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Making Your Site Search Engine Friendly - Spiderability
By John Buchanan (c) 2007

One of the keys to obtaining top rankings, or ANY rankings for
that matter is making sure that the search engines can properly
spider and index your site. This means doing whatever you can to
make sure the search engines are able to reach each page of your
site as easily as possible.

When I talk to my clients about spiderability, I'm generally
referring to two things...

   1) Are all the links in the site true hyperlinks that can be
      picked up properly by the search engines.

   2) Are all the pages within the site reachable within 2-3
      clicks from the homepage.

So let's go over the above two areas of concern.

1) Hyperlinks. This may seem almost silly, but you would be
amazed at the number of sites I run into when doing
consultations and website analyses that have non-standard
hyperlinks. By "non-standard", I'm referring to javascript
generated hyperlinks or hyperlinks embedded within flash files.

There is nothing inherently wrong with javascript or flash when
used properly, but the simple fact is that javascript and flash
are NOT search engine friendly. Google is pretty much the only
engine that is able to pick up links within javascript or flash
code. At this time, I have seen no evidence that either Yahoo or
MSN have this ability.

While Google may be able to pick up links, it is unclear as to
whether or not Google places any VALUE on the links it finds in
this manner. Remember, much of a page's ranking in Google is
determined by links, so you want to be absolutely sure that each
and every link is valued.

So, be absolutely sure that your links are true hyperlinks (by
"true" hyperlinks, I'm talking about hyperlinks coded with the
normal href tags) if you want to make sure they are found,
followed, and counted by all the engines.

2) Distance from Homepage. Ideally, you want your visitors and
the search engines to be able to reach any page within your
site within a maximum of three (3) clicks and preferably two
clicks. The more clicks it takes to reach a page, the less
chance there is that the search engines will index that page.

It is for this reason, that site maps have become so popular.
By utilizing a sitemap, you are able to link from your homepage
to a page that lists all or most of the links to the various
pages of your site. The search engines (and visitors) are then
able to get to virtually any page of your site within just a
couple of clicks.

You'll notice I've mentioned not only the search engines but
the visitors as well in the above paragraphs. By reducing the
number of clicks it takes to get from your homepage to any page
on your site, you will find that you also increase the overall
usability of your site.

While site maps can definitely help to increase the
spiderability of a site, it is important to remember that they
are not a total fix for bad navigational structure within a
site. As mentioned, all of the search engines utilize page
link popularity in one way or another in their algorithms.

In general, the homepage of a site will have the highest link
popularity of any page within the site. This is because most
inbound links to a site are pointing to the homepage. It's from
the homepage that all the internal pages derive their link
popularity from a sort of "trickle down" affect.

A site map will only derive a certain amount of link popularity
that it can pass on to the pages it links to. To understand this
best, think of the homepage as a large river with each link on
the homepage a smaller river branching off from the main river.
Each river will be fed a similar amount of water by the main
river. Alone one branch of the river will never be able to
deliver as much water to the various areas as all the branches
of the river can combined.

The site map is one branch of your sites link popularity river
and it has value, but it will never have the same impact as a
well thought out and implemented links structure that makes use
of all the rivers of link popularity within your site.

To make the most use of the link popularity of your site, you
should try and setup your sites navigational structure so that
even without a site map, the search engines and visitors are
STILL able to reach any page on your site within 2-3 clicks.

So...to make a long story short...Always be sure to utilize
true, standard hyperlinks throughout your site and be sure that
your sites navigational structure allows any page of your site
to be reached within no more than 3 clicks.

See you at the top!
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John Buchanan is a veteran search engine optimization specialist
with over 9 years experience. For more information, visit his
site at http://www.sesecrets.com or his newest site
http://www.seovideoanalysis.com where he will provide you with
a professional SEO Video Website Analysis of your site.
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