How Spiders See Your Site

A person gets so used to seeing their web pages, imagining how spiders see them is an unfamiliar task.

Yet, it's prudent a person does know what spiders see. Not only is the information good to have, it also provides a perspective unavailable with a normal visual viewing of the web page.

The additional perspective may suggest improvements you would not otherwise have recognized.

Embedded in the this article is a place where you can type in a web page URL and see for yourself. You'll be presented with:

1. The web page title.

2. Meta tag keywords.

3. Meta tag description.

4. H1, H2, H3, H4, and H5 headers.

5. The a links on the page.

6. The number of words in the content and how many are unique.

7. An alphabetized list of the words in the content, containing:

   • The word.
   • How many times it occurs.
   • The word's density compared to the other words in the content.

8. The same information as the alphabetized list but ordered by the number of times individual words occur in the content.

9. The web page content itself — plain text, no HTML tags — the words spiders see after tags are stripped.

If you type in a URL that's redirected, you'll have the option of scanning the redirect URL with a click.

Ever wonder what spiders really see at your websites? Using Spider-See within this article may result in surprising revelations.

In addition, the article contains something new — a way to import the complete functionality of the Spider-See software into your web page with a line of JavaScript or, if you use WordPress, the option of using a shortcode instead.

You'll gain a new point of view of your web pages.

Using the Spider-See Software

In the light blue-bordered box below is a text field and a button. Type your URL into the text field and click the button.

Optionally, you can uncheck the "ignore common words" feature. (The software considers these to be common words: an, and, in, is, it, of, that, the, this, to, and all one-character words except "I")

The Spider-See functionality can be put on your website with one line of code. What you see within the above light blue-bordered box is what you get.

The entire functionality is on your website. Your site visitor never visits a Willmaster.com page when using Spider-See.

But the design is likely to be different. The design on your web page depends on the CSS of your website. Paste the line of code into a test web page and see what it looks like.

To accomodate everything variation I could think of and still make it work just fine on responsive websites, the presentation is within scrollable divs. If the content would be wider than the available width, the div can be scrolled horizontally to see the balance.

Putting Spider-See On Your Website With One Line of Code

If your website doesn't use WordPress, or you want to use JavaScript regardless, put this line of JavaScript into your web page where you want the Spider-See software to show up.

<script type="text/javascript" src="https://www.willmaster.com/library/external/SpiderSee.php?js=yes"></script>

If your website uses WordPress, you have the option of publishing the Spider-See software with a shortcode instead of the JavaScript. To publish with a shortcode, do these steps.

1. Download, install, and activate the Insert Here WordPress plugin.

2. Pop this shortcode into your post or page where you want the Spider-See software to be.

   [insert_here url="https://www.willmaster.com/library/external/SpiderSee.php"]
   

That's all there's to it.

Let your own site visitors enjoy the functionality of the Spider-See software you provide on your website.

You may let people use it for free, put it into a membership area, provide its use as a bonus, or charge for its use at your website. Or have it available only for yourself.

They may be startled at what they realize about their own web pages.

(This article first appeared in Possibilities newsletter.)

Will Bontrager