subject: 5 Under Used Search Engine Tips That Will Improve Your Se Rankings [print this page] I discovered a couple of these search engine tips by accident whenI was putting up a brand new website awhile back, a blog about nothing. Just so you know, it is a wordpress blog because it's the easiest to optimie for the search engines. I use some plugins on it, one for title, description and keywords, one for social bookmarking and another for adsense ads.
I also have a thing in it that pings google to let it know there is a new post and to come look at it for addition in the google blog search. Regrettably that was the very first thing I decide to put in.
Like a dummy I put it in before the site was completed and while creating the web page I'd made a handful of test posts and tried a few different arrangements. Then I discovered a predicament with some of the links not functioning.
While I was working on that problem I went to debug mode on my server and saw that I'd had 3 requests for a robots.txt file and 3 for a favicon.ico and they all showed up as not existing or 404. No, I didn't have a custom 404 page yet, either. As I mentioned, I was in the routine of building the site.
Considering this is a whole new site with no links to it it would seem logical that google was the one who spidered the site and my stats showed that. Considering google was the only visitor it also seems logical they are the ones to request the two files, the robots.txt as well as the favicon, and stats show that.
Big deal you say? google puts more trust in sites it considers professional sites and it has certain expectations from the sites it considers professional. Nothing new about a search engine spider requesting a robots.txt file but I'm wondering if google gives a minor mark off if you don't have one. Same with the favicon file.
The surprise in the whole thing was the spider even bothered with the favicon.ico file. Which lead to wondering if the lack of either files could hurt your serps.
Google also considers sites as professional if they have a privacy page and a contact page. Those two show that you have nothing to hide. Lol, yes, I know they may be faked and I'm sure Google does too but if the lack these things hurts then you might as well add them to your sites.
You will look a lot more like a site that is run professionally than you will a web site slapped up to make a quick sale. Which site do you think google is going to favor? A sloppy site or a site that has things it likes to see.
One more mark of a professional sites is having a site map. Either an html map or a xml site map. If you don't have one go find an xml sitemap maker or make an html file to use as a site map.
The 5 tips that a lot of people don't use are as follows. Professional site designers and established website owners engaged in SEO should know them but the average guy doesn't have a clue.
robots.txt
favicon.ico
contact.html page
privacy.html page
sitemap.html or xml
There you have it, 5 search engine tips you seldom hear about and the majority of people just don't do because they don't realize they should. Just doing these simple little things will get you better search engine rankings than those who don't use them. Oh, yes, you should have an 'about.html' page too so that gives you six search engine tips. Use them and you will rank higher than those who don't.
