Posts Tagged ‘Explained’
Google Sitemaps Explained – How To Use Google Sitemaps
Monday, October 4th, 2010Three Ways To Index Your Site With Google Sitemaps [Hard,
Hard, And Simple]
Google has recently implemented a program where any webmaster
can make a Sitemap of their site and submit it for indexing by
Google. It is a quick and simple way for you to keep your site
constantly indexed and updated in Google.
The program is appropriately called Google Sitemaps.
In order for you to best use Sitemaps, you must have an XML
generated file on your site that will transmit or send any
updates, changes, and data to Google. XML (Extensible Markup
Language)is everywhere these days, you have probably seen the
orange XML logo on many web sites and its evenly associated with
Blogging because Blogs use XML/RSS feeds to syndicate their
content.
Today RSS is known frequently as ‘Really Simple Syndication’ but its
original acronym stood for ‘Rich Site Summary’. XML is only
simple code like HTML and it is used to syndicate your content
to all interested parties.
And the interested party in this case is Google. By making
Sitemaps, Google is really asking webmasters to take charge of
the indexing and updating of their sites. In the end, doing the
Googlebot’s job!
This is a ‘Excellent’ thing! With the steady influx of new web sites
growing rapidly, indexing all this material will become a
challenge, even with the resources of Google. With Sitemaps,
websmasters can now take charge and make sure their site is
crawled and indexed.
Please note, indexing your site with Sitemaps WON’T improve your
rankings in Google. You will still be competing with the other
sites in Google for top positions. But with Sitemaps you can
make sure all your pages are crawled and indexed quickly by
Google.
There are some other huge advantages of using Google’s Sitemaps -
mainly you have control over a few key variables, attributes or
tags. To clarify this as simply as possible, your XML powered
sitemap file will have this simple code for each page of your
site:
http://www.yoursite.com/ 1.0 2005-07-03T16:18:09+00:00 daily
Along with ‘urlset’ tags at the beginning and end of your code,
and an XML version indication – that’s in the end your XML file!
File size will depend on the number of webpages you have.
Taking a closer look at this XML file:
place – http://www.yoursite.com – name of your webpage
priority – you set the priority you want Google to place on that
page in your site. You can prioritize your pages: 0.0 being the
least, 1.0 being the highest, 0.5 is in the midpoint. This is ONLY
relative to your site. It will not affect your rankings. Why is
this vital? You have certain pages on your site that are
more vital than others, (home page, high profit page, opt-in
page, etc.) by placing high priority on these pages, you will
increase their importance in Google.
last modified – when you last modified that page, this timestamp
allows crawlers to avoid recrawling pages that haven’t changed.
exchange frequency – you can tell Google how evenly you exchange that
particular page. Never, weekly, daily, hourly, and so on – if
you frequently update your page this could be extremely
vital.
Why do I need a XML Generator?
In order for this XML sitemap file on your site to be constantly
updated, you need a Generator that will spider your site, list
all the urls and involuntarily feed them to Google. Thus
constantly updating your site in Google’s massive index or
database. Keep in mind, Google also gives you the option of
submitting a simple text file with all your URLs.
Now there is by now a flood of these generators popping up!
Different ways of generating your XML powered sitemap file. More
are probably appearing as you read this. For your convenience,
three ways to generate your XML Sitemaps file are listed not more than:
Hard – Google’s Python Generator
That’s a relative term, if you know your server like the back of
your hand and installing scripts doesn’t scare the bejesus out
of you, you’re probably smiling at the word hard. Google
supplies a link to a generator which you can download and set up
on your server. It will cough up your sitemap XML file and
involuntarily feed it to Google. Google XML Generator
https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/docs/en/sitemap-
generator.html
In order for this Generator to work, Python version 2.2 must be
installed on your web server – many servers don’t have this. If
you know what you’re doing, this will probably be a excellent choice.
You don’t need a Google Account to use Sitemaps but it’s
positive because you can footstep your sitemap’s progress and
view diagnostic information. If you by now have a further Google
Account gmail, Google Alerts, etc. just use that one to sign in
and follow directions from there.
To submit your Sitemap using an HTTP question for, issue your question for
to the following URL:
www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/ping?sitemap=sitemap_url
Hard – A PHP Code Generator
This is a php generator that you can place on your server. This
generator will spider your site, and produce your XML sitemap
file. Download the phpSitemapNG and upload it to your server.
Run the generator to get your XML sitemap file and send it to
Google. PHP Generator http://enarion.net/google/
Again, this is only hard to do if you don’t know your way around
PHP files or scripts.
Simple – Free Online Generator
These Generators are popping up everywhere, and Google now keeps
a list of these ‘third party suppliers’ of generators on their
site. Find them here: http://code.google.com/sm_thirdparty.html
One of the simplest to use is http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/ and
you can index up to 500 pages with this online Generator very
quickly and it will give you the sitemap XML file Google needs
to index your site. It will go into your site, spider it and
index all your pages into an XML sitemap of your site. You can
download this file, Compressed or Non- compressed and make minor
changes such as setting the priority, varying frequency, etc.
Then upload this file to your site as sitemap.xml to the root
directory of your server i.e. where you have your homepage. Then
say Google Sitemaps of your XML file and you’re in business.
Of course, the only drawback, if you constantly add pages to
your site you will need to also add these pages to your XML
sitemap file. This won’t be much of a problem unless you’re
daily count pages to your site – then you will need a touch
like the PHP or Python generator to do all this for you
involuntarily.
Google is still the major search engine on the web so getting
your pages indexed and updated quickly is the major reason to
use Google Sitemaps. If you want your site to remain competitive
it’s probably the wisest route to take.
Search Engine Optimisation Explained: Part 2
Monday, July 19th, 2010What vs who – clarify what it is your site offers, and ensure that this is clearly articulated right through its content. Unless you are a “household name” brand, the focus should be on what you produce, sell or service, not on who you are.
Searchers usually refine a query with 2-4 words, e.g. “stainless steel spade” It is incredible how many sites waste vital opportunities with fatuous lines like “Welcome to my web site.”
Define the key words or phrases that potential customers would use to find you. Ensure that those are prominent components of every title, description, bearing and paragraph, and part of a coherent sales pitch. For example the Johnson spade manufacturer’s site title ought not be “Welcome to the Johnson Agricultural Implements Web Site.” Instead, a minimalist “Stainless steel spades by Johnson” would provide maximum keyword density.
Content is King
The goal of search engines is to deliver the most relevant content for each search
Your goal is to make sure your content is relevant to any search made for harvest or air force you place forward! The best way to ensure “free” prominence for your site is to provide valuable, in-depth, relevant content. A few lines of explanatory text buried inside a Flash animation do not do this. Product reviews, case studies, white papers, client testimonials, newsletters and manufacturers specifications are excellent content creation sources.
Make each page unique, and target a specific key word or phrase in meta-tags and body text.
Sites constructed completely in Flash might look fantastic, but they are destined for mediocrity in the “free” search engine traffic stakes.
No Page More Than Two Clicks Away
Wherever you are within a site, no page should be more than 2 clicks away from you. The search engines will usually only drill 3 layers deep. If you want all content indexed, this is a crucial issue, usually resolved via a Home page link to a site map page which in turn has text links to every internal page. A recent alternative is the Google Site Maps submission service which is well worth the effort of signing up to, not least for the brilliant statistical information Google will provide you!
It is also vital to provide hyperlinks to main internal pages from within Home Page body text. This elevates their importance, and reinforces keywords or phrases within the Home Page with relevant supporting content.
Mighty Meta-tags
There are many meta-tags. Most are ignored. Some, like the “keyword” tag are now less used by search engines due to persistent abuse. But, there are still two “Head” section elements crucial to your goal of a steady stream of qualified traffic. Both provide an opportunity to control exactly what viewers see by way of search engine results, and thus influence viewer’s choice to select your site from that list. Both provide valuable information to the search engines as they try to determine the site’s theme, category, type etc;
First is the Title, the content of which is showed on the top line of the browser when viewing a site. The page title is also used as the “headline” showed when/if it appears on a search engine’s search results page. This is a crucial 1st impression, and again, “Welcome to My Web Site” does not cut the mustard. Summarise your offerings in less than 10 words, ensuring that the primary keywords or phrase is pre-eminent, thus ensuring maximum keyword density.
Second is the Description tag, evenly used verbatim in search engine’s search results page. Again, this gives you an opportunity to influence a searcher’s click-through choice, and should reinforce the message in the title in less than 25 words / 200 characters. Again, the primary keywords or phrase should occur at the start of the description to ensure accent, and total character count should be restricted to 200 in order to maintain maximum keyword density.
Dubious Practices
Necessity is the protect of invention, and the vital importance of Top 10 search engine rankings has spawned some seriously dodgy mechanisms to enable sites to climb to the top of the heap. These have ranged from the simple tricks of hidden text to the mysteries of doorway and hallway pages, link farms, and on to the intricacies of cloaking and redirection.
Basic rule of thumb should be – don’t do anything which might be construed as spamming, or subverting the search engines indexes.
Once a site is banned from a search engine index, it’s pretty much dead in the water. The search engines are permanently on the alert to newly exposed loopholes and close them quickly once discussion of new “trick” starts in search engine forums and list servers. Instead, rise to the top of the heap on merit, it’s a better long-term strategy!
Site Submissions
Having rebuilt your site in a search engine friendly fashion, how do you ensure it’s included within the indexes of the various search engines. This is a further area which has changed dramatically. A few fleeting years ago, listings were free. Not that long ago, you’d have to buy into a 48 hourly indexing process on Inktomi etc to ensure you stayed listed. Such a system delivered excellent value to the customer whilst generating excellent revenue for the search engines.
The state of flux seems to have eased. Indexing footpaths have been constructed between linked sites – to the point where if you have no excellent links TO your site, you may not be indexed at all, regardless of manual submissions.
The “Submission to 10,000 Search Engines for $99.95″ was never excellent value, and is even less so today.
Summary
In terms of total traffic potential, the three main search engines are Google, Yahoo and MSN, each of which feed their results into sundry subsidiary search engines and portals. The Huge Three account for around 90% of all searches performed on the Internet. They are all now “spider” type engines, which index the content of web sites in an automated manner, and are not hierarchical, human-edited directories. They all have supplementary “sponsored listings” derived from PPC advertising subscription systems.
For a site owner, search engine optimisation of your web site is now even more vital than it ever was. Your goal of a steady stream of qualified traffic is best met by ensuring you have the best content, organised/optimised in the best manner, and supplemented by well designed and managed PPC campaigns.
If you are a web designer, you have an obligation to your clients to ensure their sites are built in a manner which facilitates search engine indexing, instead of impeding it. Establish the function first, and the form as a lesser issue.
If you are business plotting a new web site (or contemplating reconstruction of an existing site), insist on making SEO the most vital design criteria, it will save you cash in the long term, and ensure the return on investment (ROI) timetable is substantially shortened.
RSS Explained in Plain English
Tuesday, February 9th, 2010RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a method of delivering web content to users that does not automatically require a web browser. If you want RSS clarified in plain English, then read this article to gain a greater understanding of this technology.
Users can be updated as soon as new content is added. RSS is most commonly used on blogs and news sites. Website owners can then syndicate the RSS feeds so other sites can publish the content (sometimes just the titles of the new content is in print).
RSS has countless benefits. It lets fixed web users keep up to date with your content. Some people are simply too busy, or they forget to check their favorite websites evenly.
RSS lets them subscribe to your feed, notifying them when your site has been updated. They can then either read the new content in their RSS reader or click the link through to your website. It is up to you to choose whether you will deliver the full content to their reader, or just the title and summary of the new post or article.
RSS feeds can increase your traffic significantly. Just by letting your readers know that your site has been updated, you can bring people back over and over again.
To ensure that people click through to your site, make your RSS titles compelling and exciting. By also generating curiosity, people are more likely to stay your site. That is why summary RSS feeds are ultimate in many situations, rather than full feeds.
RSS feeds should be a part of your search engine optimization and traffic generation strategy and as such, you should endeavor to stick to your SEO strategy as much as possible.
If you are using a blog platform like Wordpress for your site then no work on your part is required to generate a RSS feed. Wordpress involuntarily makes a feed and provides a subscribe link in your navigation. There are also many Wordpress plugins that control and customize RSS feeds.
To receive an RSS feed, users just need a feed reader. Many email programs, such as Mozilla Thunderbird, now place forward RSS feed readers. Some other standard RSS feed readers include:
AmphetadeskFeedReaderNewsGator
To add a feed to your reader, simply find the URL of the RSS feed on the website or blog you want to footstep. Sometimes the URL will be given to you; other times you may need to right click on the RSS icon and select “copy link place” or similar command.
Then simply paste this URL into your reader Add Feed window and the 10 newest news feeds will involuntarily downloaded (webmasters may choose more or less than ten).
In addition to software there are also internet based feed readers such as Google Reader, Bloglines, Feedbucket, RocketRSS Reader, and My Yahoo. Whichever method your users prefer to use, they will reap the benefits of RSS feeds and updates from your site as they happen.
Now that I have clarified RSS to you in plain English, you can start using it as part of your marketing plot. RSS provides visitors with an brilliant way to footstep new content on their favorite websites. On the other hand, webmasters will like being able to syndicate their new content to many readers, whilst gaining potential traffic and increased earnings from their site.
Pagerank Explained
Sunday, January 24th, 2010PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “vital” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “vital.”
Vital, high-feature sites receive a higher PageRank, which Google remembers each time it conducts a search. Of course, vital pages mean nothing to you if they don’t match your query. So, Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both vital and relevant to your search. Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines all aspects of the page’s content (and the content of the pages between to it) to determine if it’s a excellent match for your que
SEO tips can help you to get higher Yahoo or Google listings, but only if you use them. Most people reckon that they know better, even so called SEO professionals who have to use PPC advertising to get their websites listed highly enough to be seen. Who are they to tell us what to do, when they cannot it themselves?
I have had some of them write to me criticizing my ‘crap’ HTML and also my ‘useless’ between strategies. My site has ‘only a Page Rank of 3′. So what? It is sitting at between #1 on #5 on Google from day to day, at # 1 to #4 on Yahoo from day to day and at #1 on MSN. I will gladly accept their criticism of my HTML and between when they achieve the same. Till then, perhaps they would be better buying my book that complaining about my websites!
I would feel more predisposed to them if they stopped criticizing me – I only started to do the same to them when I got sick of their comments when they could not emulate my results. Who am I, a rank amateur, to beat them in the SEO stakes!! In fact, I have been at this for many years.
So, SEO tip #1 – don’t believe anything you are told unless those telling you it have at least one of their websites in the top 5 on all the major search engines for a competitive keyword. Mine has >800 million other results on Google.
Tip 2 – use classical search engine optimization. Use Meta tags because some search engines still use them. The main one is the Description Meta tag – Keywords is not so vital but use it anyhow. It does not hurt you, so use them.
The third tip relates to the title of your website. There are two points that relate to this. The first is that it should be the best keyword that you can find that relates to your niche or website. That means a excellent demand and low supply, though too much is sometimes written about this since such keywords are not simple to find. If you can’t a touch with low supply, just use what you want and choose to compete against them. Somebody has to be top, and why can’t it be you? Too many people give up in SEO too quickly. Probably because we are told not to compete against the huge boys – by these huge boys!!
The second point is that the title of your site need not be stated on every web page. My web page titles are those of the page, not the site. The graphics are the same, but the title is the keyword that they page is optimized for. Why do otherwise? Yet 99.99% do (just a guess!). Then fourth of my SEO tips is related to the headings on each page. The main title of the page should be in H1 tags, and the bearing in H2 tags. You don’t need any more, but any subheadings can go into H3 tags, but should contain text that could be construed as minor keywords.
I might be incorrect, but who says? I have found that if you ignore the huge guys, and compete against them, they can be beat. Check out what they are trying to sell you and you will notice that much of it is obsolete. Such as site generation and article generation software. That’s not an SEO tip, just a word to the wise, from the not so wise. I have no pretensions, but I know where my home page is on Google – and Yahoo – and MSN. Just search for ‘article air force’.
The fifth SEO tip is to use your keywords sparingly. Most people still reckon that 1% – 3% keyword density is ultimate, yet it is really too much. There is an optimum keyword density that has small to do with the keyword itself, but more to do with contextual relevance of the page content to the topic in hand. Which leads to the sixth of the SEO tips: write genuinely and honestly. If you know about your subject, write about it in your own language and don’t try to meet any perceived need for a specific number of so-called keywords within your page content.
Seventh, don’t forget about your links. You can get a higher search engine listing if you have lots of links back to your website from other sites. In fact, the links are from page to page, and you get a proportion of the Google PageRank of the page between to you, relative to the number of other links leaving that page, and also give the page that you link to a proportion of your PageRank, calculated in the same way. The problem with reciprocal links is that most pages are linked to and from pages with a PageRank of zero, even though the website home page can have a PR of 6 or 7.
SEO tip eight. Use your internal between to maximise the PageRank of a selected page on your website. You don’t need every page on your site listed in the top 10 of Google or Yahoo: you only need one. So maximise your efforts on that one page. Visitors that page will then stay the rest of the pages on your website, and so will search engine spiders, so you know that every page on your site will be listed and with a chance of being found in a search.
The vital point of that tip is to concentrate on getting one page in the top 10. That’s all you need. You will have links to all your other pages once somebody reaches that page in the top 10. Tip nine: Once you get visitors keep them there. Give them useful content and a touch to do, even if just to click from page to page. Place forward them a free gift for completing a quiz on your topic, or free vacation certificates for certain events: these are easily found on the internet in a form that you can either post or email for them to print their own. Place forward them an opt-in form so that you can keep in touch.
That is the most vital tip of all – if you can keep in touch with your visitors after they have left your site, then you can place forward them new harvest as they come along without having to seduce them to stay your website again.
The concept is simple; page rank allows the most vital websites to appear at the top of search results. Even if you may have seen complicated theories of how page rank works, illustrated by stupendously complicated mathematical formulas, you do not need to be a genius to know the basic principles. By understanding the basic principles you will then be able to start working towards achieving a higher page rank for your website, I have achieved a PR 5 for my website and I am no mathematical genius! In the end, Google page rank spans from 0-10. It would be typical for a webpage which has just being indexed by Google to achieve a page rank 0. A webmaster should permanently be aiming to achieve a higher page rank; this should be an ongoing process. So, how do you go about achieving a higher page rank? Well, a page rank is single-minded by a web page’s importance, the importance is calculated simply by the number of other web pages which contain a RELEVANT link to the webpage. The logic goes as forth, if many relevant websites contain a link to a web page then the web page must be vital. The keyword to remember is RELEVANCY. Google attaches a huge amount of importance to relevancy. There are millions of people who try and achieve a higher Google page rank simply by submitting their website to many, many web directories, this but is really not an effectual way of obtaining a high page rank, in many cases the only thing that this will achieve is a reduction in time taken for Google to index your web pages. It may therefore interest you to know that hundreds of links from web directories which link to thousands of other web pages is highly likely to be less beneficial than just one link from a further content related website with a high page rank. If you are wanting to obtain a higher page rank in the least possible amount of time your best option is to run a Google search using the keywords for your website. Take note of the top page of results, then, stay the high ranking web pages one by one. Write to the webmasters and question if you can participate in a link exchange, the answer is likely to be no, but the response to a paid link exchange may be different, and well worth your while. Don’t be worried of wasting time in this process because even though you may get turned down by many if you are successful with just one highly ranking relevant site, the benefits will be huge and well worth your while in terms of traffic generated. It is also vital to realise that Google pays a lot of attention to the title of the link, make sure you include many key words in your link. Personally I have tried in the past just about every method under the sun, (on the web!) in order to try and generate higher page rank. I have attempted buying links from high page rank sites on ebay. But the sites that I chose, despite being PR 6 were not relevant to my website and after 6 months they resulted in no increase to my page ranking. At this point I learnt my lesson about relevancy, in simple terms it goes a touch like this, ‘If you have a website based on gardening, then there is no point, whatsoever on exchanging links with a name who has a website based on teach spotting’. It will get you no where.
If you reap no rewards from talking to webmasters about link exchanges then all is not lost. One of the best methods I use for my website is to write excellent feature, (I hope) articles, somewhere within the articles I drop allusion to my website, in the form of a link, Ad significance Hero! Contains other advice for webmasters Just ‘link’ that. Ha- sorry about the pun. So there you go, write articles and submit them to excellent feature sites like ezine. Given that your article is excellent enough to be accepted you will achieve, a relevant link, on a page with relevant content.
There are in fact other factors which affect page rank notably the amount of outbound links from a website. If a highly ranking website has only a handful of links to other pages and one of the links is to your website then the results will be much more beneficial to you than a website that has thousands of outbound links. In effect it seems that Google divides the benefit of the site with page rank between all of the other sites which it links to. This clarifies why web directories are not beneficial, not only are they irrelevant, they also contain thousands of outbound links. Meaning the page rank benefit is divided between, yeah, you guessed,,, thousands! Time well spent? Nope!
It seems that having new, fresh and original content on your website also increases the frequency at which Google crawls your site, thus making note of new changes. So keep writing and don’t give up. It seems that if you have a site with excellent evenly updated content, with no tricks necessary, it will at sometime receive traffic; it may just not be as quick as you want and this is why you will probably find yourself following my earlier advice.
Things do get simpler, after you have traffic visiting your feature website you will find that your page rank starts to go up on its own. This is because people start to make links to your website from their independence in order to make quotes or simply recommend your website to their own visitors. Once the ball is rolling it does get simpler. You see?
I hope you loved and benefited from my efforts today! Remember, be patient, things with Google are evenly slow; rumour has it a Page rank update only occurs every three months,-seems about right in my opinion, and for low page ranking pages apparently a Google bot only crawls, around every three weeks. I don’t have total confidence in the information in this last paragraph; in fact, I don’t reckon anyone knows for sure. But I do know for sure that my PR 5 website is crawled nearly daily by Google’s bot. So just keep on going and be patient! I now make a excellent income from my site through adsense but it took a long time to get excellent levels of traffic to make the clicks. Participating in online questionnaires would have been a better answer if I had wanted instant cash! Excellent luck!- For more advice on the page rank issue and for methods of making cash on the web, including using Google Adsense stay Adsense Hero! Online cash making strategies.