Seven Ways to Get Your Website Crawled

SEO isn’t magic and isn’t a crap-shoot. “SEO is about making your website the best it can be for your site 

visitors and the search engines.” Want to help the right kind of people find your website? Then you need to design 

your site so search engines can find, crawl and index your pages.

Seven Ways to Get Your Website Crawled

1. It’s better to have one main website with numerous domains pointing to the main domain, 

than to have mini-sites or multiple sites with similar content. Mini-sites and multiple sites with 

similar content do not increase search engine listings and are frequently viewed by search engines as SPAM.

2. If you do have several stand-alone websites, make sure each serves a different target audience 

and has unique content with different domain or sub-domain URLs.

3. Search engines need to be able to follow internal links. To make that happen, use tags, text links, 

image links, and CSS menus. Spiders have difficulty with JavaScript menus, pop-up windows, drop-down menus, 

and flash navigation.

4. Choose keyword phrases that are most relevant and specific to what your web page is about. Think from 

the perspective of someone searching for what you are offering on your site. Ask, as if you were they: What would I search for if I am looking for something on your page?

5. Validate your keyword phrases through either paid or free services, such as Keyword Discovery, Wordtracker, or Google AdWords.

6. Check for keyword competitiveness. Take into consideration the size of your business. In this case, size does matter. 

If you are a major player with a major brand, you can play in a larger competitive pond than a smaller company just starting out. Know what size pond is right for you, and check for competitiveness by putting: allintitle: “keyword phrase” in your browser and check the number count.

7. Once you have your keyword phrases validated and checked for competitiveness, use them in anchor texts, 

clickable image alt tags, headlines, body text copy, title tags, and meta descriptions. Meta tags aren’t all that important for crawling.

SEO can be both intimidating and exhilarating. Intimidating because it seems as if just about everyone has an opinion 

on what it takes to get a high ranking in Google, so it’s hard to know what to believe. Exhilarating because, once you 

understand the method behind the madness of SEO, you see the art and science of it. Then it becomes fun and easy to 

come up with a strategic plan about where to place keyword phrases, how to write copy, and what size pond is best for your company to compete in. Optimize your website, and they will come.

Source: http://www.trafficattitude.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=17

20 Tips for More Efficient Google Searches

1. Either/or
Google normally searches for pages that contain all the words you type in the search box, but if you want pages that have one term or another (or both), use the OR operator — or use the “” symbol (pipe symbol) to save you a keystroke. [dumb little man]

2. Quotes
If you want to search for an exact phrase, use quotes. [”dumb little man”] will only find that exact phrase. [dumb “little man”] will find pages that contain the word dumb and the exact phrase “little man”.

3. Not
If you don’t want a term or phrase, use the “-” symbol. [-dumb little man] will return pages that contain “little” and “man” but that don’t contain “dumb”.

4. Similar terms
Use the “~” symbol to return similar terms. [~dumb little man -dumb] will get you pages that contain “funny little man” and “stupid little man” but not “dumb little man”.

5. Wildcard
The “*” symbol is a wildcard. This is useful if you’re trying to find the lyrics to a song, but can’t remember the exact lyrics. [can’t * me love lyrics] will return the Beatles song you’re looking for. It’s also useful for finding stuff only in certain domains, such as educational information: [”dumb little man” research *.edu].

6. Advanced search
If you can’t remember any of these operators, you can always use Google’s advanced search.

7. Definitions
Use the “define:” operator to get a quick definition. [define:dumb] will give you a whole host of definitions from different sources, with links.

8. Calculator
One of the handiest uses of Google, type in a quick calculation in the search box and get an answer. It’s faster than calling up your computer’s calculator in most cases. Use the +, -, *, / symbols and parentheses to do a simple equation.

9. Numrange
This little-known feature searches for a range of numbers. For example, [”best books 2002..2007] will return lists of best books for each of the years from 2002 to 2007 (note the two periods between the two numbers).

10. Site-specific
Use the “site:” operator to search only within a certain website. [site:dumblittleman.com leo] will search for the term “leo” only within this blog.

11. Backlinks
The “link:” operator will find pages that link to a specific URL. You can use this not only for a main URL but even to a specific page. Not all links to an URL are listed, however.

12. Vertical search
Instead of searching for a term across all pages on the web, search within a specialized field. Google has a number of specific searches, allowing you to search within blogs, news, books, and much more:

• Blog Search
• Book Search
• Scholar
• Catalogs
• Code Search
• Directory
• Finance
• Images
• Local/Maps
• News
• Patent Search
• Product Search
• Video

13. Movies
Use the “movie:” operator to search for a movie title along with either a zip code or U.S. city and state to get a list of movie theaters in the area and show times.

14. Music
The “music:” operator returns content related to music only.

15. Unit converter
Use Google for a quick conversion, from yards to meters for example, or different currency: [12 meters in yards]

16. Types of numbers
Google algorithms can recognize patterns in numbers you enter, so you can search for: * Telephone area codes * Vehicle ID number (US only) * Federal Communications Commission (FCC) equipment numbers (US only) * UPC codes * Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) airplane registration number (US only) * Patent numbers (US only) * Even stock quotes (using the stock symbol) or a weather forecast regarding the next five days

17. File types
If you just want to search for .PDF files, or Word documents, or Excel spreadsheets, for example, use the “filetype:” operator.

18. Location of term
By default, Google searches for your term throughout a web page. But if you just want it to search certain locations, you can use operators such as “inurl:”, “intitle:”, “intext:”, and “inanchor:”. Those search for a term only within the URL, the title, the body text, and the anchor text (the text used to describe a link).

19. Cached pages
Looking for a version of a page the Google stores on its own servers? This can help with outdated or update pages. Use the “cached:” operator.

20. Related sites
Looking for the related other websites of a website? Use the “related:” operator.