eight-legged friend, but what if they get a negative brand impression once they do? Face it, we've all clicked on the top ranked site in a search only to discover, post-click, an ocean of text and a complete lack of design aesthetics (aka "an ugly website") that makes us question what value the site actually has.

That's where .Com Marketing prevails: by understanding the needs of the search engine spider and that of the search engine user. After all, there is an art to creating effective sites that build brands and engage consumers. Not to mention a science that makes search engine spiders really glad they "dropped in."

About .Com Marketing
Celebrating its 10th Anniversary, .Com Marketing is a full-service interactive marketing and advertising firm specializing in driving motivated traffic to websites. An expert in interactive marketing, .Com Marketing has been ranked among the nation's top 100 interactive agencies in Ad Age Annual Interactive Agency Report.

To see how .Com Marketing can surpass your own expectations contact Hillary Bressler, President, at 407.774.4606, ext. 203.

To unsubscribe to the .commentary
e-newsletter please click here