here is a lot of talk about optimizing web sites for search engines, but what about optimizing your web site for potential clients?

Search-engine optimization (SEO) is about making it easy for a search engine to index your page. The easier it is for Google to figure out that you are a family lawyer in Minnesota, the better your page will register. This is why content is so important; the more “Minnesota” and “family law” appear in your content, the more clear it is that someone searching for “Minnesota family law” is looking for a page like yours.

But what about PCO (potential-client optimization)?

(more…)

The Official Google Blog says a bit about robots.txt, the file on your server that tells search engines how to access your site, what to index, and much more. From the OGB:

However, you may have a few pages on your site you don’t want in Google’s index. For example, you might have a directory that contains internal logs, or you may have news articles that require payment to access. You can exclude pages from Google’s crawler by creating a text file called robots.txt and placing it in the root directory. The robots.txt file contains a list of the pages that search engines shouldn’t access. Creating a robots.txt is straightforward and it allows you a sophisticated level of control over how search engines can access your web site.

The OGB article starts on a detailed instructional guide to robots.txt, with more to come. [via Lifehacker]