Blogs and Search Engine Optimization

Blogs Attract More Search Engine Traffic

Your favorite thing about having a blog may soon be this - they naturally attract search engine traffic. Blogs already have optimized site architecture. Most are set up with a clear navigation, where every page is set up to link back to the other main pages. They also have the inherent potential to be well-linked.

Blog Directories and Site Submission

If you haven’t already submitted to blog directories, you are missing out on some great one-way links. Many of the top directories can be found on Robin Good’s Top 55 list. But before you head over there and start submitting, you should know a little about how to optimize your blog. Then your new listings can help your site get the best keyword placement in the major search engines.

Tip One: Blogs and SEO - Keywords

You have a choice. You can target a general high traffic keyword you have little chance of ranking well for and get barely any traffic. Or you can shoot for a keyword that gets a moderate level of targeted traffic resulting in more subscribers and sales. I like to call this a “lucrative keyword”. Whatever you call them, here’s the most important thing: They may not get you the most traffic, but they often bring the most profit.

More Web Site Traffic and More Sales? Not Always

You may be surprised to learn that there isn’t always a correlation between high traffic and high sales. Many of the most profitable sites in the world get moderate traffic because their lucrative keywords result in a much higher ratio of visitors to buyers.

Length of Search Query is a Factor

A recent article in Information Week stated that the highest conversion rates from search engine traffic comes from people who do four word queries. The great thing about your blog is that it can get so well-indexed that you have the potential to show up for any number of four word phrases that are relevant to your industry.

Target Your Blog for More Traffic and Sales

It isn’t just the four word phrases that get converting traffic - there are two and three word phrases that can bring you traffic and sales. Targeting your blog discussion to a two or three word phrase that has a high yield of traffic, and yet has little competition, is not a dream of past Internet days. Another recent study revealed that surprisingly high percentages of search engine queries debuted as late as 2004.As long as there are new developments, new products, services and trends, you’ll never have a shortage of these terms if you learn how to discover them.

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SEO Search Engine Optimization: SEO Robots.txt

The importance of robots.txt

Although the robots.txt file is a very important file if you want to have a good ranking on search engines, many Web sites don't offer this file.

If your Web site doesn't have a robots.txt file yet, read on to learn how to create one. If you already have a robots.txt file, read our tips to make sure that it doesn't contain errors.

What is robots.txt?

When a search engine crawler comes to your site, it will look for a special file on your site. That file is called robots.txt and it tells the search engine spider, which Web pages of your site should be indexed and which Web pages should be ignored.

The robots.txt file is a simple text file (no HTML), that must be placed in your root directory, for example:

http://www.yourwebsite.com/robots.txt

How do I create a robots.txt file?

As mentioned above, the robots.txt file is a simple text file. Open a simple text editor to create it. The content of a robots.txt file consists of so-called "records".

A record contains the information for a special search engine. Each record consists of two fields: the user agent line and one or more Disallow lines. Here's an example:

User-agent: googlebot
Disallow: /cgi-bin/

This robots.txt file would allow the "googlebot", which is the search engine spider of Google, to retrieve every page from your site except for files from the "cgi-bin" directory. All files in the "cgi-bin" directory will be
ignored by googlebot.

The Disallow command works like a wildcard. If you enter

User-agent: googlebot
Disallow: /support

both "/support-desk/index.html" and "/support/index.html" as well as all other files in the "support" directory would not be indexed by search engines.

If you leave the Disallow line blank, you're telling the search engine that all files may be indexed. In any case, you must enter a Disallow line for every User-agent record.

If you want to give all search engine spiders the same rights, use the following robots.txt content:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin/

Where can I find user agent names?

You can find user agent names in your log files by checking for requests to robots.txt. Most often, all search engine spiders should be given the same rights. in that case, use "User-agent: *" as mentioned above.

Things you should avoid

If you don't format your robots.txt file properly, some or all files of your Web site might not get indexed by search engines. To avoid this, do the following:

1. Don't use comments in the robots.txt file

Although comments are allowed in a robots.txt file, they might confuse some search engine spiders.

"Disallow: support # Don't index the support directory" might be misinterepreted as "Disallow: support#Don't index the support directory".

2. Don't use white space at the beginning of a line. For example, don't write

placeholder User-agent: *
place Disallow: /support

but

User-agent: *
Disallow: /support

3. Don't change the order of the commands. If your robots.txt file should work, don't mix it up. Don't write

Disallow: /support
User-agent: *

but

User-agent: *
Disallow: /support

4. Don't use more than one directory in a Disallow line. Do not use the following

User-agent: *
Disallow: /support /cgi-bin/ /images/

Search engine spiders cannot understand that format. The correct syntax for this is

User-agent: *
Disallow: /support
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /images/

5. Be sure to use the right case. The file names on your server are case sensitve. If the name of your directory is "Support", don't write "support" in the robots.txt file.

6. Don't list all files. If you want a search engine spider to ignore all files in a special directory, you don't have to list all files. For example:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /support/orders.html
Disallow: /support/technical.html
Disallow: /support/helpdesk.html
Disallow: /support/index.html

You can replace this with

User-agent: *
Disallow: /support

7. There is no "Allow" command

Don't use an "Allow" command in your robots.txt file. Only mention files and directories that you don't want to be indexed. All other files will be indexed automatically if they are linked on your site.

Tips and tricks:

1. How to allow all search engine spiders to index all files

Use the following content for your robots.txt file if you want to allow all search engine spiders to index all files of your Web site:

User-agent: *
Disallow:

2. How to disallow all spiders to index any file

If you don't want search engines to index any file of your Web site, use the following:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

3. Where to find more complex examples.

If you want to see more complex examples, of robots.txt files, view the robots.txt files of big Web sites:

• http://www.cnn.com/robots.txt
• http://www.nytimes.com/robots.txt
• http://www.spiegel.com/robots.txt
• http://www.ebay.com/robots.txt

Your Web site should have a proper robots.txt file if you want to have good rankings on search engines. Only if search engines know what to do with your pages, they can give you a good ranking.

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