Important crawlers?

03:09
Google:
Crawler Description
Googlebot Crawls web pages (it’s the most important of the bunch)
Googlebot-Mobile Crawls pages specifically designed for mobile devices
Googlebot-Image Crawls images for inclusion in image search results
Mediapartners-Google Crawls AdSense content
AdsBot-Google Crawls AdWords landing pages to measure their quality

Yahoo!:
Crawler Description
Slurp Crawls web pages
Yahoo-MMAudVid Crawls video files
Yahoo-MMCrawler Crawls images

Bing:
Crawler Description
MSNBot Crawls web pages
MSNBot-Media Crawls media files
MSNBot-News Crawls news feeds
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Web Directories?

03:06
Web directories are not search engines in the typical sense; they are collections of links
that have been organized by humans. The advantage of web directories over typical
search engines is that all the links are (usually) reviewed by human editors for quality,
relevance, and suitability before being posted online. Make no mistake: some web directories
are completely automated. You should avoid these types of directories.
The most famous web directory, Open Directory Project, boasts 4,576,062 URLs in its
listings at the time of this writing. Most web directories, including Dmoz.org, can also
be searched.
Not all web directories are free. Some require yearly or one-time listing fees. One such
directory is Yahoo!.
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JavaScript Dynamic Links and Menus

05:22
Many sites use JavaScript to create links to other website pages. Here is some example
code with different link types that you may want to avoid:

<HTML>
<head>
<title>Link Examples ~ Things to stay away from</title>
<script type="text/javascript">
function gotoLocationX(){
window.location.href='http://www.cnn.com';
}
function gotoLocationY(){
window.location.href='http://www.yahoo.com';
}
function gotoLocationZ(){
window.location.href='http://www.google.com';
}
</script>
</head>
<body>

Example 1:
<a href="#" onClick="javascript:window.location.href=
'http://www.cnn.com'">News on CNN</a>
<br><br>
Example 2:
<a href="#" onClick="javascript:gotoLocationY()">Yahoo Portal</a>
<br><br>
Example 3:
<form>
<input name="mybtn" value="Google Search Engine" type=button
onClick="window.location.href='http://www.google.com'">
</form>
<br><br>
</body>
</html>

When you open this code in your browser, you will see a screen similar to Figure 8-2.
This is not to say that you can never use dynamic links. You obviously can, but you
need to think about tweaking your code to help web spiders see what they need to see.
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Content-Sharing Sites

05:19
The big players in content sharing have made it relatively simple for anyone to leverage
their platforms in the creation of media-rich content.
YouTube
Three former employees of PayPal created YouTube in 2005. They sold YouTube to
Google in 2006. YouTube is by far the most visited video sharing site on the Internet.
In January 2009, YouTube enjoyed an audience of 100+ million people in the United
States alone (http://bit.ly/11Xxcu).
You can post a video on YouTube.com and then embed the same video on your website
by following a relatively painless process. You can simply insert the Embed code as
supplied by YouTube within your HTML page. You
can also download many custom YouTube widgets to do the same thing.
Uploading your videos to YouTube is also easy. Make sure you optimize your video
title, description, and associated tags. Also, specify in the privacy setting that you want
to make your video public.
Once you upload your video, you can share it by connecting your YouTube account
with Facebook, MySpace, and Google Reader. Take advantage of these opportunities
to spread your news.
You may also consider using YouTube’s video annotations and AudioSwap features.
Video annotations allow you to add pop-up speech bubbles, pop-up boxed notes, textual
spotlights that are shown when the mouse moves over a predefined video area, and
video pauses. The AudioSwap feature lets you add background music to spice up your
videos.
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Search Engine Indexing

05:15
Google and others are indexing more pages than ever. Many of the modern search
engines now boast upward of a few billion indexed documents. Here is how Wikipedia
describes the process of search engine indexing:
Search engine indexing collects, parses, and stores data to facilitate fast and accurate
information retrieval. Index design incorporates interdisciplinary concepts from linguistics,
cognitive psychology, mathematics, informatics, physics and computer science. An
alternate name for the process in the context of search engines designed to find web pages
on the Internet is Web indexing.
Although web spiders do their best to obtain as many documents as possible for search
engines to index, not all documents get indexed. Search engine indexing is closely tied
to the associated search engine algorithms. The search engine indexing formula is a
highly secretive and intriguing concept to most SEO  enthusiasts.
Search engine indexing is not an entirely automated process.
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Domain Name Keywords

05:14
If your domain name contains an exact (or partial) match to a search query, chances
are it will show up on the first page of the SERPs—at least on Google. Google gives
keyword matching domains preferential treatment.
The exception to this rule is for competitive keywords. However, the chances of acquiring
a popular keyword domain are minimal, as most, if not all, dictionary words
are taken, in addition to the most popular two- or three-keyword phrase combinations.
This has led to the recent popularity of nonsense words as business names.
For niche keywords, you already won half the battle when you purchased your domain
name. Add an index page with related keywords, and you’ll be on the first page of
Google’s search results in a relatively short period of time.
You can use the following sample formats when creating your domain name:
http://www.keyword1-keyword2.com
http://www.keyword1keyword2keyword3.com
http://www.keyword.com
http://www.keyword.somedomain.com
http://keyword.basename.com
Note that the guidelines for subdomains are the same as for domains. The benefits of
subdomains are multifold, but subdomains can also be viewed as search engine spam
if you create too many of them. With subdomains, you can pick any name you like, as
you are in control of the domain record.
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Optimize Your Site for Speed

05:13
Nobody has unlimited patience these days. Not everyone has high-speed Internet. Stay
away from (Flash) splash screens. Compress your media files for faster page loading.
Use media files only when you need to. Also make sure to describe your graphics,
videos, and sound files. For sound and video content, provide text transcripts. Make
use of thumbnails for large images. Use web server compression for your HTML web
server transmissions to speed up transmission for all your clients, including search
engine web spiders.
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Use Intelligent Page Formatting

05:12
Try using smaller paragraphs with mixed-case text. Use boldface, italics, uppercase,
and different text color variations for emphasis. Employ browser-safe fonts such as
Times New Roman, Georgia (serif font), Arial, Helvetica, or Verdana (sans serif font).
Strategically employ bulleted lists, headings, and subheadings for clarity and information
organization. Using these options is helpful from an SEO perspective. Furthermore,
employ sufficient alignments, whitespace, and text padding for additional clarity
and web page look and feel.
Be mindful of web-safe colors. Use high-contrast color schemes for clarity and ease of
reading. Be consistent with colors. Don’t use too many colors. Try to stay away from
image backgrounds.
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What is robots.txt?

05:01
Yes, that’s right! If you are not very careful with the robots.txt file, you could be blocking
web spiders from crawling content you do want to be indexed. Most reputable web
spiders will obey your instructions within robots.txt. So, be very careful when you use
and edit the robots.txt file. Also note that Google Webmaster Tools provides a
robots.txt checker, so you can enter a URL and confirm whether a given URL will be
crawled.
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What Is a Sitemap?

04:56
using XML Sitemaps can help showcase
your most important links it would
be foolish not to utilize Webmaster Tools, as it is an indispensable resource for conducting
SEO.
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