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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With the abundance of information floating around about search engine optimization strategy, it’s good to get back to basics to address how search engines work!

This is the first post in our multi-part series that deconstructs the technical how and why of SEO in a way that non-technical users can understand.

How search engines work

The major search engines (Google, Yahoo and Bing) use what are commonly called “search spiders” or “search engine spiders” to examine web pages. They “crawl” or “spider” the web and index their results so that people can search through what they have found.

Search spiders and engines are very simple creatures, overall, and search engine optimization strategy – or SEO – is an umbrella term for the group of techniques that make it easier for the spiders to find and properly index pages on your website. But, first – more about the spiders.

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Demystifying the Google Universal Search Engine

It has been more than a year and a half since Google launched Google 2.0, otherwise known as Google Universal Search. If that term doesn’t mean anything to you, don’t worry, you’re not alone! If you’re like most people, you probably didn’t even know it existed. And maybe that’s just what Google had in mind.

What is the Google Universal Search Engine anyway?

Google’s universal search engine now integrates search engine results from its regular “horizontal” search engine along with its many vertical search engines, which you may not have known existed. If you take a look at Google’s home page, you will notice the links along the top left for Images, Maps, News, etc. These are specialized, or “vertical,” search engines that deliver more specific search results from within a particular topic.

With Google Universal Search, the listings presented are a blend of search engine results, consisting of a mix of “regular” results and more specialized results from the vertical search engines.

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Does the world economy affect the internet economy? How should you plan your online marketing budget, in light of the current financial state of affairs?

I will admit, the financial world is a scary place right now. The markets look more like roller coaster schematics than financial statements. Not to mention the doom and gloom from every news source on the planet. It is enough to make anyone want to take their online marketing budget and crawl into a deep hole. But I am here to tell you: Don’t Do It. The impacts of the internet on economy outlooks are huge and you can benefit from them.

Why you should be increasing your online marketing budget right now.

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