You want your web site or blog to be in the top search results at Google, Yahoo, Bing, Ask, etc.? Well, to accomplish that goal you need to know a bit about how search engines work. Let's start with crawling.
What are spiders in search engines?
Each search engine has its own software tools that crawl the web (let's ignore the fact that the Internet and the WorldWideWeb are not synonymous for now), looking for content to provide its readers in search results.
Yahoo! Slurp is the name of Yahoo! web crawler. Googlebot is the name of Google's spider. Right now, Bing is using MSN's old msnbot, but starting in October 2010, Bing will crawl the web using its new, fancy BingBot. (BingBot is in beta now.)
These "spiders" (also known as software robots or just "bots") are really computer code that reviews your site, analyzing all the content that is contained on your web page or blog. Your content is coded to allow the spider to do this. It can be coded by you or coded automatically by your software, like Blogger is doing for me right now as I type in Compose mode.
The spiders go through the content, word by word. Or almost word by word. (Their overall, global job is to find and organize every word they find on the Web, building lists of these words -- that's the big Web Crawl function.) Google may exclude little words like "a" "the" etc., while AltaVista indexes every word found on a site page. No search engine crawler crawls exactly the same as its competitors do.
The spiders also jump to your links. The spiders, or bots, will check out both the internal links you've placed on your site linking your content to other pages on your site, as well as those external links where you've connected your content to outside sources of information.
This is called "crawling" your site.
And, those spiders don't do this just once. No, no. They'll be back. They'll pop back over and check your site periodically, just to see if things have changed. Have you added new content? Do your links still work? They'll also be looking at how your words are being used on the page: titles, subtitles, headings, meta tags, etc. will be given a special tip of the hat as the search engine prioritizes your site.
Why do you care about spiders that crawl? Because they teach you that it's important to (1) have content; (2) have sufficient content - 250 words or more; (3) have quality content; and (4) have links that work so that the spiders have something to index and rank from your site.
Index? Rank? More on that in the next post.
7/8/10
What is a Thought Leader? A Rose By Any Other Name Should Use the Other Name
The term "thought leader" is attributed to former Harvard Business Review editor in chief Joel Kurtzman. When Kurtzman was editor-in-chief of the magazine Strategy + Business, he first used the phrase in 1994, labeling those he interviewed for their forward-thinking, savvy business ideas as "thought leaders."
Today, "thought leader" is a phrase that has been so overused and misapplied that many find its use suspicious. Use it, and be ready: for many, it sets off the internal "BS alarm."
Last year, Rob Cottingham at Read.Write.Web. suggested that "thought leader" be one of those buzzwords we no longer use. Once useful, Cottingham finds its had all its life sucked out of it by overapplication.
I agree. Don't get me wrong: I like the phrase. I like it. Problem is, so many have used it and so many have stuck it on folk that are so obviously NOT thought leaders that it's just not valuable any longer - at least not in a good way.
It reminds me of fajita tacos. Boy, were they great when they first arrived. We'd all go to the restaurant downtown and await the hissing cast iron skillets as they sojourned through the dining room to our white linen tabletops. Beef, chicken, onions, bell peppers, charred and lovely and steaming.
Now, you drive through any taco franchise and order a couple of fajita tacos and they arrive in a paper sack, with some salsa and guacamole on the side if you're lucky. Still tasty, but just not the same.
Today, "thought leader" is a phrase that has been so overused and misapplied that many find its use suspicious. Use it, and be ready: for many, it sets off the internal "BS alarm."
Last year, Rob Cottingham at Read.Write.Web. suggested that "thought leader" be one of those buzzwords we no longer use. Once useful, Cottingham finds its had all its life sucked out of it by overapplication.
I agree. Don't get me wrong: I like the phrase. I like it. Problem is, so many have used it and so many have stuck it on folk that are so obviously NOT thought leaders that it's just not valuable any longer - at least not in a good way.
It reminds me of fajita tacos. Boy, were they great when they first arrived. We'd all go to the restaurant downtown and await the hissing cast iron skillets as they sojourned through the dining room to our white linen tabletops. Beef, chicken, onions, bell peppers, charred and lovely and steaming.
Now, you drive through any taco franchise and order a couple of fajita tacos and they arrive in a paper sack, with some salsa and guacamole on the side if you're lucky. Still tasty, but just not the same.
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