What are search spiders?

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Search engine spiders crawl web pages and create lists of words, with different approaches used by search engines. SEO tactics include cross-linking, using keyword phrases, and meta tags to attract spiders and improve page rank. Manual submission and link spamming can also be used.

Search engine spiders are software programs that sift through the contents of web pages and create lists of words that appear on those pages. This process is called web crawling. The program visits page after page, following each link and recording the contents of each page as it scrolls like a spider crawling between pages. This content is then added to the search engine’s index.

Different search engines use different approaches when submitting their search engine spiders. Some track every word on a page. Others record meta tags, titles and subtitle words. Indexing the 100 most common words on a page is another tactic used by a search engine spider.

Website links are what feed search engine spiders. The more often spiders see links to a website, the more often they visit. This gives spiders more information to index a site and causes the site to appear higher in search engine results for search terms related to that site.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) involves using specific tactics to attract search engine spiders to a site. Different ways to use SEO are manually submitting a site for inclusion in a search engine, cross-linking, using keyword phrases, and using meta tags. This will help drive traffic and spiders to a site.

You can also manually request a visit from the search engine spider. This involves submitting a site to a search engine for review and can be done for free or by paid submission, depending on the search engine. The search engine will then send its own spider to the site. This may not help with page rank, but it will include the site in engine listings.
Cross-linking involves linking to pages within a website. This will prompt search engine spiders to keep browsing the same pages on the same site, indexing as they go. Link spamming is also used, but it can hurt site page rank and SEO.
Using keyword phrases means including within the text of a website certain phrases that a user might search for on a search engine. Search engine spiders see them, see how many times they appear on a page, and index them. Eventually, if enough people search for these keywords, they’ll be directed to the site.
Meta tags are special codes placed within a website that allow you to specify what search engine spiders will index. It is important to remember that the spiders will check the meta tags against the page content and, if they don’t match, they will reject them. Meta tags are not visible on a website unless someone views the website’s source code.




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