Joomla! site syndication http://www.seobasics.net 2010-07-29T09:51:49+01:00 http://www.seobasics.net http://www.seobasics.net/images/M_images/joomla_rss.png text/html 2008-01-09T19:50:00+01:00 http://www.seobasics.net http://www.seobasics.net/news/latest/seg-bootcamp-robots.txt-file.html Robots.txt files are often mentioned as being an important foundation of a search friendly web site. To site owners and small businesses who are new to search marketing, the robots.txt file can sound daunting. In reality, it's one of the fastest, simplest ways to make your site just a little more search engine friendly. (SEG Bootcamp articles are no-frills content designed to bring small business owners up to speed on the concepts and techniques needed to market their businesses online.) What is Robots.txt? Robots.txt is a simple text file that sits on the server with your web site. It's basically your web site's way of giving instructions to search engines about what how they index your web site. Search Engines tend to look for the robots.txt file when they first visit a site. They can visit and index your site whether you have a robots.txt file or not; having one simply helps them along the way. All of the major search engines read and follow the instructions in a robots.txt file. That means it's a pretty effective way to keep content out of the search indexes. A word of warning. While some sites will tell you to use robots.txt to block premium content you don't want people to see, this isn't a good idea. While most search engines will respect your robots.txt file and ignore the content you want to have blocked, a far safer option is to hide that premium content behind a login. Requiring a username and password to access the content you want hidden from the public will do a much more effective job of keeping both search engines and people out. What Does Robots.txt Look Like? The average robots.txt file is one of the simplest pieces of code you'll ever write or edit. If you want to have a robots.txt file for the engines to visit, but don't want to give them any special instructions, simply open up a text editor and type in the following: User-Agent: * Disallow: The "User-Agent" part specifies which search engines you are giving the directions to. Using the asterisk means you are giving directions to ALL search engines. The "disallow" part specifies what content you don't want the search engines to index. If you don't want to block the search engines from any area of your web site, you simply leave this area blank. For most small web sites, those two simple lines are all you really need. If your web site is a little bit larger, or you have a lot of folders on your server, you may want to use the robots.txt file to give some instructions about which content to avoid. A good example of this would be a site that has printer-friendly versions of all of their content housed in a folder called "print-ready." There's no reason for the search engines to index both forms of the content, so it's a good idea to go ahead and block the engines from indexing the printer-friendly versions. In this case, you'd leave the "user-agent" section alone, but would add the print-ready folder to the "disallow" line. That robots.txt file would look like this: User-Agent: * Disallow: /print-ready/ It's important to note the forward slashes before and after the folder name. The search engines will tack that folder on to the end of the domain name they are visiting. That means the /print-ready/ file is found at www.yourdomain.com/print-ready/. If it's actually found at www.yourdomain.com/css/print-ready/ you'll need to format your robots.txt this way: User-Agent: * Disallow: /css/print-ready/ You can also edit the "user-agent" line to refer to specific search engines. To do this, you'll need to look up the name of a search engine's robot. (For instance, Google's robot is called "googlebot" and Yahoo's is called "slurp.") If you want to set up your robots.txt file to give instructions ONLY to Google, you would format it like this: User-Agent: googlebot Disallow: /css/print-ready/ How do I Put Robots.txt on my Site? Once you've written your robots.txt file to reflect the directions you want to give the search engines, you simply save the text file as "robots.txt" and upload it to the root folder of your web site. It's that simple. Want to learn more? Check out these resources: Official Google Blog: Controlling How Search Engines Access and Index Your Website (http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/01/controlling-how-search-engines-access.html) The Web Robots Page (http://www.robotstxt.org/) text/html 2008-01-09T18:59:00+01:00 http://www.seobasics.net http://www.seobasics.net/news/latest/video-would-your-company-be-missed-if-it-closed-today.html Sage highlights an article by Search Engine Guide's Jennifer Laycock that asks vital questions of small businesses in 2008. "Would your company be missed if it closed today?" and "Is your business able to keep its promises?" text/html 2008-01-09T18:37:00+01:00 http://www.seobasics.net http://www.seobasics.net/news/latest/video-ask-listens-and-wikia-launches.html Sage uncovers the pros and cons of Ask's new voice activated mobile device for driving directions and Wikia's new search engine launch. With ease of usability is a concern for both releases, Sage extols the virtues of a free Internet design "Best Practices" report found on Matt Bailey's accessibility website. text/html 2008-01-09T15:39:00+01:00 http://www.seobasics.net http://www.seobasics.net/news/latest/the-building-blocks-of-sem.html Everyone knows that if you want to build something big, you have to have a strong foundation. That holds true whether you're putting up a skyscraper or creating an online marketing plan. While you may think it's all about links and keywords, solid search and online marketing encompasses so much more. That's why anyone looking to start marketing their business online should print out and study Matt McGee's new SEO Success Pyramid (http://www.smallbusinesssem.com/the-seo-success-pyramid/971/). Matt unveiled his SEO Success Pyramid to the public on his blog this week. I'll go so far as to say that if you only click on one link from Search Engine Guide this week, it should be to this post. (Well, it should actually be to register for our upcoming conference (http://unleashed.smallbusinessanswers.com/) where Matt will be speaking about this, but if you click on just TWO links, his post should be the second one.) Matt explains: ...the best SEOs don't talk to their clients about rankings; they talk about the process of making great web sites that earn traffic and convert visitors into customers. They talk about the process of creating great content that attracts links like bees to honey. Matt builds off the teachings of basketball coach John Wooden (http://www.coachjohnwooden.com/) to create a pyramid style representation of all the things involved in creating a solid search engine marketing plan. The SEO Success Pyramid places concepts like planning and commitment as foundational principles that build the base and specific tactics like keyword research and link building as part of the structure. Really, this is one of those graphics you should print out and hang up in your office. It's a great way to help get you focused again if you start veering down the path of information overload or social media time sink. Make sure you check out Matt's full post (http://www.smallbusinesssem.com/the-seo-success-pyramid/971/) to see his description of each block in the pyramid and how it applies to SEO. text/html 2008-01-08T22:22:00+01:00 http://www.seobasics.net http://www.seobasics.net/news/latest/want-more-comments-on-your-blog.html Have you ever read a blog and noticed that every post had several comments? It's almost as if the post was just the beginning of a fascinating discussion that carried over to the comments. But how can you create such a vibrate community on your blog?One of the quickest ways to judge the effectiveness of a business blog is to see if its readers are commenting. Comments show that the blog's writers are producing content that resonates with its readers. And the feedback that readers leave via comments are invaluable to the business' marketing efforts.So if you're wanting to get more interaction with your readers, here's some ways you can encourage more comments on your business blog:1 - Create a regular posting pattern, and stick to it. If you only want to post twice a week, stick to that schedule. Don't post 4 times one week, then skip 2 weeks before your next post. If you get yourself on a regular posting schedule, you also 'train' your readers on when to expect a new post. This helps to increase your readership as well.2 - If you moderate comments, approve them as quickly as possible. This is vital. Most readers are used to their comments appearing instantly. If they leave a comment on your blog and then have to wait a day or even an hour before it appears, you are discouraging the reader from commenting again. Readers that comment are VERY special people, and you should treat them like they are gold. If you do moderate comments, make sure you are constantly monitoring and approving comments as quickly as possible.3 - Reply to readers that leave comments. Let readers know that their comments are appreciated. If a reader asks a question, make sure to answer them as quickly as possible. If they give their opinion, respond with yours. This shows your commenters that you appreciate their contribution, but it also makes non-commenters more likely to put their two cents in as well!4 - Highlight readers that leave great comments. You may notice that sometimes a reader will leave a comment that really resonates with your other readers, and sparks several other comments. When a reader makes a great point in the comments, go back and edit the post to add the comment at the end. For example, you could add to the end of the post 'Todd makes this great point in the comments:', and then quote Todd's comment. This not only shows Todd that you really appreciate his comment (making him more likely to leave more comments in the future), but it also lets your readers know that there's an interesting conversation happening in the comments!5 - Ask your readers to comment! Feel free to ask your readers for their input. Close your post with 'So what do you think? Please tell us your thoughts in the comments section, we'd love to hear from you!' And when your readers do comment, make sure you follow all the steps above to highlight and praise their contributions.All of these steps will help you create an environment on your blog that encourages your readers to comment, and rewards them when they do. But believe it or not, the best ways to encourage your readers to comment on your blog, don't happen on your blog. Tomorrow I'll show you how the best way to get more comments on your blog, is to leave your blog.