This week a quick tip on how to check what content on your web page that the search engine spiders will actually view as visible content. The visible content on your pages is one of the main factors that the search engines will use to work out the relevance of your pages to any search term people use.

Search engine spiders or robots act as text only browsers. This means that they will not be able to read the content in any graphical or Flash based content on your pages. If you want a quick way of seeing what they can read then you can do one of the following:

1) Download a text only browser such as Lynx. This will work in the same way as a browser, what this browser doesn’t show it is unlikely that the search engines can see.

2) Use a spider simulator such as this one. This will show you the content that the spider can read but also the links that it can follow on the page.

3) Really quick way is to open the web page and press Ctrl A. This will highlight all the visible content on the page. Then copy and paste in a Word or Notepad doc. The content that appears is what the search engines can see. Any text that you can highlight with your mouse is visible text that the search engines can read.

Simple hey.