<< Back to Index The Laws of Design
A quick overview of designing techniques that help in indexing your site.
Site Navigation
For logical reasons, spiders index your site by following the links on your pages. It is only natural that the move should be as easy and painless as possible. However, there are some snags that throw spiders into a tailspin, and you should avoid them when possible.
Frames
Frames are the old school of design. There is no reason for you to have your site designed in frames - whatsoever. Frames confuse spiders and unless your programmer is very careful to use the NOFRAMES tags properly, the spider will only get lost while trying to navigate your site.
It is best to develop each page utilizing a Template design for those "inside" pages; webpages that have a similar layout, but different body content.
Dynamic-generate pages
It wasn't so long ago that spiders absolutely hated dynamic content. But as it is, technology and the Internet advances. Still a main problem with dynamically generated pages is that a spider can become overwhelmed. For example, if the spider finds a long URL with a question mark in the middle, followed by a long string of letters and numbers, it may stall. Understand, spiders DO index dynamically generated pages, but more slowly. Spiders cannot distinguish a session ID, product or article number after the question mark nor can they determine if the site has 15 pages or 15,000.
For merchants, you don't want to make it difficult for the spider to find your products - after all that's what you are selling, right?
If you have dynamic pages that are not being indexed, here are a few tips:
. Ask your programmer to employ URL rewriting or Mod Rewrite to simplify the URL for the search engine spider.
. Use a site map that lists HTML links to each of your product pages. This is a great way for your visitors to easily find what they want if you do not include a site search. Google now allows for sitemaps to be submitted in an XML format. There are many free sources that will generate your XML page for free. See our Recommended Resources page at the end of the book.
. Paid inclusion. Google is not a pay for inclusion search engine, But Yahoo! for one is and it may well be worth the cost. [See recommended resources]
Flash and Javascript Menus
I love Javascript menus - however some spiders cannot follow the navigation system constructed solely in Flash or Javascript. Fortunately, there is an easy fix. I apply to the bottom of each webpage important links to that webpages' sections.
For example: On main page I list the main sections at the bottom of the page. Then on the page, "Services", I list the links to the services. In this way you have a nifty menu for your visitors and a way for the spider to navigate your site, too.
<< Back | Next >> |
