How to Write for Robots

Write Content that Increases Your Site's Search Engine Ranking



In the 1951 SciFi thriller The Day the Earth Stood Still, Helen, played by Patricia Neal, saved her life by knowing how to speak to Gort, the robot. Here are some tips for getting your content ready for the robots that crawl your web pages to index the page content for search engines:

1. Create lots of relevant content
Some experts suggest that you publish 100 pages of content relevant to your potential customers! Every page you can add toward this is going to help your relative ranking, so start your journey of a thousand steps that begins with the first step ...

2. Identify keywords for your site
Use the words your potential visitors are likely to use to search for you on Google or other search engines. To generate keyword ideas, check out Google's AdSense Keyword Tool.





This is a useful tool because it tells you what search words people entered and how many times. The Keyword Tool even allows you to make a list of the keywords you want to use and can export the list into a variety of formats.

3. Use the keywords in certain ways
Keywords earn even greater relevancy by how they are used throughout your site. Use keywords in page titles, page urls, image descriptions, subtitles and, of course, within the paragraph itself, emboldened. It would be ideal if your domain name itself contains the most important key word. Do not over-use your keywords; your total of a single keyword per page should not exceed 8 as there is some evidence that using more than 8 is considered spamming and your site ranking will be penalized.

4. Do not use full-page Flash
Do not use full-page Flash movies, especially on the home page. This blocks some robots from crawling your site. If the Flash movie is an intro or splash screen movie on the home page, it can block the entire site from being indexed, and therefor found, on Google.

5. Use DIVs not Tables
Do not use tables as your primary way of formatting your page; use divisions instead. Divisions expose your content to the Googlebot. Beware: many sitebuilders use tables instead of divisions to create layout boxes.

So get ready for the GoogleBot invasion by preparing your content, and don't forget the magic words

Gort, Klaatu barada nikto

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