search engine optimization question

Bob Bedford

I've a question about generating pages for search engines.

It's possible to detect a bot coming on a website and then show a complete
other page for it ?
My main page is mainly graphic, with a form. Quite no text at all. I would
preffer instead to show a site description to bots ! Not spamming at all,
just trying to tell to the bots that my site is not what people see and just
a search engine, but a real site with real potential.

How to do so ?

bob

Sep 29 '05 #1

Nicholas Sherlock

Bob Bedford wrote:

I've a question about generating pages for search engines.

It's possible to detect a bot coming on a website and then show a
complete other page for it ?
My main page is mainly graphic, with a form. Quite no text at all. I
would preffer instead to show a site description to bots ! Not spamming
at all, just trying to tell to the bots that my site is not what people
see and just a search engine, but a real site with real potential.

How to do so ?

Use alternate text on your images that matches the text on the graphic.

Cheers,
Nicholas Sherlock

Sep 29 '05 #2

Adam

On Thu, 29 Sep 2005 07:54:18 +0200, Bob Bedford wrote:

I've a question about generating pages for search engines.

It's possible to detect a bot coming on a website and then show a complete
other page for it ?
My main page is mainly graphic, with a form. Quite no text at all. I would
preffer instead to show a site description to bots ! Not spamming at all,
just trying to tell to the bots that my site is not what people see and just
a search engine, but a real site with real potential.

How to do so ?

Dunno! But sounds like a good idea though!

I thought search engines don't *only* search "home" pages though ...
providing there are decent links to further pages that they can follow
easily - ie. not buried under a Flash navigation bar or something.

I've often wondered about server redirection (is that the right term?)
- as sometimes my menus are generated from a database/back-end admin
system, where there are no "static" links to follow. But it all looked
pretty complicated - and (possibly) too dependent on server
configuration that I'd have no control over.

Adam.

Sep 29 '05 #3

Bob Bedford

"Nicholas Sherlock" <n_********@hotmail.com> a écrit dans le message de
news: dh**********@lust.ihug.co.nz...

Bob Bedford wrote:

I've a question about generating pages for search engines.

It's possible to detect a bot coming on a website and then show a
complete other page for it ?
My main page is mainly graphic, with a form. Quite no text at all. I
would preffer instead to show a site description to bots ! Not spamming
at all, just trying to tell to the bots that my site is not what people
see and just a search engine, but a real site with real potential.

How to do so ?

Use alternate text on your images that matches the text on the graphic.

Cheers,
Nicholas Sherlock

Thanks for your reply Nicholas,

Already tried that but as for what I got from internet, google doesn't use
it anymore.

Sep 29 '05 #4

Philip Ronan

"Bob Bedford" wrote:

I've a question about generating pages for search engines.

It's possible to detect a bot coming on a website and then show a complete
other page for it ?
My main page is mainly graphic, with a form. Quite no text at all. I would
preffer instead to show a site description to bots ! Not spamming at all,
just trying to tell to the bots that my site is not what people see and just
a search engine, but a real site with real potential.

How to do so ?

Don't.

What you're proposing (serving different content to search engines) is
called "cloaking". Not only does it annoy users when they discover that the
search terms they are looking for don't exist on your page, but it is also
liable to get your site blacklisted by Google. (See their guidelines at
<http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html#quality>.)

Are you using graphics to display text in your pages? Don't do that either.
<http://webpagesthatsuck.com/biggest-web-design-mistakes-in-2004-part2.html>
explains why (scroll down to #9)

Phil

--
phil [dot] ronan @ virgin [dot] net
http://vzone.virgin.net/phil.ronan/

Sep 29 '05 #5

Bob Bedford

> Don't.

What you're proposing (serving different content to search engines) is
called "cloaking". Not only does it annoy users when they discover that
the
search terms they are looking for don't exist on your page, but it is also
liable to get your site blacklisted by Google. (See their guidelines at
<http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html#quality>.) I want to put some terms on the other page that are related to my site. I
won't and I'm not interested to get people not being involved by the content
of my site.
Are you using graphics to display text in your pages? Don't do that
either.
<http://webpagesthatsuck.com/biggest-web-design-mistakes-in-2004-part2.html>
explains why (scroll down to #9)

I don't use images to show text, but my main page is only a search form for
articles and it doesn't help for referencing

Sep 29 '05 #6

Philip Ronan

"Bob Bedford" wrote:

I want to put some terms on the other page that are related to my site. I
won't and I'm not interested to get people not being involved by the content
of my site.
I don't care, quite frankly. And neither do Google. What you're proposing is
more like search engine suicide than search engine optimization. You may
*think* it's a good idea, but it isn't.
I don't use images to show text, but my main page is only a search form for
articles and it doesn't help for referencing

Then put some more content in there. How about a list of links to your most
popular or most recent articles, or a rotating list of links to
randomly-selected articles? How about a bit of text explaining what your
site is for, what it does, and who might benefit from using it?

Your time and effort will be much better spent producing a useful,
informative and/or entertaining site than by playing silly games with the
search engine robots.

--
phil [dot] ronan @ virgin [dot] net
http://vzone.virgin.net/phil.ronan/

Sep 29 '05 #7

Big Bill

On Thu, 29 Sep 2005 10:06:09 +0100, Philip Ronan
<in*****@invalid.invalid> wrote:

"Bob Bedford" wrote:

I want to put some terms on the other page that are related to my site. I
won't and I'm not interested to get people not being involved by the content
of my site.

I don't care, quite frankly. And neither do Google. What you're proposing is
more like search engine suicide than search engine optimization. You may
*think* it's a good idea, but it isn't.

I don't use images to show text, but my main page is only a search form for
articles and it doesn't help for referencing

Then put some more content in there. How about a list of links to your most
popular or most recent articles, or a rotating list of links to
randomly-selected articles? How about a bit of text explaining what your
site is for, what it does, and who might benefit from using it?

Your time and effort will be much better spent producing a useful,
informative and/or entertaining site than by playing silly games with the
search engine robots.

Philip! Stop being coy - explain the concept of the z-index to this
nice man at once!

BB
--
www.kruse.co.uk/ se*@kruse.demon.co.uk
Elvis does my SEO

Oct 2 '05 #8

R. Rajesh Jeba Anbiah

Bob Bedford wrote:

I've a question about generating pages for search engines.

It's possible to detect a bot coming on a website and then show a complete
other page for it ?
My main page is mainly graphic, with a form. Quite no text at all. I would
preffer instead to show a site description to bots ! Not spamming at all,
just trying to tell to the bots that my site is not what people see and just
a search engine, but a real site with real potential.

<news:11**********************@g43g2000cwa.googleg roups.com> (
http://groups.google.com/group/comp....7bb41576afe16d )

--
<?php echo 'Just another PHP saint'; ?>
Email: rrjanbiah-at-Y!com Blog: http://rajeshanbiah.blogspot.com/

Oct 3 '05 #9

chipgraphics

The Sitemap Generator is an open source project developed by Google. You can find it [here]. The [color=SeaGreen]sitemap_gen.py[/color] script analyzes your web server and generates one or more Sitemap files. These files are XML listings of content you make available on your web server. The files can then be directly submitted to Google.

They have more open source projects and API's for developers that you can use to benefit your site. Their open source section is [here].

Best of Luck,

~ Chipgraphics

Oct 3 '05 #10