(Please take note this article contains only the first
steps for optimizing your site and raising your page rank.
The tips here by no means guarantee that search engines
with index you faster or increase your page rank.)
Step 1- the robot.txt file
The best place to start is by creating a robot.txt file.
This is the most rudimentary task you can do to help
optimize for search engines. It must be added to the root
directory of your website. The robot.txt file is the first
thing that almost any search engine looks for when it
arrives at your site. Although it is not necessarily
required, most search engines treat this file as a formal
invitation to investigate and index the pages of your site.
Many engines will not explore your site if it cannot find
this text file. As long as you do not have directories or
search engines you want to omit, the format can be as
simple as two lines of text:
User-agent: *
Disallow:
This tells an arriving search bot that it is permitted to
explore the entire site. If you would like to make certain
directories off limits or block certain search engines, you
can expand the scope of the file. For instance, if you do
not want Google indexing anything in a directory you have
called 'resources' you can place this in your text file:
User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /resources/
Step 2 - create a site map
The next step is to create a sitemap. This is a detailed
list of the links on your site in xml format. Google has a
sitemap maker for download to aid you. There are many
sites that offer this for free, as well. Once created, they
must be submitted to search engines.
Google and Yahoo both allow you to manage you website from
a webmaster tools section. Here you can add your sitemap,
monitor keywords, and much more. It is strongly advised to
create an account with both companies and monitor how your
site is doing. Creating a link to your sitemap that is
reachable by end users of the site is also advisable.
Step 3 - validating your code
Many webmasters overlook validating their html as long as
the site 'looks good'. Note that just because a site
displays properly does not mean that it obeys the rules of
the mark up you have specified. If you are unsure if your
site passes this validation you can run it through the wc3
validator. It can be found here: http://validator.w3.org.
Step 4 - build links to your site
The final step that will be covered here requires some time
and work but is well worth it. You must build up the
amount of quality external links to your site. The more
quality links are pointing to your site, the more attention
you will receive from search engines. There are many ways
to go about this and most of them are unwise. Avoid paying
to get links from sites that offer link advertising as one
of their primary services. Being placed on a page with a
long list of irrelevant links in order to boost page rank
will probably hurt your efforts more than help them. Look
for quality advertising. This means finding sites to get
links from that have real content and is not just based on
advertising links like yours. Placing content on your site
that appeals to people will result in links to your content
from other sites and blogs across the web. This is great
for your page rank.<br><br> Another way to get quality
external links at no cost is to write articles related to
the content of your site and place them on article database
sites throughout the web. If you have a site worth viewing
then chances are there is a topic on which you can write.
Be sure to reference your site in the resource box or in
the article body if the database's rules allow you that
option. Write your articles well and offer needed
information and it will help increase your sites popularity.
----------------------------------------------------
Author: Mason Curry, Vexart Studio
Search Engine Optimizer & Web Developer
http://www.vexart.com
No comments:
Post a Comment