OBJECTIVE:
To exploit the way a search engine indexes website so that your website is closer to the top of the query responses.

• The Crawling Spider: When you submit you website to a search engine, the search engine crawls it (indexes it) with a spider (reading software). The search engine adds your website's URL to each appropriate field on its database. For instance, if you sell canoes, rowboats, and fishing gear in Sacramento along the American River, the search engine will place your website's URL under each of these nouns. So then, when someone goes to a search engine and enters canoes (or any of your other nouns), your websites URL and description will come up as a response to the query.

• Relevancy Rating: Unfortunately, 1000's of webiste URLs will come up for each inquiry. The higher the relevancy rating the search engine gives your website, the closer to the top your URL will show. You need to exploit the spider's effective crawling habits and avoid the spider's ineffective crawling habits.
  Sample: A visitor to a search engine enters the word "canoe".
  1. URL: If your URL has the word "canoe" in it, your relevancy rating is higher.
  2. <Title>: If your "Title Tag" has the word "canoe" in it, your relevancy rating is higher.
  3. <Meta Keywords>: If your "Meta Keyword" has the word "canoe" in it, your relevancy rating is higher.
  4. <Meta Description>: If your "Meta Description" has the word "canoe" in it, your relevancy rating is higher.
  5. Stemming: The more you use words with the root of "Canoe", the higher your relevancy rating.
  6. Page Heading: If your website's Page Heading has readable text that includes the word "Canoe", your relevancy rating will be higher.
  7. First Paragraph: If the top paragraphs of your website include the word "Canoe", your relevancy rating will be hifger.
  8. Links: If you link to pages that include the word "Canoe" in their domain name, or if pages with the word "Canoe" in their domain name link to you, your relevancy rating will be higher.
  9. Alt Name: If the "Alt" attribute of all your graphics include the word "Canoe", your relevancy rating will be higher.
  10. Customize your code for a Specific Search Engine: Each search engine places a different weight on the above 9 items. Some ignore a few; others rely entirely on a few. If you know that a specific search engine is used by your visitors, you can easily find out which item that search engine values most, and exploit that fact.

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  11. Search Engine Blind Spots: Search engines can not read certain type of web page content, frameset files, image maps, graphics, casscading style sheet coding, JavaScript, VisualBasic script, etc. If you have a great deal of this near the top, your relevancy rating will suffer.
  12. Effect of Coding Practices: What you see on the web page is not necessarily the order in which it was coded. So if you use frames, tables, JavaScript, VisualBasic Scipt, or cascading style sheets, you need to remember to allow what the search engine seeks to stay as close to the top of the Code as possible.