Spider Friendly Web Pages

First off what is spider friendly navigation? Basically it is how easily search engines can read your website. This ultimately depends on the search engine that is reading your site. Some have the patience to dig deep into your site and promise to follow every link. Others may get bored before they finish indexing a whole page. Carefully organize your page content and Web site to ensure that spiders index the whole thing - not just bits and pieces. Here are some tips that will help you to do this:

1. Use Keywords/phrases that best describe the target page.
2. Avoid using image maps, if needed make sure to add text links at the bottom of all pages.
3. Do not use long text; limit 40-50 characters in a text link
4. Avoid using JavaScript links
5. Create text links and use a common navigational menu for all pages
6. For best results try to limit the number of links per page to 20. (Only a recommendation)
7. Include a site map if you have more than 20 pages.
8. If you are using flash navigation, always have text links as a supplement to the flash
9. Try to use keyword phrases in the HTML and image file names
10. Keep your file names hyphenated (e.g. use this-page.html instead of thispage.html)

General Tips and Tricks

1. Make sure your website is completely finished, spell checked, online and all links are working before submitting to Search Engines'.
2. Try to include .robots.txt. to prevent spiders from crawling certain directories. (For more info, visit www.robotstxt.org)
3. If the site was designed in something other than HTML, make sure there is some static content for the spider to read.
4. Try and get on DMOZ if you are not already there.
5. Read each search engines. guidelines and follow them closely.
6. Use meta tags in all places
7. For getting proper keywords that are commonly used visit:
a) http://www.wordtracker.com
b) http://inventory.goto.com/searchinventory/suggestion/
c) https://adwords.google.com/select/m...=KeywordSandbox
8. For checking keyword density use the following sites:
a) http://www.keyworddensity.com/
b) http://www.ranks.nl
9. When using frames, make sure to include keyword rich content between the tags, on the main frameset page.
10. Keep all content in root directory if possible.
11. Make sure your home page can load within 8-10 seconds on a 56k modem
12. Try to use CSS data as an external file and call it using tag
13. Optimize your images and keep the page size low
14. Update your more important pages at a regular interval
15. Check your site for broken links periodically

Things to Avoid

Here are some things to avoid when creating your website:

1. Avoid strange color combinations, as this can make it hard to read for a viewer
2. Text that is too small to read will also cause the reader to leave
3. Unrelated Advertisements will distract viewers
4. Hidden text, which is text the same color as the background
5. Submitting your site to FFA sites
6. Duplicate pages, doorway pages and cloaked pages
7. Re-direction from the homepage to another
8. Automated submission to search engines
9. Submitting to search engines more than once a month
10. Use of tag in HTML page header
11. Using trademarks or company names other than yours in Meta tags.
12. Instance of 5 or 6 keywords being repeated in one row

Summary

Search engine optimization is the process of Internet marketing and is the most cost-effective means of marketing to your target visitors. 90 percent of the web users are turning to search engines to search information online, so it is very crucial that your website rank within the top 20 results if you want to be found. A successful search engine optimization will bring qualified customers and prospects to your website. So if after several months of your website's position on the search engines result page has not improved, you might want to consider the services of a professional website optimization and search engine placement expert.