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What are search engine spiders? |
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Many search engines employ digital robots called spiders, robots, or crawlers to fan out across the Internet and gather information about websites, and submit that information back to the search engines to be indexed and ranked.
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What is crawling? |
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Crawling is the process in which search engine spiders gather and log information about a website. While crawling, spiders review content, follow links pointing to and from the site, and send that data to the search engine the site can be ranked. Once a site has been indexed, the search engine regularly sends its spiders back to check for updates to the website.
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What is SEO? |
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SEO, or search engine optimization, is the process of making your web pages more search engine friendly by adding and editing page content and keywords and by creating links to and acquiring links from other websites.
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What is SEM? |
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SEM stands for search engine marketing, and is defined as the process of optimizing and positioning a website within SERPs to achieve increased visibility. SEM encompasses SEO, and may also include the use of paid listings, and other services provided by search engines to increase traffic to a website.
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What is manual submission? |
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Search engine submission is the process of manually submitting a website to a search engine so that it may be indexed. Many search engines provide this as an option for web masters, however submitting a site places no priority on the site being indexed. It is also good to keep in mind that it is good to exercise caution when manually submitting, as excessive submissions can result in a website being banned from a search engine's index.
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How many keywords are too many? |
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Keywords play an important role in search engine optimization if used correctly. Avoiding overuse of keywords in your page content and META Tags will prevent your website from being penalized as a spam site. Unfortunately, because of the protected nature of search engine ranking algorithms, there is no definitive answer to the question of “how much is too much.”
What can be said is this: pick a few specific keywords or phrases that are relevant to the topic of your web page. There are even some tools to help you more effectively determine the keywords you use (see How do I find the best keywords to target?). Use these keywords and phrases repeatedly throughout the page content in a way that sounds natural and stays on topic. Doing so will provide great benefit to your site visitors, and will make your website more search engine friendly.
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How do I find the best keywords to target? |
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Selecting the right set of keywords is not an easy task, and the process requires a good amount of thought. When choosing your keywords, keep your target audience in mind. Place yourself in their shoes and consider what they might associate with the services you offer. There are many great keyword suggestion tools to help with this process.
One such tool can be found at . This tool combines the keyword databases used by WordTracker and Overture to provide keyword suggestions, and allows users to view a list of the total number of searches conducted using those keywords for the past 90 days.
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What is a link farm/exchange? |
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Link farms and link exchanges exist in various forms, but in all variations they perform the same function – to provide a long list of links (almost all of which are irrelevant, non-related, or hold no authority) as an attempt to inflate a website's PageRank. Search engines view link farms and link exchanges as bad neighborhoods, and penalize sites associated with them. Link farms are trouble, and are best avoided.
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Can links hurt me? |
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Links can in fact hurt your site. There are several ways in which this can occur. Links to or from sites considered “bad neighbors” - sites that use questionable or bannable SEO tactics, or those that have already been banned for similar – can dramatically reduce a website's ranking With the emergence of Google's TrustRank algorithm, links that are not relevant to the topic of your site may also have an adverse effect on your ranking. Relevance is the key for effective SEO and SEM, so focus on gaining links that are relevant to your content and from sources of authority.
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What is PageRank? |
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The PageRank algorithm, created and implemented by Google, uses the total number of incoming links pointing to a website to gauge its “importance” based on the premise that a site's popularity can be derived from the total number of links pointing to it. Web pages are assigned a rank from 0 to 10 (0 being the lowest and 10 being the highest), which can be viewed in many Internet browsers through the use of various tool bar add-ons.
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What is TrustRank? |
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TrustRank is Google's follow-up to their popular PageRank algorithm. Rather than relying on the sheer number of inbound links pointing to a website to give rank, TrustRank considers the relevance and relation of incoming links in respect to the content of a website, in addition to the authority of the site at the other end of that link.
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What is the “sandbox?” |
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In preschool, the sandbox was where the young kids sat and enviously watched the big kids play. For websites, the sandbox serves a similar function. Created by Google, the sandbox's purpose is to reduce the presence of new web pages in Google's SERPs, though it is widely speculated that the sandbox initially emerged as an attempt to keep spammy sites at bay.
The sandbox and TrustRank appear to be related, as TrustRank tends to favor established websites and links with age and authority. The period of time that a site may be in the sandbox varies, but is typically around 3 to 6 months, however in some cases sites have been sandboxed for a year or longer.
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How do I get out of the sandbox? |
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A very small fraction of new websites appear to be unaffected by the sandbox, and much research has sought to find a common thread. While this question has no definitive answer, several theories have developed. Some believe that the sandbox is a direct function of a domain's age. Others believe that the sandbox is the effect that results from a new website's initial lack of links, which causes that site to have no PageRank or TrustRank.
Websites that experience rapid increase in sheer link volume do not gain TrustRank easily, which has led to many web masters adopting the process of adding relevant, quality links from authority websites slowly and steadily over time, thereby increasing TrustRank as an attempt to expedite their escape from the sandbox. Theories on age have also led to the practice of purchasing domain names for websites long before they have gone live. By steadily accumulating links during the creation process, the website gains greater TrustRank and PageRank and may not be subject to sandbox filters by the time it's ready for the public.
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What is Google SiteMap? |
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A Google Sitemap is sort of like a roadmap of your XSite that you can provide to Google. With the Sitemap, their spiders are able to to navigate through your XSite in its entirety, ensuring that all your content is indexed correctly. Click here to learn more and set yours up now.
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