Themes-based spiders represent search
engine companies' latest attempt to deliver
high-quality results to searchers. The
change is happening relatively slowly,
which gives webmasters a chance to measure
the impact on their ranking and modify
their sites accordingly. Find out if your
site is ready for a visit from a
themes-based spider.
A New Way To Rank Web Sites
At its most basic level, a theme is a
simple description of your site's focus.
If you've already optimized your site using
a descriptive
TITLE Tag and targeted
Keywords, you should have a pretty good
idea of your site's theme.
But do the search
engine spiders view it the same way? A
page-based spider will look at and index
each individual page of a Web site. You
could conceivably have hundreds of pages
listed individually in a search engine's
database, all of them optimized for
different keywords. Themes-based spiders
also look at individual pages in a site,
but then combine the results and analyze
the site in its entirety.
For example, imagine a site that contains
several pages devoted to drawn-thread
embroidery patterns and other pages that
discuss endangered desert tortoises and
Nevada ranchers. A page-based spider could
conceivably give both topics a high search
results ranking if the individual pages
were optimized correctly.
Not so with a themes-based spider. When it
mixes the keywords and content from the
different topics, it might decide that the
entire site is really devoted to Nevada
ranchers who use drawn-thread techniques to
embroider tortoises. That keyword phrase
might indeed get the site a #1 search
results rank, but chances are it would
generate very little traffic and isn't at
all what the webmaster had in mind.
How A Themes-Based Spider Works
Currently, there is no "pure"
themes-based spider indexing sites. Some
search engines have added themes to their
overall ranking algorithm, but the results
are integrated into the more traditional
ranking criteria. Those engines include:
Google, Inktomi, AltaVista, Excite, Lycos,
Fast, and WebCrawler.
Just like a page-based spider, a
themes-based spider crawls through your
site cataloging the following information:
- Your top-level
domain name and
subdirectory names.
- Individual pages' TITLE
tags.
- META Tags data.
- HTML Tags inside the
document's BODY section (Header
Tags, ALT
Tags, hyperlinks, etc.).
- Text content of the page.
- Inbound and outbound links.
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So far, this isn't any different from a
page-based spider, but the themes spider
isn't finished yet. When the spider
finishes crawling through the site, it then
determines the site's theme by evaluating
the pages as a whole, not individually.
Steps in this process include:
- Match keywords from the
META tag with page text to
identify keywords used most
frequently in the site.
- Identify and match keyword
phrases in the site.
- Weight the keywords,
keyword phrases, and links
using traditional ranking
methods that attach more
importance to keywords
contained in TITLE and header
tags.
- Give the site one entry in
the database according to the
theme the spider has selected.
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If you can't accurately describe your site
in one sentence and then optimize the page
content to reflect that focus, then you
have a problem. Your site's traffic will
suffer if the spider assigns a theme that
doesn't match your intended focus or
promotional strategy.
Optimizing Your Site For Themes
There's no reason to panic and tear apart a
site that is doing well. But if you're
having trouble getting to the top in some
engines, the lack of a coherent theme may
well be part of the problem.
Think about it: the absence of tightly
focused content and keywords will hurt you
in any search engine, whether it's
page-based or themes-based. Themes-based
spiders just magnify the problem.
Optimizing your site for themes is not much
different than more familiar search
engine optimization techniques.
As themes-based spiders grow in importance
though, you may find it more difficult to
optimize individual pages on your site for
widely differing topics. Keep themes-based
spidering in mind as you create new sites
and redesign existing ones. Consider
breaking up a single, multi-focused site
into different domains and linking between
them instead of trying to combine many
varied topics into a single site.
Remember The Basics
The basics of good site promotion haven't
changed: a TITLE
tag, META
tags, and good content with targeted
keywords and their synonyms sprinkled
liberally throughout. Pay close attention
to your inbound and outbound links: a high
link
popularity score increases your rank
with both traditional spiders and
themes-based spiders.
You spend so much valuable time designing a
great site. Make sure that
everyone can find it!
