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SEO Technology: Bettering SEO Elements for Better Organic Rankings

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SEO (Search Engine Optimization) content is dependent on certain site elements that you need to take cognizance of. Sometimes, overlooking these factors can make all the efforts to get web rankings up, go down the drain. One such site element is the robots.txt file. Search engines while visiting a website, do a content classification. During this process, the search engine robots might pick up obsolete content from a website. Some content might be used on a website for dual-purposes. The search engines might pick up these as well. As a result, websites might be penalized for using duplicate content. Search engines feel, the website is using illegal SEO techniques, when content is duplicated on a website. So what happens is, that the website’s search engine rankings fall drastically.

Using a robots.txt file can control all these things. To put it simply, a robots.txt file is a text file that you put on your website for search engine spider programs to read. You have to put this file in your main directory; otherwise search engine spider programs might miss it. A robots.txt file will enclose all information that has to be excluded from the search engine spider program indexing. By doing this, a website’s content can be preened for public perusal. It also assures confidentiality.

Robots.txt file can be used to take out pages from being indexed by search engines, and displayed as search results on user searches. To exclude page-level content, the Robots Meta tag can be used in the source code of web pages. You can use this Meta tag to specify the content that has to be excluded from the search engine indexes. However, caution has to be exercised, since a small mistake here could also create a fall in the website’s SEO rankings.

So, the above factors can play a key role in enhancing a website’s SEO rankings. By using robots.txt, you can only put content that can easily pull in search results and good SEO rankings. By using content that is rich in SEO keywords, there will be no more obsolete indexing of your web contents.

Filed Under: Computers, Internet, IP Address Database, Search Engine, Technology Tagged With: Meta element, robots.txt, Search Engine Optimization, Web crawler, Web Design and Development, Web page, Web search engine, Website

Spamdexing

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The Internet is like a highway of information with not many pointers to guide people to the right destination. Search engines play the role of traffic routers, or in other words, something that gets you to the right destination. If you are requesting for a webpage, then the Internet search engine uses Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques to get you the webpage rankings.

When you enter your searches in the search fields of search engines, and hit Enter, you might be flooded with a lot of non-relevant sites. You will come across sites that are not related to your search. It will leave you wondering, if indeed, the Internet uses SEO.

Search engines rely on webmasters. A Webmaster or site author maintains a website. Webmasters are the ones that put information on the website, to be used by search engine indexes. Webmasters use some tracking tools to find out the number of visits to their website. To increase the number of visits or hits, they might do a twisted version of SEO, which is called Spamdexing.

Webmasters may alter the indexing on their websites, so that searches that are not relevant will still be routed to them. Another way is to plug-in as many non-relevant keywords or key phrases as possible in the website content. These keywords or key phrases will not have any relevancy to the website’s content. They are done, only to attract search engine spider programs.

All these negative SEO methodologies classify as Spamdexing. Even hidden text is used on websites, to fool the search engines. A common Spamdexing technique is stuffing. It is the incessant use of a keyword in a website. Search engines are fooled to pick these websites for a search term, based on the density of the search-term found on this website.

Another Spamdexing technique is hidden text. Text is hidden behind layering, or background colors on websites. This text is not visible to the human eye, unless on close scrutiny. Spammers also use metatags to embed keywords. For example, an adult site will have the keyword -finance’ embedded in its metatag.

Filed Under: Computers, Internet, IP Address Database, Search Engine, Technology Tagged With: Meta element, Promotion, Search Engine Optimization, Spamdexing, Web crawler, Web Design and Development, Web search engine, Website

The Inner Workings of Search Engines

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A search engine works by using web crawling, indexing and searching; in that order. They process by keeping data about web pages that they retrieve from the web. These individual pages are received by a web crawler, or spider, which is an automatic web browser that follows every link it picks up. Users can create exclusions by making a robots.txt file. After the content is retrieved, the pages are analyzed and it is decided how they will be indexed through key words in the title, special fields or headings. Some of these fields can include meta tags.

The data is then kept in an index database. Search engines will keep all or part of the cache and information about the web page. Google for instance stores all of the information and other search engines keep every word. This source page has the search text indexed and will be essential when the page is updated.

When a user utilizes a search engine by key word, the search engine finds the index and provides the person searching a list a web pages that best match their query. The search findings can include a few lines of text, a summary and the title of the web page. Users can usually use boolean terms that most search engines will recognize.

How the search engine is most useful depends on the results the user receives and how relevant these results are. There are millions of web sites with certain words that the user may search but the results are based on popular sites and relevant terms. Many web sites will pay for advertising on search engines so a user may see those results first. These are listings that will rank higher in the search engines because they have sponsored the search with certain key words and Search Engine Optimization (SEO).