Etips is a publication of:
Your Guide to Professional Web
Site Design and Development
| Issue: |
#154 |
| Date: |
September 23, 2003 |
| Publisher: |
Shelley Lowery |
| Email: |
admin@web-source.net |
| Etips: |
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Hello,
Welcome to this week's edition of Etips.
First of all, I'd like to thank all of those who wrote me this past week.
I want you to know, although I can't possibly help you individually or even
answer your messages (it's humanly impossible), I do read each and every
email -- your comments and questions provide me with insight as to the
information you'd like to see in Etips. And, your kind comments are sincerely
appreciated as well.
On another note, I was recently honored with an invitation to participate
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-------
In this week's edition of Etips, I will be featuring a two part article entitled,
Optimizing Dynamic Pages, written by Dale Goetsch, Technical Consultant
for Search Innovation Marketing.
If you're a long time subscriber of Etips, you know the importance of optimizing
your pages for the Search Engines. However, Search Engine robots cannot index
dynamic pages without a little assistance. Dale's article will assist you
in optimizing your dynamic pages for the Search Engines.
I hope you'll enjoy this week's edition of Etips.
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Optimizing Dynamic Pages
Part I: The Widget Queen
By
Dale
Goetsch
You are the Widget Queen. You eat,
breathe, and live widgets. You sell more widgets than anyone. You want to
reach more widget customers, so you have decided to sell widgets on the web.
You have spared no expense in designing and building the ultimate widget
website. You have widget descriptions; you have widget specifications; you
even have widget movies. The only thing your widget website does not have
is visitors.
Off to the search engines you go. You type in the phrase "left-handed blue
widgets" and look at the results. All of your major competitors are listed.
There are even competitors you have never heard of. But you, the Widget Queen,
do not have a listing there.
What's up with that? What follows is some very basic introductory material
followed by some advanced technical details on dynamic sites and SEO.
What is a search engine?
First of all, you need to understand what a search engine actually searches.
When a potential visitor does a search in a search engine, such as Google
or AllTheWeb/FAST, she is not really searching the web; rather, she is looking
at a database compiled by that search engine. This database consists of the
text and links from the web pages that have been visited by the search engine's
robot.
How is a search engine database compiled?
Search engines compile these databases automatically using software programs
called "robots" or "spiders". These automatic programs visit pages on the
World Wide Web, much as humans visit web pages using browsers, by starting
at some arbitrary location and following links. When a website owner "submits"
a page to a search engine, in most cases she is supplying the search engine's
robot with a starting point for their automatic journey. Starting in that
location, the robot then follows links and thus "discovers" other pages in
your website or visits other sites to which your site is linked. (This, by
the way, is how search engines can find individual pages or whole sites that
have never been submitted to them--if there is a link to one site from another
site, chances are good that eventually a search engine robot is going to
find that link and follow it.)
Even though robots visit pages like human visitors do, what they can do with
what they "see" is quite different. When a human visitor uses a browser to
view a web page, that visitor can read the text on the page, look at images,
play movies, listen to sounds, submit information in forms, follow hyperlinks,
and any number of other tasks. The human visitor really interacts with the
site. The search engine robot, on the other hand, can only do a few of these
things. It is this difference that can keep your dynamic page from being
included in the search engine database.
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What does a robot do?
Search engine robots are very simple creatures. They can "read" text, and
they can follow links. That's it. Robots cannot view a Flash movie, they
cannot fill in a form, and they cannot click a "submit" button. What that
means is that no matter how much great information your web page may contain,
if a visitor has to select it from a list, or type a password, or submit
a form full of information to get there, no robot will ever visit that
page.
The origins of dynamic pages
Most dynamic web pages are generated in response to queries run against
databases. Behind your widget website there is a large database of widgets.
When a visitor comes to your site and looks for left-handed blue widgets,
it is this database that supplies the response. The database provides that
information to the visitor. Typically the visitor checks a box or selects
from a list or even types text onto the page and presses a "submit" button.
Once she jumps through those hoops, your visitor gets her page full of
left-handed blue widgets.
I can't see you
Unfortunately, when a search engine robot visits this page, it cannot check
that box, it cannot select from that list, and it cannot click the "submit"
button. Put simply, the robot cannot get to page of widgets. If the robot
can't get there, the page will not be included in the search engine database.
If it's not in the database, searchers cannot find it.
So how do you get there?
So how do we attract other visitors to our dynamic page of left-handed blue
widgets? There must be some way to get there without having to click on that
"submit" button.
Next week we will look at several ways to get search engine robots to visit
dynamic web pages. Stay tuned.
Copyright © 2003 Search Innovation Marketing. All Rights Reserved.
About the Author:
| Dale Goetsch
is the Technical Consultant for Search Innovation Marketing
(http://www.searchinnovation.com),
a Search Engine Promotion company serving small businesses and non-profits.
He has over twelve years experience in software development. Along with
programming in Perl, JavaScript, ASP and VB, he is a technical writer and
editor, with an emphasis on making technical subjects accessible to non-technical
readers. |
|
| Tip of
the Week |
 |
JavaScript is a scripting language
designed for use within a web page and/or on a web server. It is used to
create special effects within a web page. Elements such as links, images
and forms can be manipulated using this powerful technology. You can find
free JavaScripts at Script Search.
http://www.scriptsearch.com
Today's tip is an excerpt from the highly acclaimed
Web Design Mastery series.
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