Search Engine Spiders Crawling

No, it’s not a bad B horror movie title, it’s what search engines do to find your website. And making your web pages spider friendly is important to getting your content indexed in the search engines. One of my favorite tools is Summit Media Spider Simulator that not only spiders the page to see if it’s search engine friendly but also gives you a grade, letting you know if essential elements for search engine optimization are on the page. Another valuable tool is the W3C Markup Validator which will crawl the page to see if your code is valid according to the standards set by the World Wide Web Consortium. More valid your code, the easier it is for search engine spiders to crawl your page.

Most business owners assume that their web designers are testing their designs to make sure they’re search engine friendly but that’s not always the case. I generally recommend hiring a search engine marketing consultancy during the development phase for a website evaluation and to advise the designers on elements needed to make the pages crawlable for the search engines. Because it’s more cost efficient to fix a design issue during the development phase than once it’s launched.