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Improve your Search Engine Position with Sitemaps
Improve your Search Engine Position with Sitemaps
A sitemap is a little-known secret to enhancing your Web site's position in the search engine listings. No, it's not a killer secret that will draw in thousands of new visitors overnight, but it is an important addition to your toolset, and not hard to implement. This article will tell you why you need a sitemap, and how to create one and submit it to the search engines.
The term "sitemap" can refer to two different things. Many large, complex Web sites provide a visual sitemap that visitors can use for quick navigation, if they already know roughly where they want to go. If your site is large or complex, you should provide one of these sitemaps for your visitors.
But this article is about the other kind of sitemap: The kind that is made for the search engines, like Google, to use in indexing your site. There are several forms that these sitemaps can take, but we'll get to that a little later.
First of all, let's consider why you even need a sitemap. Google and the other search engines will index your site even if you don't have a sitemap. However, there are four main advantages to having a sitemap:
1. If your site uses non-HTML links, such as Macromedia Flash menus or JavaScript menus, the search engines will not be able to follow these links, and so they will not find all of your pages. A code-driven site must use a sitemap.
2. A sitemap tells the search engines which pages on your site are more important, and which are less important. This prevents the less important pages from competing with your own pages in the listings.
3. A sitemap tells the search engines which pages on your site are updated more frequently than others. This enables the search engines to ignore your static pages, increasing the likelihood that they will have the most current data on your most dynamic pages.
4. A sitemap enables you to tell the search engines when you have added or updated your site's content. To some extent, this puts you in control of making the search engines aware of your latest content. Of course, it doesn't force the search engines to do your bidding, but it tends to make it easier for users to find your new pages more quickly.
So, what is a sitemap?
As mentioned above, there are many possible forms of sitemaps, but we'll concentrate on the most useful kind, the XML sitemap format created and promulgated by sitemaps.org. This protocol, currently known as "Sitemap 0.90," is maintained and endorsed jointly by Google, MSN, Yahoo, and Ask, so you know it is pretty much a universal standard.
An XML sitemap consists of a list of pages on your Web site, and standard information about each page. Here is an example:
< url >
< loc >http://www.freelancesubmit.com/Index.htm<; /loc >
< lastmod >2008-04-07< /lastmod >
< changefreq >never
< priority >0.3
< /url >
...
< url >
< loc >http://www.freelancesubmit.com/Services.htm<; /loc >
< lastmod >2008-04-07
< changefreq >weekly
< priority >0.8
< /url >
...
Don't worry about the technical details of formatting the XML. We'll talk about tools that will create this for you in a moment.
There are three things to notice about each entry:
1. LastMod. Tell the search engines the last date (and time) you changed this page. That will tell them which ones they ought to index right away, and which ones they can ignore.
2. ChangeFreq. In case you're not updating your sitemap all the time, this will give the search engines a clue as to how often they ought to check each page.
3. Priority. This tells the search engines the relative importance of this page, compared to all the other pages in your site.
In assigning a value for "Priority," on a scale of 0.0 to 1.0, determine which pages are most important and which are least important within your site. We're not telling the search engines that this "Services" page is in the 80th percentile of all pages on the Web, but it is far more important than the "Index" page within this site. That's where we want our visitors to end up.
It's easy to identify pages within your site which are lowest priority. Some examples:
- Privacy Policy - "Contact us" - "About us"
Please don't misunderstand this. It's not that your "Privacy Policy" page is unimportant and so you might as well not have one. It's that your "Privacy Policy" is important enough to take for granted: Your visitors will find it when they need it. But for search engine purposes, you'd rather direct them to the pages where you actually do your business.
So, how do you create a sitemap?
There are a number of software tools that will create a sitemap by reading your site's content. You will have to adjust the results, especially the "Priority" settings, but most of these do a pretty good job. Search the Web for "sitemap generator," or for any of the following specific free tools:
- SitemapDoc - XML-Sitemaps - AuditMyPC Google Sitemap Generator
And once you have your sitemap, what do you do with it?
There are three things to do, in sequence:
1. Place the sitemap file into the root directory of your Web server, alongside your main "index" file. And each time you update it, place the new copy there.
2. Notify the major search engines of your new sitemap file each time you update it. For Google, this means to submit it from within "Webmaster Tools." For other major search engines, search on that search engine for "submit sitemap," and you'll probably find where to enter the URL of your sitemap file.
3. Place a reference to the sitemap file in your robots.txt file, as "Sitemap: http://www.freelancesubmit.com/sitemap.xml". This will make sure that any search engine will find it, even those that you did not submit it to directly. You only need to do this once, unless you change the name or location of your sitemap file.
Once you have your sitemap created and submitted, don't forget to maintain it. Each time you add a page to your Web site, add it to your sitemap. Each time you update a page on your Web site, update its "lastmod" setting in your sitemap. Try adjusting the "priority" of your pages from time to time to see if it improves the performance of that particular page. And each time you modify your sitemap, resubmit it to the major search engines.
________________________________________
About the Author: Charles J. Bonner is the founder and principal project manager of www.FreeLanceSubmit.com. For a complete list of resources for creating and using sitemaps, visit http://www.FreeLanceSubmit.com/ArticleBuildASitemap.htm
A sitemap is a little-known secret to enhancing your Web site's position in the search engine listings. No, it's not a killer secret that will draw in thousands of new visitors overnight, but it is an important addition to your toolset, and not hard to implement. This article will tell you why you need a sitemap, and how to create one and submit it to the search engines.
The term "sitemap" can refer to two different things. Many large, complex Web sites provide a visual sitemap that visitors can use for quick navigation, if they already know roughly where they want to go. If your site is large or complex, you should provide one of these sitemaps for your visitors.
But this article is about the other kind of sitemap: The kind that is made for the search engines, like Google, to use in indexing your site. There are several forms that these sitemaps can take, but we'll get to that a little later.
First of all, let's consider why you even need a sitemap. Google and the other search engines will index your site even if you don't have a sitemap. However, there are four main advantages to having a sitemap:
1. If your site uses non-HTML links, such as Macromedia Flash menus or JavaScript menus, the search engines will not be able to follow these links, and so they will not find all of your pages. A code-driven site must use a sitemap.
2. A sitemap tells the search engines which pages on your site are more important, and which are less important. This prevents the less important pages from competing with your own pages in the listings.
3. A sitemap tells the search engines which pages on your site are updated more frequently than others. This enables the search engines to ignore your static pages, increasing the likelihood that they will have the most current data on your most dynamic pages.
4. A sitemap enables you to tell the search engines when you have added or updated your site's content. To some extent, this puts you in control of making the search engines aware of your latest content. Of course, it doesn't force the search engines to do your bidding, but it tends to make it easier for users to find your new pages more quickly.
So, what is a sitemap?
As mentioned above, there are many possible forms of sitemaps, but we'll concentrate on the most useful kind, the XML sitemap format created and promulgated by sitemaps.org. This protocol, currently known as "Sitemap 0.90," is maintained and endorsed jointly by Google, MSN, Yahoo, and Ask, so you know it is pretty much a universal standard.
An XML sitemap consists of a list of pages on your Web site, and standard information about each page. Here is an example:
< url >
< loc >http://www.freelancesubmit.com/Index.htm<; /loc >
< lastmod >2008-04-07< /lastmod >
< changefreq >never
< priority >0.3
< /url >
...
< url >
< loc >http://www.freelancesubmit.com/Services.htm<; /loc >
< lastmod >2008-04-07
< changefreq >weekly
< priority >0.8
< /url >
...
Don't worry about the technical details of formatting the XML. We'll talk about tools that will create this for you in a moment.
There are three things to notice about each entry:
1. LastMod. Tell the search engines the last date (and time) you changed this page. That will tell them which ones they ought to index right away, and which ones they can ignore.
2. ChangeFreq. In case you're not updating your sitemap all the time, this will give the search engines a clue as to how often they ought to check each page.
3. Priority. This tells the search engines the relative importance of this page, compared to all the other pages in your site.
In assigning a value for "Priority," on a scale of 0.0 to 1.0, determine which pages are most important and which are least important within your site. We're not telling the search engines that this "Services" page is in the 80th percentile of all pages on the Web, but it is far more important than the "Index" page within this site. That's where we want our visitors to end up.
It's easy to identify pages within your site which are lowest priority. Some examples:
- Privacy Policy - "Contact us" - "About us"
Please don't misunderstand this. It's not that your "Privacy Policy" page is unimportant and so you might as well not have one. It's that your "Privacy Policy" is important enough to take for granted: Your visitors will find it when they need it. But for search engine purposes, you'd rather direct them to the pages where you actually do your business.
So, how do you create a sitemap?
There are a number of software tools that will create a sitemap by reading your site's content. You will have to adjust the results, especially the "Priority" settings, but most of these do a pretty good job. Search the Web for "sitemap generator," or for any of the following specific free tools:
- SitemapDoc - XML-Sitemaps - AuditMyPC Google Sitemap Generator
And once you have your sitemap, what do you do with it?
There are three things to do, in sequence:
1. Place the sitemap file into the root directory of your Web server, alongside your main "index" file. And each time you update it, place the new copy there.
2. Notify the major search engines of your new sitemap file each time you update it. For Google, this means to submit it from within "Webmaster Tools." For other major search engines, search on that search engine for "submit sitemap," and you'll probably find where to enter the URL of your sitemap file.
3. Place a reference to the sitemap file in your robots.txt file, as "Sitemap: http://www.freelancesubmit.com/sitemap.xml". This will make sure that any search engine will find it, even those that you did not submit it to directly. You only need to do this once, unless you change the name or location of your sitemap file.
Once you have your sitemap created and submitted, don't forget to maintain it. Each time you add a page to your Web site, add it to your sitemap. Each time you update a page on your Web site, update its "lastmod" setting in your sitemap. Try adjusting the "priority" of your pages from time to time to see if it improves the performance of that particular page. And each time you modify your sitemap, resubmit it to the major search engines.
________________________________________
About the Author: Charles J. Bonner is the founder and principal project manager of www.FreeLanceSubmit.com. For a complete list of resources for creating and using sitemaps, visit http://www.FreeLanceSubmit.com/ArticleBuildASitemap.htm
Tags: ask, engine, google, html, javascript, msn, search, sitemap, web, yahoo
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Captain Kick-Back
Watch this Space Issue 44!!
Poor ABCs for Regional PressThe most recent six-monthly ABC figures were releasedrecently. Covering the back half of 2009, the numbers provide further evidence of the continued decline in circulation across nearly all local press titles. Among daily, weekly, paid and free titles the trend was overwhelmingly negative, which will put further strain on cashflow as newspaper sales and advertising revenues suffer. The Liverpool Echo suffered a 9.5% year on year decline, dropping below the 90,000 copies mark with its figure of 88,519. Business title the Yorkshire Post misplaced 5.7% of its sales as it slipped to 43,095, while the Glasgow Evening Times’ circulation dropped by 13.2%, to 59,365.
Commentators describe the decline as the inevitable outcome of a trend begun in the early noughties, wherein readers began to turn away from print media, finding instead their news, events listings and classified advertising online. The continued success of the Metro is also seen as contributing to the decline, while the impact of the recession has only exacerbated the situation.
Captain Kickback says: “The story stays the same here, but the numbers keep getting smaller, particularly in large cities where the commuter is king, people surf the web al desko and the Metro is thriving. It’s worth noting that one of the few titles to do well, the Dorset Echo, is not only a more rural title, but one which switched from evening to morning publication shortly before the period in question. Despite a brace of innovations and shrewd ideas like the shift of titles such as the Echo and the Birmingham Mail from evening to morning distribution, the paid/free model adopted by the MEN, or the Bath Chronicle’s move from daily to weekly distribution, it would be a brave media pundit who could offer more than an apologetic grimace to the regional publishing industry. Over a long enough timeline, the printed word will surely return to nought, as will we all.”
London Evening Standard Raking in the Readers
Another among those brace of press innovations that I mentioned earlier, the Evening Standard’s move to free distribution and huge increase in print saw dividends in the most recent National Readership Survey results. The number of people reading the average issue rose by 133% year on year, to a fairly impressive 1.39m: a figure well above the readership of the smaller national titles (step forward The Guardian, we know you’re there. And you FT, and bring the Indie with you).
As Russian oligarch (an alarmingly difficult word to type) Alexander Lebedev crosses the t's and dots the i’s, j’s and umlauts on his deal to buy the Independent, word is that a similar free model will be adopted there. Given the slow and lingering death being suffered by the beleaguered national lefty title, many there might find some significant solace in the turnaround achieved at Evening Standard towers.
Captain Kickback says: “Does the Cyrillic alphabet even use umlauts? Wouldn’t the contracts be written in English anyway? What on earth was I thinking? Does it really matter? Probably not. We’ll gloss over that and move on. Nobody noticed. It’s fine.”
Congleton Chronicle, How Appt
Another of those new innovations in the press marketplace. The Congleton Chronicle has come over all technical and released its very own free app for the iPhone. The downloadable widget allows the user to browse an e-version of the first seven pages of the newspaper. The rest of the paper is available to people who opt to pay a subscription of £2.39 per month.
Captain Kickback says: “The Chron is the first newspaper to have its own branded app which gives access to the full version of the newspaper. The numbers are likely to be very small at first, but this is at least a move in the right direction. It’s also probably an idea to start demanding a position in the first seven pages if you use this title regularly!”
Technophiles One & All
The 2010 award for not entirely surprising statistic goes to a recent Microsoft funded survey, which found that young men are the heaviest users of the internet. Most use it everyday and describe it as the piece of technology they are most attached to. 99% of young men go online either everyday or nearly everyday, half of them using their mobile phones to do so.
25% of young men (‘young’ is defined as 18-44, I’m sure some of you will be pleased to know) claimed to check their emails before they get out of bed, while 18% look at social networking sites on their mobile phones first thing. 60% of this group visit a social networking site at least once each day, and 94% use email everyday. The strength of video on demand among this demograph is worthy of note: 73% of them watch VoD at least once per week.
Captain Kickback says: “Computers have made the move out of the spare bedroom and into the living room (or, it would seem, the bed). 25% of men aged 18-44 watch VoD in the living room while their partners watch television. We can buy video advertising on pre-roll networks, at a surprisingly cheap rate.”
We’re All For The High Jump
...if left-leaning thinktank Compass get their way. The quango philosphiserists recently proposed a total ban on all advertising in public spaces, all advertising aimed at the under 12s and restrictions on shopfront promotions. These musings have found resonance with recent pronouncements made by David Cameron about what he perceives as the sexualisation of children and the destruction of the family, brought about by the declining standards of the media.
Captain Kickback says: “It’s at most unlikely that anybody’s going to systematically dismantle a worldwide industry worth nearly £300bn, but in the race to say sensible things ahead of the general election, it’s probably inevitable that the finger of neo-Victorianism will get wagged at all and sundry.”
Did You Know…
The government’s Central Office of Information is the UK’s largest advertiser with commercial radio. During the run up to a general election, the moratorium on all forms of broadcast advertising by government agencies means that radio networks have a glut of airtime to shift. This can only be terrific news for you the advertiser as rates fall and the chances of free over-delivery increase drastically.
That's your lot for another issue. If you'd like any more information on any of these stories, you can either reply to this email or contact your Space and Time team.
See you next time!!
Captain Kickback
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