Categories » ‘Principles’Sitemaps | The Google Welcome Mat for your websiteApril 20th, 2009 by PeteAn XML Sitemap provides a directory of your website specifically for spiders to find all of your content and is a critical element in internet marketing. Don’t confuse this with the ‘sitemap’ directory often provided so human visitors can view an outline of your website’s structure. The sitemaps I’m referring to are not designed for humans but for search engine spiders. OK so maybe deep geeks can understand them, but definitely not marketers and other mere mortals Google PageRank | The web page quality scoreApril 5th, 2009 by PeteFor some reason PageRank seems to be one of the great secrets in internet marketing, and yet it is not. Understanding PageRank will aid in improving your website’s Google ranking. This in turn provides increased online exposure which in turn leads to improved sales opportunity. Background Viewing PageRankNovember 17th, 2008 by PeteGoogle ToolbarThe easiest way to view Google PageRank is to use the Google Toolbar search bar which you can download and install for free from http://toolbar.google.com After you install the Google Toolbar you may have to explicitly enable the PageRank display by going to Settings; Options; More and enabling PageRank and Page Info. When installed, a small gauge displays PageRank in your toolbar, with a mouse-over tooltip showing the PageRank for the page you are currently visiting. You will note from the Privacy Notice in the toolbar installation, that it sends to Google ”…the addresses or other information about sites when you visit.” www.google.com/support/toolbar/bin/static.py?page=privacy.html&hl=en I think this is a very small price to pay for such empowering information, however if your view is different you may like to take advantage of one of the many websites that kindly provide this information for free and presumably without consequence. Adding your business and site to Google MapsOctober 5th, 2008 by PeteAdding your site to Google Maps Registered Businesses that correlate with the search and location are displayed in the Google Maps element in the search results. Amazingly Google still don’t currently charge for this high profile exposure, so make sure you are taking advantage of this!
Promoting your business via Google Maps and Google ImagesFebruary 1st, 2008 by PeteYou have probably noticed Google Australia www.google.com.au has added Maps and Images to its search results, but have you considered using these to market your business ? Google Maps
Currently you can register for free in the Google Local Business Centre and after authentication submit your details and wait the approximately four week processing lead time. There doesn’t appear to be any limit to the number of individual registrations you can make, and there’s even an upload facility for multiple location businesses. You can also add a Google Map into your website to allow visitors to see where your business is located. This require some technical skills refer www.google.com/apis/maps/gallery/mapsAPIProducts.html although the WebAssist Dreamweaver Tools for Google is a great simple approach. Google Images Unlike the simple Google Maps registration, promoting your website’s images to Google is more complex, involving image search optimisation techniques. Other Google Products Refer : www.google.com.au/intl/en/options/ Why Google ? Robots.txt | Now with added Sitemaps!January 22nd, 2008 by PeteThe robots.txt file is a rather obscure file that would normally only be fully appreciated by deep geeks, but its importance in search engine optimsation should not be under estimated.Simply put, a contemporary robots.txt guides search engines to the site’s XML Sitemap; this is the website’s street map especially designed for search engine spiders. Read more about sitemaps Historically the robots.txt file’s only role was to inform search engine spiders which website files and folders it may not index. In April 2007, the Sitemap Protocol was implemented elevating robots.txt to main stream relevance . Refer www.sitemaps.org/protocol.php Read more about the role of the XML Sitemap and why it is so important for optimsing your website.
Its all about KeywordsDecember 15th, 2007 by PeteKeywords are the foundation of paid and organic search success. Yet in my ongoing mission to convince South Australian businesses to invest in internet marketing, one of my greatest challenges is getting them to optimise their keywords. In considering what a keyword is, there are really three manifestations of keywords and to be effective, each needs to be aligned with the next. I’ve developed this simple model to illustrate their relationship: Keywords are: 1. Client’s words 2. Current searches You would be surprised (maybe horrified) at the poor use of grammar and the predominance of dyslexic-like searches. Interestingly, as we are all becoming more sophisticated searchers, so our search criteria is evolving from single words into a short phrases of three and even four words. Handy indeed, and a critical consideration when selecting your keywords. 3. In your website The spider will determine which words are predominate in your site. Configuring your website to achieve this is a challenge in its own right but fundamnetally ensuring those words are quite evident in your site. As a result of this discussion, a more accurate definition for keyword might now be:
Keyword alignment, is a term I use to describe the relationship of these three keyword manifestations, and when optimal, maximises your site’s sales effectiveness. Get closer to Google with WebMasters ToolsNovember 27th, 2007 by PeteInstead of trawling though your website statistics –a tedious and highly interpretable chore at best – assuming you even have access to your website statistics – check out these information systems provided by the major search engines:
Each of these facilities require you to register yourself , then add a file or metatag to your site as an authentication test. A very important function in each facility is the ability to register your website’s Sitemap. The Google Site: commandNovember 15th, 2007 by PeteSite: status The syntax is: site:<your website adddress> as illustrated below The search result displays all of the pages in your site that the search engine knows about. Check to see if that correlates with how many pages there actually are in your site. Don’t be surprised if there are some pages that the search engine hasn’t found as this is very common and typically due to ‘GoogleBot unfriendliness’. With search engines believing your site is smaller than it actually is there’s a negative impact on your site’s search ranking, but more importantly key pieces of your content is not available to be found in searches by prosective clients ! |
