Using Lynx for SEO Analysis
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In part one of this two-part series, you learned how to use Lynx to navigate web pages. You also discovered the meaning of the color coding the Lynx text browser gives its output, which you use to determine if the text is a hyperlink, plain text content, bold or italics. In this part, you'll learn how to analyze the information you uncover about your web site using Lynx.
It is vital that you have Lynx installed on your computer if you want to get the most out of this article. If you still do not have a copy, you can download it from here:
http://cid-c3bc6a3c5463e218.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/.Public/Lynx%20Text%20Browser.zip
I recommend reading the first part because you'll need the information it contains to properly understand the second article. This section will give detailed examples of how you are going to use Lynx to analyze search engine crawlability issues. It is like a physician using X-rays to look for problems inside a person’s body. You can do the same when you use Lynx to browse your website.
Make sure web pages link and navigation are crawlable
Due to rapid advances in web development, modern developers often use techniques that introduce problems in crawling. When your website is not crawlable, search engines will not properly index text content. Since your keywords are text content, if they are not found or prominent in your indexed pages, you will not rank very well, especially for long tail terms. And if you do not rank very well, it affects the traffic and profitability of your website.
It is important to know that what the Lynx text browser sees is very different from what you can see with normal web browsers. One of the most popular modern technologies for displaying content is Flash. To find out whether your Flash-based website is crawlable, you need to check three important things in Lynx:
- Navigation links
- Textual content
- Text found in images
Let’s start by demonstrating an actual Flash-based website, because they often face more crawling issues than HTML-based websites. One of my favorite Flash-based websites is http://www.2advanced.com/ .
Below is the screenshot of the home page, displayed entirely using Adobe Flash:
When you visit the website using a normal browser (Firefox, for example), you can see visible navigation links with labels that include Contact, Language, Home, Launch project, More details, Privacy and More News.
You can even see the detailed list of website navigation when you mouse over the phrase “Expand navigational array,” and you can see Flash-based navigational links that include “company,” “portfolio,” “services,” “case studies,” “recognition,” and many others to the right.
Flash-wise, this is a well-developed website. However, when the Lynx browser looks at the site, using the same kind of eyes as the search engine crawlers, it sees a very different picture:
So what happened?:
Navigation links. Those navigation links discussed above are not visible to the Lynx browser. This means that if Googlebot or other search engine crawlers land on the home page, they will not be able to crawl internal links pointing to other pages of the website. Thus, the crawlability of website from the home page is poor.
Textual content. The indexable content is not the same as that seen by normal web browsers. Even navigating on the visible “click here” link in Lynx will take you to nowhere.
Text found in images. Of course those images do not have alt tags, and therefore cannot be seen by Lynx.
If you have a website like this, and you are serious about ranking your home page in Google for both your main term and long tail keywords, it will be difficult because the search engine spiders will not be able to find content to index.
Next: What you should do if you have uncrawlable links and content >>
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