Is your site being ignored by search engines?!
By Hani Banna
Posted Friday, October 22, 2004
If your web site is information driven, it is more than likely that a database is used to serve up the content.
Now when it comes to search engines, all your valuable content is invisible because it is stored in the database! Generally speaking search engines will not index search results on your web site. This leaves you with a database full of rich information but no way for the search engines to index it!
There is a simple way around this: store your content in a dual format. One version is kept in the database and another in static html formatted files. The static version is then submitted and indexed by the search engines. This is a programming free, 20 minute process as you will see below.
If you don't have a large content database here is what to do, visit your site and perform a search that returns the largest amount of results from you database. Store the source code of the search result page to a static html file and publish this file to your web site. Then it's a matter of submitting this page to all the search engines and Voila! Your web site content is for the world to see.
If you have a fairly large database then you're in luck! Cause I've got a method for you that will create some of the most powerful jump pages you'll ever have. This should take around an hour all up, but it's well worth it:
1) Creating the static pages: visit your web site online and perform a single search for each major content category, eg: "history books" might be one category. At each result screen save the source code to a html file. It's worthwhile taking care in the naming of the individual html files. The name could be in-line with the category names. Repeat this for all the categories.
2) Publish the static pages: your content is now in a static format which is search engine ready. Publish all the static pages into a new directory on your web site.
3) Create a master page: you are now ready to submit the static pages to the search engines. You could submit the static pages one by one. Instead, you can create a master page which contains links to all of the static pages. This means that only the master page needs to be submitted to the search engines. The search engines will then crawl through the rest of the pages.
4) Submit to the search engines: all you have to do now is submit the master page to all the major search engines. That’s it!
Now the big bonus! If you performed your searches in a clever manner (1 above), you will have keyword specific static pages. These will produce amazing traffic from search engines as they will be rated very high.
If you have some lengthy content pages you might want to break down the static pages into 3 levels: articles, list of articles and a master page, for example.
Within two to four weeks of submitting your mater page you should see some impressive traffic from your category specific static pages.
It is then just a matter of refreshing and resubmitting the static pages at regular intervals, monthly would be sufficient.
Most importantly, keep it simple for yourself, if a single static page is enough, leave it at that. If you have time, plan out how you can get the most value out of your content.
If you have any questions or queries please don't hesitate to contact me. You can find me at (www.makingclicks.com)
About the Author
Hani Banna is an online marketing consultant with one of the major banks. He has been helping companies maximize their marketing efforts with a no-nonsense approach. Visit (http://www.makingclicks.com/) to create a killer marketing campaign instantly!
