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Archiver > Freepages-Help > 2011-09 > 1316111452


From: "Ralph Taylor" <>
Subject: Re: [FreeHelp] FREEPAGES-HELP Why don't search engines find myrootsweb pages?
Date: Thu, 15 Sep 2011 12:30:52 -0600
References: <mailman.167.1316070027.30454.freepages-help@rootsweb.com>
In-Reply-To: <mailman.167.1316070027.30454.freepages-help@rootsweb.com>


Janice asked, re:
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~tomerbusby/GenealogyPages/
Busby_Historical_Pages.html (Note broken link due to word wrap)
"I would like for search engines to find these pages so I can share the
photos and the people's names relating to this. However, when I type in
keywords that are unique to my page, it never appears in the search. How do
I get my keywords into the source or, how do I get search engines to
find my pages so I can share them?"

There are several issues with search engines indexing your pages and
delivering them as hits in searches. Here are a few:

1. Timing -- SE bots "spider" the Web, page by page, to find content and
don't get through the whole Web every day. It may take a few weeks or months
for your pages to show up in searches.

2. Structure of the page -- SEs rely on the on heading tags (h1, h2, etc. --
think "outline") for indexing page content. If these tags are absent (as
with yours), your page is ignored by the search engines.

3. Operating system -- If, as Lorrie's message suggested, your site isn't
Linux-friendly, the bots may skip it because they're Linux critters.

4. Text vs. graphics -- Graphics indexing isn't yet as advanced as that for
text.

5. "Keywords" -- Most SEs have gone away from using keywords in the doc head
to assess and index content. (They got burned too often.)

6. Index/follow -- Meta statements in pages can tell a bot whether to index
a page or not and whether to follow links on the page or not. If you've used
noindex or nofollow, well-behaved bots will obey.

So, these suggestions:
-- Look up the use of heading tags and put them on your pages appropriately.

-- Make your site Linux-friendly. It's the OS for 99.9% of Web servers.

-rt_/)


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