I was chatting with a friend, who was telling me about an ex-client of his.
The client had a site re-design by a family member, and though he had done a lot of link building, the website wasn’t ranking anywhere. His site wasn’t even listed in Google. Was the site banned? On inspection, John Zumwalt found the designer had put a robots.txt file on the site, blocking all robots. A simple mistake, but difficult to spot if you don’t know what you’re looking for. Sometimes professional help is what is needed.
If your site is not being crawled by Google or other search engines, here’s a simple checklist to follow:
ROBOTS.TXT MAY EXCLUDE SPIDERS:
Check to see if you have a file called robots.txt. This can appear in any directory but is usually found in the root. Either remove the robots.txt or make sure it conforms to the following robots.txt standard.
NO INBOUND LINKS:
Search engines crawl the web, following links from page to page. If you don’t have a link pointing to your page from a page that is already included in Google, it is less likely that Google will find your site. Submit your site to a directory, ask a friend for a link, or beg, borrow or buy. It pays to get links from reliable sources, as opposed to link farms, which Google may discount.
THE SITE MAY HAVE TECHNICAL ISSUES:
The server may be set up incorrectly, your site may contain code that makes crawling difficult, etc. Luckily, Google offers a reporting tool in the form of Webmaster Central. Use Sitemaps and the Site Status Wizard to help determine potential problems.
NO DEEP CRAWL:
Google crawls the site but doesn’t find many pages. Check your linking structures to ensure that important pages are well linked. You may wish to use a pyramid site structure to help organize your site thematically. Remove, or alter, duplicate content. Increase the quality of inbound linking, and avoid poor quality outbound linking. See Matt Cutts comments roughly 3/4’s of the way down.
FLASH, SCRIPTING:
Google can have problems following animated and coded links. It is safest to provide an all HTML version of your site if using Flash. Google is getting a lot better at following scripted links, however, be sure to check with Webmaster Central if problems persist.
SITE BAN:
It’s unlikely, but possible, that your site may have been banned. Check with Webmaster Central, and if a ban is in place, try submitting a re-inclusion request. Here’s the definitive guide on submitting a re-inclusion request, straight from the horse’s mouth. Essentially, Google wants to know that the problem has been corrected, and it won’t happen again.
Often, web design theory has got it all backward.
A web site is sometimes first conceived as an entity that reflects the company that publishes the web site. A mission statement, that is given an online form.
The harsh reality is that most people don’t care about your mission statements, but they do care about seeing their own reflection. They are not surfing the web to find you, they surf the web and click on you, hoping you will answer some questions about the problems they have in their life. In other words, they are basically saying “it’s not about you, it’s about me.”
In no environment is this more true than on the web. The web is a two-way communication medium, and the control of that communication, unlike, say, a film, rests not with the director, but with the user. The back button or the “escape” button is only ever a click away. Because you can not force them to sit through a sales pitch, customers or repeat visitors will only happen if they find “themselves” (hopes, dreams, and solutions) on your site.
Your Website is Not a Trifold Pamphlet
For this reason, a web design that places too much emphasis on what the publisher wants to say is doomed to irrelevance and an alarming dearth of visitors. The publisher does not have the upper hand when it comes to controlling the flow of web communication, yet a lot of web design theory assumes this as a given, mostly because outmoded ideas of web design is based on print publishing. Many still view their web site as a trifold pamphlet that mysteriously sneaks into every living room.
What are the most successful computer applications? Email. Word processing. Spreadsheets, Games. Take a look at the web sites that are most successful: Google, Amazon, Facebook, and eBay. The history of computing is all about user-centric empowerment. The future of computers and web sites is already on a trajectory of increased user interaction. One of the key metrics Google’s algorithms measure is social engagement. If you are not producing content that people are engaging in, not just reading, then you are doomed to the rocky shores of oblivion.
The way to do web design is to base the design around users, specifically their wants and desires. People’s wants and desires should drive the design process, and structures imposed for other reasons will be less successful. This goes beyond usability. Web design should be, fundamentally, about listening to and addressing people’s problems.
SEO-centric web design
This is where SEO-centric web design comes in. As many SEOs know, people are broadcasting their needs and problems. Every second. They are using keyword queries in search engines to tell the search engine what they need. We can “listen” to these needs by using keyword research tools.
Once we discover the language people are using to describe their needs, we can then build pages, architectures, and content copy, using their language, and addressing their problems, thereby creating a website that is an accurate reflection of the people who will use the site.
For example, a search engine doesn’t see a hierarchy, and most users don’t care about it. Every page is effectively a “home page”. Once people land on a page, they are at the start of the funnel which should quickly and effortlessly lead to the desired action, which is the point at which you meet their needs. The “desired action” is often wrongly defined in terms of the desires of the publisher or business owner, but it’s even more useful to view it in light of the desires of the visitor and potential customer.
At this point, some readers will surely be thinking “but people don’t come to my site via search engines”. Though that is a terrible situation to be in, it doesn’t matter. The site should address people’s problems, and search engines reveal the language people use to do define and frame their problems. Once you have a website that answers people’s questions and search-intent, then search engines will start promoting you. Web designers should not ignore this valuable information. Rather, this information should be integrated into the design process. It is a Google-centric web. Google achieved this feat by placing the user first. SEO should be at the heart of the design process, not something bolted on at the end.
Today, many business people talk more about SEO which stands for Search Engine Optimization. It sounds easy if we only hear the name of SEO but in reality, it is really complicated and has many challenges to handle. The good news is without really knowing much about SEO You can still do some simple things to improve your ranking.
Nevertheless, there are many ways to start, as long as we know some basic things which will help us to make full optimization. And here, one of the biggest challenges is to appear in the biggest search engine Google, though there are other search engines available, they grab the lion share of searches. But the question is how to appear high in that search result engine and a single day will not work for sure. This takes time, if anyone tells you different they are lying or selling you a plan that will ultimately get you penalized by Google, and then it is game over.
Thus, there is a need and importance to understand the basic 7 things of SEO as listed below, followed by some good videos which talk about some basic SEO and hope it helps. There is, of course, much more to SEO than what is listed below. But unless you have invested in the tools and the time it takes to learn them, I would leave the “other SEO stuff” for Oklahoma City’s own SEO KRAKEN professionals.
1. Build good content:
In other words, it is quality content which is basically something useful for your target customers or visitors that you would like to provide them when they visit your site. Without content, there is very little to distinguish your site from all the other 2 billion sites on the web. Google needs content to understand who you are and how to match you to searchers. Searchers need content to understand what you are about. The idea that you can just build a site and people will flock to it and buy your goods, is from a bygone era if ever.
2. Build links to your website:
You can create many links to your web site by submitting your site to open web directories, link exchanges, discussions in forums, etc. Links are basically Google’s way of knowing how popular you are. The more links mean you are “popular” and Google rewards you with a higher ranking.
3. Try to appear and explore more online:
One of the best ways is to join social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc. You create a profile on those sites. Post things that people will find interesting.
4. Make Friends:
Just appearing online will not be enough but need to make personal and business friends as much as possible so that your friends and online community will know more in detail about what your business is.
5. Think unique ideas or content:
It is not that easy to think and create unique ideas or content since there are many online sources that can be similar but try to differentiate the way you present. You may quote other blogs or web site but you can put them in a way that they had not been used before which may not be original but unique somehow.
6. Update content and stay in touch:
Often updating content plays an important role in order to stay in touch with online friends and community. More post, more people will see it.
7. Spend at least one hour per day:
Spend at least some time every day on social media marketing in person and also I recommend using some tools like FeedBurner and Dlvrit in order to update automatically to your Twitter and other social media accounts. Enjoy watching some SEO videos below, and my hope for you is that as you apply them for your business and blogs, you will rocket to success.