Banana Creative’s Blog

A team of copywriters, designers, and developers has come together to create the greatest web site your industry has ever witnessed. After months of meetings and many late nights, the moment has finally arrived — the web site launch. At last, a beautiful home page quickly appears on screen. And then….

Nothing happens. No visitors. No traffic. The web site disappears into cyberspace.

What went wrong here? The team created a web site without any regard for the role of the search engine spider — a program that routinely combs the internet searching and indexing web sites. A large number of expensive web sites are designed beautifully from a human perspective, yet all but invisible to search engine spiders, and thus those searching on the web. You see, there is quite a difference in what is seen on the screen and what is seen by a search engine spider.

Here are a few common web site elements — what search engines can see, and what they cannot.

A Search Engine Spider Can See

HTML Text. A search engine spider relies heavily on HTML text to determine the subject of a web page. Spiders, therefore, index HTML text and will even make distinctions between differences in how the text is presented. For example, the text that is present in a headline or appears bold is assumed to be slightly more important than the regular body text.

Links. Outgoing links on pages are easily understood by the spider, especially if they are text links. The wording of these links can, like HTML text, give the spider an idea of the content on the page. However, if your web site team embedded your links in a drop-down menu that uses JavaScript or other scripting language, it will prevent most search engine spiders from seeing them.

Tags. There are several different types of tags, not all are important to search engine spiders. Meta tags include the “keywords” tag and the “description” tag. The keywords tag should list all key phrases or words that describe the page. The description tag is one or two brief sentences that describe the page. The “title” tag contains the words that appear at the top of your browser’s window. All of these tags should directly relate to the product or service your company provides.

A Search Engine Spider Cannot See

Graphic Text. When a designer uses text in a graphics form on a web site (where the text is actually an image vs. HTML), the search engine spider cannot read the text. The main reason for using text as a graphic is to have the ability to use a font that most visitors do not have installed on their computers. It is also a way to control what the visitor will view. This is often done to maintain consistency with other marketing materials and works best in moderation.

Images. A search engine spider is not yet able to look at images or pictures and determine their relevance in visitor’s searches. A way to get the spider to see the images is to attach an “alt” tag that describes the image. In general though, a spider will ignore logos, pictures, and any other graphic element.

Flash. Flash animation, or any other form of animation on your web site will not be seen by search engine spiders. However, this does not mean that using Flash elements will render your web site invisible. Just that you should not rely on text in any animation on your web site to be indexed. If the web site is built entirely in Flash, it could potentially be an overall search engine ranking killer. While some spiders are getting better at indexing web sites built entirely on this platform, it is still wise to use Flash in moderation.

These are only some of the elements that affect a web site’s visibility on the Internet today. The list is changing as fast as technology is progressing. So, before designing and developing a web site, it is important to research and examine all of the elements that could affect your web site’s success, or hire a professional that can help.

Author, Danielle Mai, Banana Creative, www.bananacreative.com.
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