Make sure the search spiders will crawl all the pages on your site by following these search engine optimization strategy tips!

This is the last post in our multi-part series on how search engines work; read the basics of how search engines work and the importance of visibility to the search spiders.

Search engine optimization strategy #1: Add a robots.txt to your site.

A robots.txt is a file that tells search spiders where they are and are not allowed to go on a site. Having a robots.txt, even a basic one, is considered to be a “sign of quality.” It shows that you acknowledge that search engines are allowed on your site and that they may have free access to it. Learn how to add a robots.txt file to your site.

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If your pages can’t be seen or read by search spiders, then those pages can’t show up in search results! Find out more from The Search Guru.

In a previous post, we covered the basics of how search engines work, and how they use search spiders to index the pages on your site. It’s very important that your pages become indexed because, if they aren’t, then those pages can’t show up in search results.

The number of pages that have been indexed by the search engines is referred to as your level of “visibility,” and this is another crucial part of your search engine optimization strategy – to become more visible.

Here are the types of questions that we get at The Search Guru – and their answers.

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The number of site pages in a search engine index can differ widely between Google and Yahoo!, which we all know is frustrating. Why the difference?

Let’s say your site has 300 pages in the Google search engine index and 315 in the Yahoo! index. Those numbers are pretty close; it looks like both spiders are crawling and indexing most of your content.

But what if your site has 300 pages in Google, and 620 in Yahoo!? This indicates that there may be a deeper issue affecting your site.

Canonical URL, duplicate content and 404 error pages are three common reasons why page counts can differ.

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What if there was a free keyword research tool that let you find out what questions people had about your areas of expertise? Well, there is!

Wordtracker provides a free keyword research tool called Keyword Questions that is quick and easy to use. You simply enter a phrase and, in return, you get a list of questions that people have asked about that phrase.

Let’s say that you’re an accountant. This time of year, people are starting to organize material for their income taxes and are looking for helpful information online. If they find the information that they need on your site – in other words, if they find the answers to their questions – then you’ve got an excellent opportunity to also sell them on your services.

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Top 10 Ways to Generate Sales Leads in 2010

You want and need a killer sales strategy to kick off 2010 and The Search Guru is here to help. You are probably already using some of these techniques. If so, what can you do in 2010 to ramp up their effectiveness? If you’re not using any of these strategies yet, why not?

Our recommended sales-churning methods include:

• ways to use social media services
• pay per click management techniques
• organic search engine optimization strategies
• insights into your link building campaign
• buzz marketing

These methods are listed in no particular order because each situation is different – but we are confident that you can craft a powerful strategy using your own unique combination of the strategies listed below.

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