| So, you spent a considerable amount of time | | | | javascript doo-dads you implemented? Some |
| designing your website. You have attractive | | | | spiders can't read that type of code, and you |
| graphics on display, user-friendly | | | | may be blocking them from collecting your |
| navigation, perhaps a bit of Flash or | | | | information for search. Be sure to allow room |
| javascript to enchance the user's experience | | | | for spiders to move around. Keep complicated |
| on your site. The site's content is fresh, | | | | code to a minimum or forgo it altogether. The |
| relevant, and original. A site such as yours | | | | cleaner a website's code is, the better a web |
| should attract much attention in relevant | | | | crawler can spider the site and gather |
| search results, so why is incoming traffic so | | | | relevant data for caching. The more relevant, |
| slow? Why are the search engines not caching | | | | updated information a seach engine spider |
| your information as quickly and as often as | | | | gathers from a site, the better that site's |
| you would like? | | | | chances are in search results. |
| | | | |
| You look at your website and wonder what | | | | A good way to determine whether or not your |
| could be wrong. On the outset, the site looks | | | | website is searchable is to have the code |
| fine, but consider this: what the average | | | | validated. The W3C Validator is a free |
| Internet user sees is not what the search | | | | service recommended to validate site code and |
| engine spider (or "bot") sees when it crawls | | | | check for conformance to W3C standards. The |
| the web to collect the data. The spider reads | | | | World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an |
| the site's code, all of the characters and | | | | international consortium where member |
| data you or your HTML editor added to create | | | | organizations, a full-time staff, and the |
| the site. Oftentimes, a spider will attempt | | | | public, work together to develop standards |
| to crawl a site only to become entangled in a | | | | for the World Wide Web. Simply enter your URL |
| different kind of web! If there is one | | | | in the validator and a list of errors, where |
| character out of place, additional code that | | | | applicable, will alert you to what needs to |
| shouldn't be there, or code that is | | | | be improved in the code of your site. Think |
| unreadable to spiders, your website just may | | | | of it as fine tuning, it may take some time |
| be bypassed altogether. | | | | to improve your site's code, but in the long |
| | | | run the increase in search referrals will |
| Remember all of those fancy Flash and | | | | have made it work the hard work. |