A Range of Questions As I Am Trying to Get my Search Engine Footing

[whoknows361]

Hey guys, I have only recently been reviewing your questions & answers on this thread & I find myself amazed at both how much all of you know about website ranking & search engines & about how much you can do to increase your ranking. I am relatively new to this area & I have some questions.
I mostly create flash-based websites, what can I do to increase my client's rankings with this type of medium?
What types of software are out there that I can utilize to see what bots are searching my pages & how frequently?
Do you have any helpful links and/or posts that would help me understand how to increase rankings in bot-based search engines?
What do I need to know concerning websites & increasing rankings & traffic?
Are web site submittal companies worth it for my clients?
What is a robot.txt?

Thanks for all your guidance thus far & thanks in advance for your responses.

Jonathan

 

[ChrisHirst]

I'll start with the easy one;

Are web site submittal companies worth it for my clients?

No!

robots.txt is a protocol that is used for excluding parts of a website from compliant crawlers. Unless you need to keep them away from something, it's not required.

For Flash websites the only real way is to have a parallel HTML site that is the default arrival point and then either use a detection script and/or "see Flash version" link.

The software you need is a Log Analyser (analyzer), the hosting may have some installed.
Have a read through here for some opinions. A few of the top of my head are Awstats, FunnelWeb, Analog. A google search will find a lot more. There are also many other visitor tracking systems around as well.

for helpful links;
Start reading HR at the Tips for newbies thread, or one for flash sites also IHY is packed with useful information.

Chris.

Indifference will be the downfall of mankind, but who cares?
Woo Hoo! the cobblers kids get new shoes.
People Counting Systems

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

 

[jstreich]

The key to search is TEXT CONTENT.

TEXT:
Plain text in HTML. Especially the anchor text that links the page. Avoid "here," "click here" or "link" as anchor text. The FLASH stuff won't be crawled, as bots see the page the same way you would in a text only browser like Lynx. If you can't tell what your sites about with lynx, then googlebot and company won't beable to either.

CONTENT:
Most spiders know when a site is just hurting for hits because it'll be a dictionary listing of "popular terms" and it'll have a million links to the same couple pages with different link text. These pages, if their on the same host, can hurt your ranking.

Flash is cool, flash is hip, but flash can't be seen by everyone, but most damaging, it can't be seen by google. Having good, real, up to date content that people want to read is a better way to get people from a search engine... Also, it's the best way to keep a steady readership.

Remember that loadtimes (even if they are accompanied with cool loaders) for flash is time that your visitors are going "how important is this site to me?" (espically the ones still on dial up), and if they can get the same content somewhere else on the web (which they can, because the net is so large) without waiting, they won't stay.

Give images (especially images that are links) good alt tags, as they will be looked at, where the image isn't seen by the spider. They know it exsists (and google may index it) but by and large, the alt tag is the only thing the spiders know about images.

[plug=shameless]

http://game-master.us/phpx-3.4.0/

[/plug]

 

[ChrisHunt]

I mostly create flash-based websites, what can I do to increase my client's rankings with this type of medium?

Stop using it and use HTML instead. SEs have got a lot better at indexing Flash over the years, but it's still an unnecessary obstacle to put in their way. Try using Flash elements within your HTML pages, and only when and if you need them.

What types of software are out there that I can utilize to see what bots are searching my pages & how frequently?

Types of log analyzer. Google for them.

Do you have any helpful links and/or posts that would help me understand how to increase rankings in bot-based search engines?

Yes, but Chris has beaten me to it.

What do I need to know concerning websites & increasing rankings & traffic?

Lots of things, but it's not rocket science - put quality content into to your sites and their ranking will climb long-term.

Are web site submittal companies worth it for my clients?

No.

What is a robot.txt?

Get answers here

-- Chris Hunt
Webmaster & Tragedian
Extra Connections Ltd