What to Avoid for a More Visible Website
You won't find a webmaster who doesn't want to have more visitors.
The success of any website is measured by how popular it is. In some
cases, having more traffic is even more important than making money.
Web search is a huge source of web traffic so naturally Search Engine
Optimization (also known as SEO) is one of the most important things
any webmaster should understand. SEO is about designing a website in
such an optimized way that will allow search engines to better
understand its content, index its pages and give them higher search
result rankings so to deliver more web visitors to the website. SEO has
become a massive industry by itself. It is constantly evolving as search
engines evolve and there is a huge list of variables to consider. In
this article we will address just a couple of the simplest yet critical
issues related to website design.
Search engines use 'web crawlers' to scan and index each website. These web crawlers are essentially computers that have been programmed to read and save the content of each web page so the search engines can analyze their content and display them in their search results accordingly. Therefore, in order to appear on search engines your web pages must be visible to these web crawlers. Not all web pages are visible to web crawlers.
Flash & Javascript
Websites that are built in Flash or using javascript are very difficult if not impossible for web crawlers to read because the contents are encoded in a way that they are not visible in the web page's HTML source code.
If you are running an online shop or an online directory where you have a database of product listings and you want them to appear on search engines so they will attract more people to your website, then you must make sure the listings are not encoded using Flash or Javascript.
If you have a search system on your own website that lets people search the listings in your database, you may also want to avoid using javascript or Flash for the search results page and make sure the result listings will link to each product's own dedicated page.
Dedicated Static URL
If you are not doing this already then it is highly recommended to give each product or listing page its own dedicated static URL. By giving each item its own dedicated page, you can create a sitemap that contains all the pages on the site and help web crawlers index every listing you have.
Search engines use 'web crawlers' to scan and index each website. These web crawlers are essentially computers that have been programmed to read and save the content of each web page so the search engines can analyze their content and display them in their search results accordingly. Therefore, in order to appear on search engines your web pages must be visible to these web crawlers. Not all web pages are visible to web crawlers.
Flash & Javascript
Websites that are built in Flash or using javascript are very difficult if not impossible for web crawlers to read because the contents are encoded in a way that they are not visible in the web page's HTML source code.
If you are running an online shop or an online directory where you have a database of product listings and you want them to appear on search engines so they will attract more people to your website, then you must make sure the listings are not encoded using Flash or Javascript.
If you have a search system on your own website that lets people search the listings in your database, you may also want to avoid using javascript or Flash for the search results page and make sure the result listings will link to each product's own dedicated page.
Dedicated Static URL
If you are not doing this already then it is highly recommended to give each product or listing page its own dedicated static URL. By giving each item its own dedicated page, you can create a sitemap that contains all the pages on the site and help web crawlers index every listing you have.
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