Search Engine Compatibility

A fundamental to ensuring that your website appears in the search engine listings (also known as an "index") is making sure that search engine spiders can successfully "crawl" your website's pages to include them in the search listings.

A search engine spider is an automated web browser that must interpret your page's HTML code, just like a regular browser does. However, spiders are very unsophisticated web browsers, incompatible with many modern web technologies - such as frames, javascript and Flash, to name a few. These incompatible technologies are commonly referred to as "traps". A search engine compatibility review will identify these traps and suggest specific corrective actions.

Many websites are unintentionally designed with built-in search engine traps, severely limiting the search engine spiders' ability to read essential data on your website. This can be particularly detrimental if many or all of the website's links are contained within these traps. If a spider can't read your links, then it can't crawl your website.

Search engine optimization is often neglected during the website design process, when developers are focused on navigation, usability, and branding. As a result, many websites launch with fundamental problems which can be much harder to correct once the site is complete. Yet, many companies wait until their site fails to appear in the search engine listings before seeking expert advice.

Most search engines require 8-12 weeks before including a newly registered website in their search results. Launching your website with built-in traps, and then fixing it after-the-fact can mean that up to six months may pass before a single visitor is able to locate your site from a search engine.

That's a shame, because for most small businesses, search engine listings are the single-most economical source of website visitors.

A search engine compatibility review by MSH Marketing Group should be near the top of your "to-do" list when you are considering ways to increase your website traffic and maximize your search engine effectiveness. Let us conduct a search engine compatibility review on your existing website to identify common traps and other factors that could be hindering your search engine ranking.

For more information about Search Engine Compatibility, read our write-up which explains the difference between search engine compatibility & search engine optimization.

Try our new FREE Search Engine Compatibility Report Card.