Findability Blog of Jake Beachboard

We know what webcrawlers are and how they like to surf around the web in a very methordical method but is there anyway we can help the little guys out? The answer is yes search engine spiders dont pull over for directions they just run around but if your nice you can give them a sitemap. Not just the one you see on a very complex webpage but one just for them. Its a XML document that uses a specific format and it tells a spider where all it needs to go..so it wont get lost on the Jersey turnpike. To find out more information check out these links, they really are helpful

Sitemaps.org
Google xml sitemap generator
Neuroticweb sitemap

Its dark, you go into the “bad side of town” looking for a little SEO. Sure there’s a way to get all this traffic man…any thing you need and it aint gonna cost you anything for a little blackhat Seo…

WHOOOOO there kiddo, didn’t your mama ever tell you just say no to blackhat seo?
She didn’t? Well didn’t you see the commercials? no?….well then take a seat Officer Beachboard will teach you kids to just say no to Backhat SEO.

So what is Blackhat SEO? Thats a easy question, Blackhat SEO is a term used to describe shady SEO tactics that will at first drive some traffic to you but the second Google, Yahoo, and other search engines find you the black list you. Basically what your doing is abusing the way google reads sites and trying to make it think that your content is relevant to a bunch of thing that have nothing to actually do with your site. Remember back in the 90’s how you couldn’t look up anything without finding an adult website? Well if you look at the old meta data you’ll find pages of keywords that are there to try and trick the search engines. It used to work, but now its so shady its a great way to get kicked out of this industry by your peers and blacklisted by google.

So you just spent weeks putting together an even that your site is sponsoring, it took tons of work and people are aware but wouldnt it be nice if you could sink all of the events information to the users outlook or his google calendar? Or even better a google map that syncs with his google calendar and then that syncs with his personal organizer! Wow that would be the best…well guess what you can do that, its called Microformats.

What the heck is a Microformat? Well the simple definition is its a way to format data in xml so that it is readable by all sorts of devices and services. Heres an example of a hCard microformat

<div class=”vcard”>
   <div class=”fn”>Joe Doe</div>
   <div class=”org”>The Example Company</div>
   <div class=”tel”>604-555-1234</div>
   <a class=”url” href=”http://example.com/”>http://example.com/</a>
 </div>

So as you can see its really simple and overly helpful you can check out more information on the following sites.

Microformats.org
Wikipedias Microformats Article
Wikipedias hCard article

One thing that we always drive for when working on webpages is generating traffic and a user base. We want people to visit the site and enjoy content that updates all the time. One way we can do this is with a nifty little guy named RSS (Really Simple Syndication) but I know your asking what can RSS do for me? Well thanks the internet there are dozens and dozens of RSS readers out there that a user can sign up on and link your page to it. This way when you update your site his RSS will update and he will go view the article. Its like a newspaper, a user just looks at 1 item and can check out dozens and dozens of sites.

Check out these sites to learn more!
Smash Magazines Rss stuff
Devlounges article on RSS
Wikipedia RSS article

Custom 404 pages can be really helpfull or really hurtfull. Most times people just hit them and walk away looking for something else or poking about the rest of the site. Sometimes they are looking for something that doesn’t exist, other times its because we have messed up linking a file and the server have no idea what we are looking for.

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