Your Search Engine Optimisation Expert – Sheldon Nesdale

Did you know that Google’s robot crawler can pretty much only read text?

It doesn’t see your pretty images, or flash, or javascript.

It only sees text.

Google has just added a new feature to Webmaster Tools that shows you exactly what GoogleBot sees.

To use Webmaster Tools you will need to sign up, and verify you own your website.

Then you can find it under the “Labs” tab, click on “Fetch as Googlebot”.

What will you see?

1. You’ll see the html source of your webpage (which you can do using your browser by clicking on “View Source”)
2. Response code (Eg 200 which means everything is fine, or 301 which means “temporary redirect”)
3. What type of server your website is on (Eg Apache or IIS/Windows)
4. Any scripts or CSS files which are called and included

Boring?

Yeah it is actually.

How you can use that to improve your Search Engine Optimisation

The point I want to make is that Google gobbles up text for breakfast.

• So if your main navigation is javascript, Googlebot probably can’t read it
• If you have text in your images, Googlebot can’t read it
• If you have keywords in your meta title, meta description, headings and content, you’re on to a winner.

Have no idea what I’m talking about?

4 Things You Can Do to Improve Your Search Engine Optimisation:

1. Free SEO Review of Your Website. Get tips to improve the search engine friendliness of your website, for free
2. The Search Engine Optimisation E-Book. Learn how to do SEO yourself with this low-cost ebook
3. Customised SEO Report for you and your website. Find out exactly what you need to do next to improve your Search Engine ranking
4. Search Engine Advertising with Google Adwords. Find out how you can buy a steady stream of pre-qualified prospects to your website