Search engines are an inspectors best friend (or at least can be). They drive traffic to your website and hook you up with jobs. It's extremely important for you to get your site to the top of the list when someone is searching for an inspector in your area.
The way that your site gets listed and the text used in the description is determined partially by what's known as a search engine 'spider' for the way they crawl through the web (no need for arachnaphobia here).
Depending on your website logs you can actually see when the spiders look at your site. For our site
www.HomeInspectorPro.com
approximately 40 spiders visit a day and crawl through the entire site.
Spiders see the web differently than your clients will. It's extremely important that the text on your page is readable by the spiders as the text is a large part of what determines your ranking. They don't see graphics, they don't see flash. Some can read PDF's.
Check out
www.iwebtool.com/spider_view
and type your website into the box and view your site through the eyes of a spider. You might be very surprised. I've looked at sites that were full of content but due to errors on the page the spider only saw the first paragraph, completely missing the rest content. If this is happening to you, you have to figure out why. Post your site here if you'd like me to look at it and help you out.
More tips to come!
