HTML Help: Force Spider Revisits

I was told using a JavaScript to print the date on the page would force search engine spiders to visit your site more often because the search engines will see that the content changes frequently. True?

The search engines don't see the changed date, they read the source code that creates it. All they see is the same JavaScript code they saw the time before, rather than a changing date.

Even if they did see the date change, if the date was the only thing that changed it's not likely to help because it's not a significant change. It's possible it could even lower your rank if nothing else changes visit after visit.

The idea is to get indexed well NOW. To do that, it's better to have your keywords as close to the top of your code as possible, rather than pushed down in the code by a date changing JavaScript.

Hoping for improved rankings because of revisits is kind of like trying to cross a mud puddle in two leaps. You can't keep your feet dry by jumping across the puddle in two leaps, and you can't force your site to be ranked higher by using scripts that force your keywords deeper into your code.

You can place:

<meta name="revisit-after" content="30 days">

...in the <head> section of the page. You can define how often you update a page in an XML Sitemap. Neither those nor anything else will "force" a spider to do anything. Those tactics are treated as suggestions, but the spiders are sent out based on the search engine's own formula.

The best thing you can do to force revisits is to add new content as often as possible and to modify existing content if you can improve it. The more substantial changes they see, and the more often the changes are made, the more the spiders will visit.

You can also add a blog to your site and make a post at least two or three times a week. Search engines seem to love blogs.

If you add an XML Sitemap you can ping some search engines when you make changes. They'll revisit your sitemap faster than they'll spider your whole site over again.

This concludes the

HTML Help about Forcing Search Engine Spiders to Revisit a Website

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