Complicated SEO Issues - I'm not getting spidered, why?
Frames:
There are many pitfalls in design that can hinder
a spiders ability to completely (or even partially) index the content
within a given page. One of the biggest mistakes webmasters are
still making is that of using "frames".
Frames are a design convention used to utilize independant
scrollable regions within a single URL designation (or so it appears).
Frames are actually divided into multiple URL designations and are
generally not spiderable by the search engines.
I do not want to get into how to optimize framed
sites here as this is a tutorial about "proper seo" not
"patchwork seo" if you have frames in your website then
my advice is to redesign, as you can use CSS to give an equivilant
effect if that scrolldown is really something you are not willing
to give up. I will however be writing an article for those of you
who are absulutely unwilling to give up your frames so that you
can at least provide something for the spiders to love you for and
thus improve your rankings somewhat but these techniques are far
inferior to just building your website the right way in the first
place.
Javascript:
Again, real pretty but excessive use is generally
not necessary. Don't get me wrong even I use javascript on almost
all of my sites but the key is to use it sparingly. The reason for
this is that spiders cannot read javascript and thus any link or
text portrayed by such Javascript will not be counted in your indexing
and thus produce lost opportunity. My suggestion is for all webmasters
to "STOP USING JAVASCRIPT FOR NAVIGATION" use HTML text
links instead. Your images can be called in Java as with your pretty
little rollovers but when it comes to things you want indexed Java
is not the way to go.
Pack your javascript away
When calling javascript editors place the Java protocalls
in header of your page: In order to save file size and maximize
load times cut out that java protocall and paste it in an external
file (i usually call mine java.js) then to call the java I place
just this one line of code: <Script src="java.js"></script>
this reduces the filesize considerably with no adverse side effects.
Flash:
Myself, I love flash. In fact my favorite sites
all incorporate some type of flash into their design but the key
phrase here is "some flash". To have a site with a flash
image is great, it will impress your visitor and increase the estethic
quality of your site for sure, but this flash must still be accompanied
by a healthy portion of good old fashioned text, written in html,
and readily accessible to the SE spiders. Also, if it absolutely
necessary to use flash navigation (which it never is) then make
sure to include html text link counterparts so that your internal
pages will be found and indexed. It is possible to embed text into
flash but that is for another article...
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