Site Navigation for SEM

As we alluded to in an early section of the tutorial, search engines gather information about websites by sending out software “robots” (a.k.a.,. spiders, crawlers) to scan the Internet.  To find their way from one site to another and to navigate within a single site search engines robots locate and follow links.  These automated programs locate information, retrieve the data and store what is found in massive databases.  Once additional software analyzes or “indexes” the acquired material it can then be made available to respond to a user’s search queries. 

For marketers the process used by search engines to build their information repositories needs to be understood if a marketer’s website content is to be fully included.  A marketer has no chance of using search engines to drive traffic to their site if information on the site is not contained within a search engine’s database.  This, of course, means the site must be accessible to search engine robots. 

In this portion of our Fundamentals of Search Engine Marketing tutorial we begin a discussion of issues related to assisting search engine robots gather information by exploring the effects website navigation has on search marketing efforts.  For the purposes of search engine marketing, site navigation refers to techniques used to insure search engines are able to find and access content contained within a website.