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Be Kind to the Googlebots!

As I posted last week, I am currently working on optimizing this blog. In doing so, I came across something that I am now completely fascinated with (and mostly because of its name and how I imagine it to look in my head): the Googlebot.

(I think I imagine it to be something like the little obsessive-compulsive robot M-O that cleans things in WALL-E.)

So there's not actually a Googlebot - it's Google's search bot - or spider - software that searches the web and indexes the information it finds in the Google search engine. Here are some of the things the Googlebot likes:
  • Relevant and descriptive titles (blog title bar, blog post titles, titles in the permalinks)*
  • Relevant and descriptive labels (categories, tags)
  • Relevant and descriptive anchor text
  • You updating your blog often!
Anyway, these are some of the things I'm implementing in an effort to be kind to the Googlebots, so, again, please bear with me while I'm changing some things around (like titles, labels, and permalinks) and making new, shorter posts out of long, older posts.

* Followup: You should avoid changing post titles/permalinks, especially if your blog post has already been indexed. What happens is that somebody may do a search that brings up your blog post, but when he/she links to the page, the page no longer exists. So think through your blog's intention (if you're serious about your blog, of course) and try to get everything right the first time.
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