Spiders, also known as web crawlers or web bots, are programs that explore the web by following links from page to page in order to index the web. This technology is used by search engines to determine the popularity and relevance of a web page.In order to increase your score on search engine indexes, it is critical to create your page in a manner that will attract spiders to the site. Here are some tips that you can follow to help your website rank higher.

The first thing you should do is make a list of words that describe your products. Think about the people who will be buying your products. If they were searching for the products that you’re selling, what would they type into the search engine? Come up with 10 to 20 words that describe the products that you are selling. Now from the list, pick the most likely word for people searching for your product to type into a search engine.

If I was starting up Peaceful Mind Tea Shop, my list would include different types of tea. However, the most important keyword from that list would be the word “tea.”

Your Title

The title of your page should not only give your company name, but information about what you sell. With Peaceful Mind Tea Shop, simply putting “Peaceful Mind” as the title would not properly represent what my company is selling. Instead, I should choose a title that is more descriptive and includes the most important keyword from my list. Titles such as “Peaceful Mind Tea Shop” or “Teas for a Peaceful Mind” would make my site rank higher when someone searches for the word “tea.”

Meta Tags

Meta Tag keywords are crucial to having your website indexed properly in search engines. In the tag, you specify the content of the page using keywords. The keywords should be specific, separated by commas and should not repeat. Use the list of 10 to 20 words that describe your products here.

For my online tea shop, my meta tags would look something like this:

<meta name=”keywords” content=”tea, English breakfast, Ceylon, Darjeeling, jasmine, oolong, chai, hoji-cha, green, herbal, chamomile” />

This would ensure that when someone searches for “chai”, my website would be included in the search, even if the specific types of tea that I sell are not listed on the first page.

You can read about setting up Meta Tags at the World Wide Web Consortium.

Content

The first page of your website should include content with keywords that you would like to be associated with your site. Your content should be relevant and updated often in order to get the most attention from spiders. In the text of your site, be sure to include as many of the keywords from your list as many times as you can without sounding silly.

Picture names count as content to spiders as well. Instead of naming your images things like “image39.jpg”, give them meaningful names such as “jasmine-tea.jpg”. The spiders will see the picture names and include that when calculating your ranking.

Do not, however, try to trick spiders by adding content that is not visible to people who view your site, such as white font on a white background. Spiders are created to notice this and will lower your ranking if you are caught.

Spiders also look at how often the page is updated when they are creating their rankings. Continuously adding content to your page, such as through a blog, will increase your ranking.

Keep it Simple

There are many flashy things you can do to make your website be more fancy, but spiders ignore these things and simply look for content and links. When you’re designing your website avoid frames, image maps, splash screens and redirect pages because they may confuse spiders that are attempting to find content on your site. Websites that are entirely flash or javascript based do not include content that can be read by spiders and will likely have low rankings. Instead, keep your page simple with HTML based descriptions of your products.

Links

Links to your website from other sites can increase your rankings with spiders. By working with other websites to set up reciprocal links, you can increase both of your rankings. Like titles, it is important for the link to include a description of what you sell. While a link with the text “Peaceful Mind” will help, the website will receive a higher rating on the word “tea” if the link reads “Peaceful Mind Tea Shop.”

Introduce Yourself

Search engine spiders may find your site even if you don’t tell them about it. However, in order to ensure that the spiders will come to your site, you should go to the most popular search engines and add your website to their list. A list of search engines can be found by logging into your account and clicking on Search Engine List at the bottom of the home page.
By following these steps, you can have higher search engine rankings, which will lead to more visitors, and more paying customers, to your site.