2008-07-19

How crawable is your website ?

How does a search engine spider crawl your website you say ?

Here's an analogy of how a spider might crawl your website: Imagine yourself visiting a newly constructed mall down by your town, what might you do when you first find yourself inside the mall ?

  • Navigating around ? For something of interest to you ?
  • Looking around ? For something of interest to you ?
  • Which varieties of stores are available ? Which is / are relevant to your needs ?
  • Where are the restaurants / fast food outlets / restrooms ?

You decided to locate the restroom but to your surprise.....the door to the restroom was locked when you reached it.

One week later, you came back to the mall and when you went to the same restroom...the door was locked once again.....

Another week later.....history repeats itself.....
Will you still try using the same restroom the next time round ?
Yes ? No ?

Similarly the search engine bot faces the same issue when their navigation is blocked either by your password protected content areas; your graphical images which displays nothing when being blocked by ad block programs, missing images....etc...

So what could you do to prevent such mishaps ?
  • Adding appropriate ALT attribute descriptions to your graphical image; Making sure the surrounding copy / text around your image clearly sets the context.
  • Having password protected content area only for those content that would require registration such as pay-per view content / subscription based premium contents.
Your turn.
What could you ensure the crawl-ability of your website ?

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