Web design blog » SEO/Marketing

What is a Sitemap?

Peter Cadney — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 15:34:24 +0000

If you are struggling to get your site indexed within Google, you may be missing a Sitemap! The Sitemap Protocol allows you to inform search engines about URLs on your website that are available for crawling by their search “spiders”.

In its simplest form, a Sitemap is an XML file that lists URLs for any given site. The sitemap also enables webmasters to customise additional information about each URL, such as when it was last updated, how often it changes and how important the page is in relation to other URLs within the site. This gives the search engines a better idea of how your site is organised and can therefore crawl and prioritise the pages more effectively.

Sitemaps are particularly useful when users can’t reach all areas of a website through a browseable interface ie: if a page is hidden, or doesnt have a direct link to it! In this example, a sitemap would allow users to reach your site. The easiest way to submit a sitemap to google is as follows:

1. Go to http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/

2. Put your website details into the form and wait for your sitemap to be generated. Download it uncompressed, to somewhere on your desktop.

3. Sign into yuor google account and upload the sitemap to Google’s Webmaster Tools Dashboard.

4. Click add sitemap and find the .xml file!

5. Done!

NB: Although adding a sitemap can help Google find hidden pages, this does not guarentee being indexed or achieving a certain search ranking. It is should be seen as a small step in your overall SEO effort. Good luck!

Google confirms that “Content is King”

Peter Cadney — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 14:38:51 +0000

If you are familiar with SEO, you will have heard the statement “content is king”. The premise being that search engine algorithms give credit to sites with large volumes of relevant content, that provides a good user experience. Although not proven as such, this concept has been wideley accepted in the SEO community as good practice for any website to aid in strong search engine rankings.

Googler Maile Ohye posts an interesting article outlining the concept of quality content being almost more important that a sites inbound link profile.

“Let’s say I have a site, example.com, that offers users a variety of unique website templates and design tips. One of the strongest ranking factors is my site’s content. Additionally, perhaps my site is also linked from three sources — however, one inbound link is from a spammy site.

As far as Google is concerned, we want only the two quality inbound links to contribute to the PageRank signal in our ranking. “

Applying this concept to your website:

As far as applying this to useful web design, such articles should make us rethink our SEO efforts, and give more attention to providing quality sites with large volumes of information and useful content. When creating new content, ensure that it is optimised not just towards the target keywords, but also the themes and ideas surrounding your chosen topic. That way, the site will have a more relevancy to your target keywords!

By increasing quality content on your site we can all help improve the experience of web users as a whole, the visitor numbers to your site and hopefully give your site a nice boost in the search engine results pages aswell!

Video Marketing – Does it really work?

Peter Cadney — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 16:27:20 +0000

A number of our clients have asked about video marketing and whether or not it would benefit their business. I will attempt to explain exactly what video marketing would consist of, and how it could potentially benefit driving traffic to a website.

An increasingly popular method of generating visitors to your site can be through creating videos and linking back to your site. You can do this with a backlink embedded in the video itself, or within the video description. Video giants, like Youtube will allow backlinks within the video descriptions and is a great way to drive some free traffic back to your site.

Is it possible to do SEO for a site under construction?

Peter Cadney — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 13:13:52 +0000

Well the short answer would be yes, and yes, a site under construction can rank for search terms within search engines. But think very carefully before embarking on SEO work before a site is fully completed.

One reason why you should not invest too much time on such a site, would be that any changes to text and site structure will affect your rankings – you are best working on the site when it is fully completed.

Another reason – Directory Submissions for example, are always worth doing once a site is up and running to avoid multiple rejections from webmasters. You will also gain the benefit of a clearer understanding of your main keywords to be used within the site

Rather than attempt to complete the SEO work as quickly as possible, allow time for the site to grow naturally, steadily. Your time will be better off spent planning the SEO required for any given project, rather than trying to implement them straight away. Write articles, do your keyword research, scout out the competition, start a small blog in the meantime to add some content to the site. Have your work ready, and it will be easier to implement once the site is live.

The importance of a domain name for SEO purposes

Peter Cadney — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 10:47:53 +0000

Many web and e-commerce success stories we see can often be attributed to a clever idea, a well designed product or a fantastic marketing campaign. The domain name is often irrelevant to their targeted search terms (think Amazon or eBay for example). However, more and more it is suggested that a strong “keyword rich” domain name can play a huge factor in deciding your success within the search engine results pages.

Take for example the search term “kitchen supplies”, we see that it ranks number one in google. This can be as a result of a number of factors, including quality links, content and so on.. but notice how the search term is highlighted within the search results. This is not only good as a visual aid to draw customers to click, but is argued to play a strong role in shall we say “aiding” the websites position for the search. This method of including the keyword within the website name is common practice, but close study and research of the most popular search terms within your business niche may give you an edge on your competition.

Submitting your website to directories

Peter Cadney — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 09:51:22 +0000

Submitting your website to online directories can be a great way to increase the number of backlinks to your website. The effectiveness of this as a promotional tool can be reduced however, if a large percentage of your submissions are rejected by the directory moderators. I have outlined some useful tips for increasing acceptance rates into these directories below; which will hopefully save you alot of time in the long run!

1. Keep the title/description between 20-50 characters and avoid cramming it with keywords.

2. Submit only the root directory, and not “deeplinks” (unless the directory is a specialist “deeplink” directory)

3. Write a quality page summary describing the content or services your website provides.

4. Avoid writing in caps lock or Making Every Word Begin With A Capital Letter.

5. Submit your site to the most appropriate category possible. I can imagine directory owners taking a half second look at your websites content, and if the category and description dont match they delete it!

By avoiding writing anything too spammy, and following some of these tips you should see a steady increase in your directory acceptance rates.

Social Networking Sites As A Promotional Tool

Peter Cadney — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 10:12:39 +0000

The powers of MySpace and Facebook as a marketing platform have been realised for a long time, but how can they be utilised for your websites promotion?

These sites are a potenital gold-mine of visitors for your website, and best of all it is a free resource. Some tried and tested methods for generating visitors are:

Posting funny videos or interesting videos.
Having a useful service or profile page.
Offering free services or trials or
Giving discounts on interesting services.

Although your reach can be huge on a site like MySpace, the best results come from relevant, targeted links that are enticing for the specific readers. For example a post on a bands profile page of “10% Discount on all CD Albums today – Buy now!” would be much more effective than an unrelated advertisement selling hair-growth pills for example ….

These platforms are also valuable resources for brand building, and allows your logo or comments to be seen on popular profiles. Use this to your advantage – go forth and promote!

SEO Tips: Writing Articles

Peter Cadney — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 10:08:12 +0000

One avenue of a websites link building strategy often over-looked is Article submission. In a nutshell, this involves writing articles on topics relevant to your site and submitting them to various article submission directories. In doing so, you will gradually build links to your webpage on topics that readers are interested in and create additional traffic to your site. This is a valuable tool to help your Search Engine Rankings.

Some things to bear in mind when writing articles:

1. Keep the content unique and interesting for the reader. You want as many views as possible.

2. Dont make the article an obvious sales pitch for your products; let the reader want to visit your company website.

3. Submit your article to high quality directories and industry specific sites to increase your article’s effectiveness.

4. Become active within the article communities, and aim to be viewed as an industry expert.

5. Give readers insider tips or advice on the topics in hand to gain their trust.

By using some of these tips when thinking about writing articles, you will gain invaluable backlinks to your site and targetted traffic to go with it.

Is Google broken?

Peter Cadney — Sun, 15 Oct 2006 23:54:57 +0000

Is Google broken? I doubt that very much!

However tonight I noticed these results on page 3 when doing a search for “affordable website design” It’s very strange that nearly all the results on the page are displayed as URL only listings. All the sites I looked at that are listed in this way have titles and descriptions and it’s not as if there aren’t many pages competing for that phrase (only 125,000,000)

I tried quite a few varying terms but everywhere else I look the results seem to be fine. I haven’t noticed anyone talking about this on the SEO forums yet so maybe it’s only a bug relating to the term I tried.

Here’s a screen shot of the results incase it’s only on the datacentre I’m hitting…….

Is this a new Google tool?

Peter Cadney — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 16:07:26 +0000

Ok, I just stumbled across this result when searching on Google. Here’s a picture for anyone who doesn’t like to click links.

I’ve never seen this before, has anyone else? No matter what other search term I type I can’t get this to show up anywhere else. It seems to work quite well so I guess we will see it all over the place before long.

Another small step on the road to total Google domination!