Remove the style sheet from your blog’s layout and design and you will see what search engines see when they visit.
What do they see first? What is left when you remove all the pretty? That’s what search engines see.
Things you need to know about search engines when they visit your blog:
- Search engines don’t “see” your design, only the words
- Search engines hunt for keywords
- Keyword usage and placement influences their importance
- Layout matters. Push content to the top of the physical page, not the bottom
- Frames, iframes and tables can block search engines from finding your content
- HTML/XHTML errors can stop a search engine from visitiing
- 404 page not found errors, dead, or moved links lead nowhere
- Flash, DHTML, or JavaScript which replaces text and have no descriptions are ignored
It is critical to ensure all such errors and road blocks are fixed. Search engines are now sophisticated enough to verify if your design and structure meets web standards. A poorly coded blog can lower your page rank score. And a poorly designed, error-filled blog can lead the robot or spider in a wrong direction, confuse it, or stop it in its tracks. If it has difficulty moving through your pages, it will stop.
Well-designed and web standard code allows the crawler to move easily through your site, which tells the search engine the site is designed with care and attention to detail and web standards.