The Lucky Cabin

If you’re considering working with a search engine optimization specialist to enhance your Website marketing, how do you know if you’re contracting with a reliable professional or a charlatan? The search optimization industry has no professional standards, no requirements for certification, and no governing board or body to control licensing. Anyone can practice search engine optimization no matter how much or how little they know. And most importantly, there is no formal science behind search engine optimization. Critics of the industry say it’s not rocket science and that anyone can do it. SEO defenders say it’s more complex than simple but they lack credibility.

One example of how the SEO industry has failed its clients is the widespread adoption of a controversial and now discredited trick called Pagerank sculpting. Denounced as sham SEO by some of the more critical writers in the industry, Pagerank sculpting made its appearance in mid-2007. The idea behind Pagerank sculpting is that you should hide internal links, portions of your site’s navigation system, from search engines. The favored tool for hiding the links was the “rel=’nofollow’” link attribute which Google had introduced a few years earlier to help devalue blog comment spam links.

Armed with a recent example of how Google itself had used the nofollow attribute to prevent Pagerank from flowing to new inner pages on YouTube, a few well-known SEO writers began praising the virtues of Pagerank sculpting. They even claimed to have run tests that showed Pagerank sculpting was helping sites get more pages indexed than ever before. Despite demands from some corners of the industry to publish the test data, the Pagerank sculpting SEOs simply kept repeating their message on blogs and at conferences.

As more people took up the practice Pagerank sculpting began to look like a legitimate SEO strategy. But in reality Google had quickly taken action to correct the harm that Pagerank sculpting was causing to Websites. Instead of allowing nofollow links to add their PageRank to other links on a page, Google dissolved the Pagerank and spread it across the Web. In this way Google ensured that pages that Google knew about had a chance to stay in the search index, and they might even still lead Google to find and index new pages.

The Pagerank sculpting SEOs failed to notice that their trick was not working. They were never even aware of how Pagerank was actually flowing out of their sites (and clients’ sites) to the rest of the Web. Instead, the band played on and people had a grand time until Google engineer Matt Cutts revealed in 2009 what Google had done to protect the Web from Pagerank sculpting.

In the wake of Google’s disclosure, any SEO who continues to advise the use of Pagerank sculpting is clearly not playing with a full deck of cards. These Pagerank sculpting advocates have recently been denounced as scam artists by one of the leading critics of Pagerank sculpting. If any SEO contractor or agency approaches you with advice to use Pagerank sculpting, you should probably look for another, more credible source of SEO expertise.

Frankly, yes. I am MORE than a little ticked that I shared this information with a few close friends and somehow it ended up the rave discussion on a popular forum. So people don’t “get it wrong”, here’s the actual excerpt from the Adwords Black Book - not yet released, but it will be priced EXPENSIVE.

What do I do? I turn lemons into lemonade. I give this one tactic to the masses as an eye-opener. I hope you’re paying attention; this is the first shot in the revolution.

The Internet is about to change.

Tactic Five: Use Brand Names to Build Your Brand

This is just brilliant and you can utilize this tactic in a number of ways.

Your competition has spent a lot of money building their brand. People look for it.

You may feel you’re at a competitive disadvantage, but you’re not. Not if you play your cards smart.

Novice Internet marketers - or marketers who just must have the cash flow now - don’t get in this part of the game.

But they should, as soon as they can.

I’ve watched a good friend of mine make many (MANY) tens of thousands of dollars (and build his customer list) by giving his own products away to people buying from his competitors.

Before I go further, remember that my mind sees things from a more devious perspective. What I’m sharing wasn’t his intention, nor how he saw it. He just knows, as a truly brilliant marketer, that the best offer gets the sale most of the time.

He also doesn’t view these people as competitors - but instead JV partners.

But let’s be frank on this whole affiliate marketing / JV partner thing. As goes the status quo here, these arrangements are usually much better for the person with the product to sell than they are for those selling.

I don’t care what the commission is. In fact, the higher the commission the MORE you ought to know the rewards are great for the product owner.

This depends on the market, of course, but if a company is running a good operation at least 33% of customers will buy at least one more product with them. Many will buy repeatedly.

One affiliate product that I promote pays me a $30 commission per sale. That’s about 20%, which happens to be on the top end of this entire niche.

Well, 35% of their customers buy from them again in the future, not to mention the value of the customer when mailing joint venture deals.

But get this - their average customers will buy over $600 worth of product directly from that company (good for them - they do their business well). But, my 20% commission suddenly becomes a 1.5% commission on the REAL value of that customer.

That sucks.

So you’ve got to play this game to your advantage (because they sure are). And that even goes beyond a name squeeze. You have to do what you can to get those names and email addresses of the people who actually buy from your competitor.

How do you do that?

You offer a sweat deal of a bonus, that’s how. You literally give away a product - a physical product of real value. No crappy, cheap downloadable ebooks - that just doesn’t work. You tell that person, “Buy through my affiliate link, then come back to my site and fill out this form - which requests name and physical address - and I will MAIL you this fabulous bonus worth as much as what you just bought.”

Holy smokes, isn’t that expensive?

Isn’t it more expensive to send a good customer off to someone else for 30 bucks? You and I should be the one’s selling that additional $440 worth of product and keeping the profits.

Stop playing the fool; take this additional step and start building YOUR business - even if it means offering a free bonus to people for buying from your competition!

Because of the delay with it’s backlink’s update period Google have managed to control the link broker’s pagerank eventure.

Many would say that analyzing Google’s backlinks is close to worthless, but still you need to know if your partners have your backlink with your keyword hostet on a good PR page.

Pagerank still have some importants and link’s poiting to your homepage is a part of the algoritme and relevant to some extend. You will never know the exact number of backlink, and they would be different from search ingine to search ingine.

Link building campaigns can be time consuming, and you will never be able to guess the effect on the pagerank result. The best link would be thoose coming out of the blue, from peoble who decided your content is important and give you a link.

In the end I think it’s thoose kind of link that make the difference between PR 5 and PR 6,7,8,9,10 and off cause traffic. Content is king and SEO is the throne.

http://home6.inet.tele.dk/anton/seo-elite.htm

Kim Anton Hollenner
SEO Advisor

In a recent report for a new client, I wrote:

“Remember, a visitor’s search doesn’t end when they leave Google. Their search and the phrases associated with it continue right through to the completion of the task they have in mind.”

Many of us pay attention to the keywords and phrases being used by our visitors when they arrive via a search engine. It makes sense not only because it gets you higher rankings, but also because the use of the right search terms signals to your reader that your page is relevant to them. In other words, your heading and intros are directly relevant to their search.

But all too often, once those key phrases are in place, we think the job is done. Not so.

There are other key points on your homepage where getting the phrase right can make a big difference.

Here’s what I mean.

Let’s say you are working on two pages; the homepage and a second level page. Working with your site logs and a tool like WordTracker, you optimize the homepage with the best keywords and phrases you can find. And that’s great. You now have text that is relevant to your visitor’s search.

But here’s something else you can do…

Use the same process to identify the best words for the links from your homepage to the second level page.

Simply go through the same process with that second page. Use your logs and a keyword tool to find the most relevant terms for that page.

And then use one of those terms in the link from your homepage.

Do you get the idea? The core of this process is to recognize that your visitor hasn’t completed their ’search’ when they arrive at your homepage. The search is just the beginning. Part of your task is to understand how best to write the links that take people deeper into your site. And one way of maximizing that clickthrough is to use terms that are directly relevant to the visitor’s continuing search.

SEO helps us focus on writing in ways that are directly relevant to the task our visitors have in mind. My point is, don’t consider the job completed when you have optimized the homepage or any particular landing page. Use the same approach, the same way of writing, to help that visitor all the way through to the moment when they complete their task, whatever that may be.

Nick Usborne is a copywriter, author, speaker and advocat of good writing. You can access all his archived newsletter articles on copywriting and writing for the web at his Excess Voice site. You’ll find more articles and resources on how to make money as a freelance writer at his Freelance Writing Success site.

By about 2pm everyday, each of my team members has spoken to a good handful of
clients and potential clients who have been speaking with other SEO firms. This an
absolutely wonderful thing to see, as in the past in our industry, not enough of our
consumers were questioning what they were purchasing. It is a sign that
accountability will come and the bad guys will be weeded out.

While this is
a good sign, it’s the cause of my having to answer the same questions over and
over. The consumers in the SEO world are being fed out and out lies by some of the
people who call themselves experts in the area of Search Engine Optimization. They
hear these lies and while comparing prices, contact us at Abalone Designs. They
then proceed to tell me everything that all of these other companies promised them
and I am utterly astonished. Here some of the most asinine claims I hear through
the grapevine.

“We can guarantee your rankings”

Don’t be fooled! Ask the company what you will be ranking for,
immediately! 9 times out of 10, a company that guarantees you rankings, is
guaranteeing that you will rank for your own company name, which means people
on Google or MSN or Yahoo! would have to know your company name before
searching. How does this produce new customers and visitors to your site? Chances
are, as soon as these search engines index your site, you will rank within the top ten
for your company name, if not first, because it is unique. Why bother paying
someone for something that is already going to happen, anyway?

Guaranteeing rankings is highly unethical. It is impossible to guarantee
rankings unless you have access to Google’s database itself, and even then I’m not
sure it’s possible. Keep in mind, we are working with a 3rd party, here. A highly
guarded 3rd party that doesn’t, under any circumstances, reveal it’s secrets. No one
outside of the companies that run these search engines knows what it is exactly that
makes search engines rank sites high. Especially due to the fact that these search
engines and the rigorous ranking filters they use to spit out search results change
almost monthly. Even a former Google employee doesn’t know how to guarantee
rankings! If someone is telling you they’ll guarantee top rankings, run fast! Those
are some shady, shady claims. Google themselves have said:

“No one can
guarantee a #1 ranking on Google - Beware of SEO’s that claim to guarantee
rankings, or that claim a “special relationship” with Google, or that claim to have a
“priority submit” to Google. There is no priority submit for Google. In fact, the only
way to submit a site to Google directly is by using the page at http://
www.google.com/addurl.html. You can do this yourself at no cost whatsoever.”
- http://
www.google.com/intl/en/webmasters/seo.html

An ethical SEO
company will not guarantee rankings. They will guarantee that their methods follow
search engine guidelines, and they will guarantee customer satisfaction, but at no
point in time will any SEO company with a conscience guarantee your
rankings.

“Your site needs to be continually resubmitted to get on
and stay on the search engines”

When will I see the end of this one? How old is this method now? 5 years? 10 years?
We’re talking about the days when Webcrawler was the biggest search engine and all
computers were beige! This claim is so fully untrue, had Pinocchio uttered it, his
nose would have stretched from Rome to Poughkeepsie. And the good folks at
Google will once again back me up on this one:

“Submission is not
necessary and does not guarantee inclusion in our index. Given the large
number of sites submitting URLs, it’s likely your pages will be found in an automatic
crawl before they make it into our index through the URL submission form. We DO
NOT add all submitted URLs to our index, and cannot predict when or if they will
appear.”
- http://
www.google.com/intl/en/webmasters/1.html#A2

“Meta tags
are not important anymore”

Sure they aren’t. If you don’t want a
decent ranking on MSN. The new MSN search places a lot of value on the keywords
and description meta tags. Without these tags in your site’s code, your ranking on
MSN will suffer. Just as importantly, if your keywords and description meta tags
don’t use proper language, your rankings will suffer. The description tag is also
what MSN uses as the visible description for a site in the search results. And of
course, to prove I’m not the one blowing hot air, here is what MSN themselves say
about it:

“Site descriptions are extracted from the content of your page
each time MSNBot crawls your site and indexes its pages…

…the best way to affect your site description is to ensure that your web pages
effectively deliver the information you want to see in search results.” - Click here to see the
page this is found on.

“Your Web Site Has Been Sabotaged”

This one is truly unreal. I can’t believe it’s even been used as an excuse for why an
SEO company hasn’t achieved decent rankings for you. But alas, more than one SEO
company has told potential clients of ours that the reason they are not ranking well,
or why their search engine optimization campaign is not effective, is because
someone else has been sabotaging the site. Some of the clients who have been told
this are small businesses, like bed and breakfasts or pet sitters. We always explain
to these potential clients that the likelihood of someone even having the initial idea
to sabotage a web site, the site in question would have to be a fairly large one, and
the target of a lot of hatred. Why? Because sabotaging a web site’s rankings takes a
massive amount of time and energy. We’re talking months, maybe even years of
hard, hard work. Why would anyone devote months or years of their life to taking
down a pet sitting site? Or a bed and breakfast?

Once again, these are
some hefty claims and it is a clear sign that the company who is running your SEO
campaign is unwilling to be held accountable for their actions or lack
thereof.

Don’t Put Up With It.

The bottom line is, your search engine optimization company works for you. You
are paying them. Hold them accountable as you would any other vendor. Keep
reading these articles, read info at the search engines, educate yourself and if
something your SEO says smells a little rotten, don’t be afraid to call them on
it.

Is being screwed an inevitability in the SEO world? Damn near. But
thanks to the increasing interest of our consumers in self-education and their
increased questioning, our industry will slowly climb out of the gutter and someday
down the line, send this article into antiquity. In spite of my pride, I’d be overjoyed
to see that day come.

Courtney Heard is the founder of Abalone
Designs, a search engine optimization company in Vancouver, Canada. She has
been involved in web development and marketing since 1995 and has helped start
several businesses since then in the Vancouver area. More of Courtney’s articles are
available at http://www.abalone.ca/resources/

Linking Pages

Are you creating linking pages to impress the search engines? How much more value would they have if you offered quality, optimized content for each of your categories?

Rather than having a bland list of ‘linking partners’ you could be using your links to gain more credibility AND provide more content for the search engines.

Create a separate page for each link category and write 200-400 words of content on that subject. Offering your recommended links at the end will make you a source for information rather than just a catalogue of links.

Optimizing each page for a popular keyword will draw more traffic to your site than links alone. It will also be more beneficial for your visitors who are searching for related resources.

Press Release

If you thought you were starting to grasp the importance of content, you haven’t even started to see the potential yet.

Press releases should become an important part of your marketing. What do you need to create a press release? Content.

Press releases are notices to the media about newsworthy events, accomplishments or information. By creating a press release to announce a new product, results of a poll or related news event, you can get free advertising in the media.

News media is always looking for new content for their readers. Learning how to compose and deliver a press release will give you access to this pool of willing advertisers.

To create your own press release, go to a website like www.PRweb.com and read the releases that are posted there. When you are familiar with the format you can write your own and submit it. Just avoid advertising copy and be sure to highlight some new thought or angle to make your press release newsworthy for publishers to use. If you want to invest the extra money you can hire a press release writer or have your release reviewed by a PRweb specialist.

Newspaper

Press releases can work just as well in your local paper as they do in online news websites.

Submit your press release to the editor or the writer for the section of the newspaper you want to target.

You could also try to submit your own column, giving tips and related information to your topic, as a free form of advertising. Smaller newspapers may find this idea more appealing since larger newspapers would not be likely to publish your works without formal working arrangements.

Magazine Articles

Just like online magazines, printed magazines need fresh content all the time. If you are writing articles you may be able to submit them to magazine editors for review.

Be sure to follow their policies which may be listed on their website or you can email or phone for instructions. Just like newspapers, you will have a greater chance for success if you target smaller publishers first.

Classifieds

Online classifieds have gone through some fluctuations of their own. Originally touted as one of the best methods to get traffic, the inundation of ads by internet marketers nearly flooded the market and made it impossible for readers to find what they were looking for.

However, using classifieds can still send you some traffic and will also help your site get listed in the search engines. Use keyword phrases in your ad and include a hyperlink. You are not putting a lot of content in these ads, but what you do put needs to be effective.

Offline Brochure

Do you promote a product, information or service that can be used locally? Consider creating a brochure that gives information on a question related to your topic. Include reference to how using YOUR service or product will assist them in solving the problem. Give some brief answers and point out your website as a source for more information.

Offer to leave your brochures in places that might attract your audience or post them on community boards. Pass them along to friends and family who might pass them along to others for you.

Traffic is people - whether they come to your site or directly to you, they all count.

Newsletter Exchange

Are you having success with your newsletter? Perhaps you’d like to approach another website owner and offer to write a short article for his subscribers - or to exchange articles to promote one another to each other’s list.

If the newsletter isn’t competition, but complimentary to your market, they should be equally interested to talk to your list of subscribers.

Article Announcement Lists

Article announcement lists are similar to article directories in that your article will be placed before an audience of webmasters and publishers who may choose to use your article on their website or in their newsletter.

The advantage of article announcement lists is that the members sign up to receive new articles by email. Your article will be directly sent to members who are interested in the topic of your article based on the list description they have subscribed to.

Yahoo! has a ‘Groups’ area where you can browse the lists and sign up to receive announcements. By following the guidelines for posting, you can submit articles relevant to the topic (for example there are groups for home, business, internet etc.)

The individuals receiving your article have already indicated an interest in articles on the chosen topic and this creates the perfect audience for your material. You may find traffic coming directly from the members of the list or from their websites when they publish your article with your link.

Publish an Ecourse

Create a multi page tutorial that can be given to subscribers or given away by other businesses.

Like a report, the ecourse can be offered as a freebie by yourself or others. The readers receive valuable tips and information all while being directed to your site at the end of each lesson. You may find that a tutorial delivered over the course of several weeks allows you to develop a relationship with your reader whether they originally received it from you or someone else.

By providing valuable instructions on a related topic to your business you are warming up your audience to become future customers or clients.

Affiliate Programs

Help your affiliates drive traffic to your site by giving them letters or reports to post on their sites or in their newsletters. Your affiliates are also in need of content to provide their customers and if you are providing that content for free they will have more success in sending their subscribers or visitors in your direction.

Your Blog

Creating a blog that is related to your business or niche will allow you to attract an audience that may not respond to a sales page. Providing content and news about your topic with hyperlinks to your various articles or sales pages is an indirect way to send traffic to your site. You can set up a free blog at www.blogger.com.

If you have valuable content and offer subscriptions to your blog (subscription services are free at www.bloglet.com) you can create a pool of readers who will turn to you first when looking for your product or service. You can also make your blog available for others to publish on their websites by creating an RSS feed. This will allow other websites to automatically run your new content on their websites every time you update your blog.

By submitting your blog to www.PingOmatic.com you can alert other blog services when you post updates.

Other Peoples’ Blogs

Your content can be just as valuable to other bloggers who may have a difficult time finding content to share with their readers.

Offering to submit an article to a relevant blog can be a great way to drive traffic to your site with the use of a hyperlink in your author credit.

Be a Contributing Writer

If your writing skills or expertise are truly impressive you may be able to offer an online or offline magazine or newsletter your services as a contributing writer.

By writing a column on your topic or service and having it regularly published in a magazine that caters to your audience, you will have the opportunity to place yourself as an ‘expert’, leading to loyal readers and customers.

Search Engine Optimization Articles for Website Content

In order to design a website that performs well with the search engines, it is very important to give the search engines what they want. You’ll want to find out what search engines index and what they do not in order to have your pages returned as a result. Consider the following strategies to get your web page noticed as frequently as possible.

Strategy #1 - Keywords

To most search engines, keywords are vitally important. Because of this you will want to pay special attention to keywords and how they play a role in your website and ultimately search engine results. Do some research to find the keywords that are most important to your products, services, and what your website is all about. Then, construct copy using the keywords, being sure to include the keywords in the title and near the top of the article. By doing this, you will be sure to gain a high ranking with the search engines that give more consideration to keywords.

Strategy #2 - Don’t Spam

Be sure to know the rules and regulations of search engines in order to get a high ranking, increased traffic, and ultimate success. One major rule most search engines big and small adhere to is no spamming. If you do spam you will more than likely be blacklisted from the search engines indexes which means your URL will not be returned as a result for people’s searches regarding your website, and in turn you will receive little traffic if any at all. Be sure you do not engage in spamming and be clear about what the search engines consider spamming so you do not risk being blacklisted.

Strategy #3 - No Frames

Frames cause problems for a lot of search engines and as a result most search engines do not include web pages with frames in their indexes. To avoid this make sure you develop a website that has a unique URL for each page within your website. The money you might save from building a web page with frames will backfire because you will not get traffic. Do whatever you must do to exclude frames from your website and then watch the traffic increase on a daily basis.

There are plenty of things you can do to increase your success of your website, however these three particular strategies are guaranteed to help you, increase your traffic, and ultimately sales. Don’t let another day pass by without employing these strategies and increasing your website traffic.

Michael Turner reveals step-by-step how you can increase search engine traffic in his free 7 part mini-series. Grab it now at http://www.powertraffictactics.com/

While it is okay to admire and envy all those sites enjoy top ranking with leading search engines like Google, it is much more important to study these sites closely. You will definitely end up learning a lot that will prove to be very useful in helping you take your own site to the top of Google rankings. Topping the search engines will mean huge volumes of traffic on a daily basis without you having to do anything. Healthy traffic, as you know almost automatically translates itself to healthy revenue for the site. And when you consider that over 75 per cent of the traffic that finds its’ way to websites comes from search engines, you quickly realize how important and crucial top rankings in search engines are to any online business.

So what will you be looking for when closely studying some of the top ranking sites? The answer is in the fact these sites have done something right and have certain strengths which millions of other sites all over the world do not have. It will be even more useful if you can find a common thread that links all the top sites.

In this article we will look at two that this writer noticed recently when studying top ranked Google sites.

Very well written, quality, targeted, content

With the hundreds of small details that a webmaster usually has to take care of, it is very easy to forget or downplay the importance of well written quality content. All the handful of top Google sites that I took a closer look at had exceptionally well-written, targeted, quality content. No visible typos or grammatical errors. It is clear that at least Google take into account the quality of writing when ranking websites. This simple observation means that if you make efforts to sustain a high standard in the quality of content on your site, you are already on the right path to higher search engine rankings.

Good quality content will not only bring back your site visitors again and again, but will also trigger word of mouth, and even more important, quality links pointing to your site which are bound to bring loads of traffic.

A Marketing Plan To Get Traffic To Their Websites

All the top ranked Google sites that I studied all had elaborate marketing plans for generating constant and increased traffic to their sites. The majority had affiliate programs. In the offline hey days I remember people used to say that without marketing it did not matter how good your product was, your business would die. The same is very true for any online enterprise today.

Take the time to take a closer look at top ranking websites, study their history and find the secrets they used that you too can apply to your online business.

Lois S. is a Technical Executive Writer for http://www.websitesource.com and http://www.lowpricedomains.com with experience in the website hosting industry.

Google Sitemaps enables Webmasters to Directly Alert Google to Changes and Additions on a Website and that’s just one of 7 Benefits.

Telling search engines about new pages or new websites use to be what the submission process was all about. But major search engines stopped using that process a long time ago.

Google has for a long time depended on external links from pages they already know about in order to find new websites.

For webmasters and website owners Google Sitemaps is the most important development since RSS or Blog and Ping, to hit the Internet.

Using RSS and Blog and Ping enabled webmasters to alert the search engines to new additions to their web pages even though that was not the primary purpose of these systems.

If you’ve ever waited weeks or months to get your web pages found and indexed you’ll know how excited we webmasters get when someone discovers a new way to get your web pages found quicker.

Well that new way has just arrived in Google Sitemaps and it’s a whole lot simpler than setting up an RSS feed or Blog and Ping. If you haven’t heard of Blog and Ping it’s a means by which it’s possible to alert the search engines to crawl your new website content within a matter of hours.

If you’re a webmaster or website owner Google Sitemaps is something you
Can’t afford to ignore, even if you’re also using RSS and/or Blog and Ping

The reason you should start using Google Sitemaps is that it’s designed solely to alert and direct Google Search Engine crawlers to your web pages. RSS and Blog and Ping are indirect methods to alert search engines, but it’s not there primary purpose.

It works now, but like most things it’s becoming abused. Search Engines will find ways to combat the abuse as they’ve done with every other form of abuse that’s gone before.

Abusing the search engines is a short term not a long term strategy and in some cases certain forms of abuse will get you banned from a search engines index.

You may also be thinking, don’t we already have web page meta tags that tell a search engine when to revisit a page. That’s true, but the search engine spider still has to find the new page first, before it can read the meta tag. Besides that meta tags are out of favour with many search engines especially Google, because of abuse.

If talk of search engine spiders leaves you confused, they’re nothing more than software programs that electronically scour the Internet visiting web sites looking for changes and new pages.

How often the search engine spider alias robot, visits your website depends on how often your site content is updated, or you alert them to a change. Otherwise for a search engine like Google they may only visit a website once a month.

As the internet gets bigger every second of every day, the problem for search engines and webmasters is becoming evidently greater. For the search engines it’s taking their search spiders longer to crawl the web for new sites or updates to existing ones.

For the webmaster it’s taking longer and becoming more difficult to get web pages found and indexed by the search engines

If you can’t get web pages found and indexed by search engines, your pages will never be found in a search and you’ll get no visitors from search engines to those pages.

The answer to this problem at least for Google is Google Sitemaps

Whilst still only in a beta phase while Google refines the process, it’s fully expected that this system, or one very similar, is here to stay.

Google Sitemaps is clearly a win-win situation

Google wins because it reduces the huge waste of their resources to crawl web sites that have not changed. Webmasters win because they alert Google through Google Sitemaps what changes or new content has been added to a website and direct Google’s crawlers to the exact pages.

Google Sitemaps has the potential to speed up the process of discovery and addition of pages to Google’s index for any webmaster that uses Google Sitemaps.

Conventional sitemaps have been used by webmasters for quite some time to allow the easier crawling of their websites by the search engine spiders. This type of sitemap is a directory of all pages on the website that the webmaster wants the search engines or visitors to find.

Without sitemaps a webmaster runs the risk of webpage’s being difficult to find by the search engine crawlers, or never being found at all.

Do I need Google Sitemaps if I already have sitemaps on my websites?

Google Sitemaps are different to conventional sitemaps because they’re only seen by the Search Engine Spiders and not human visitors. Google Sitemaps also contain information that’s only of value to the search engine in a format they understand.

Creating Google Sitemaps in 5 steps

1. Create Google Sitemaps in a supported format ( see end of article )

2. Upload Google Sitemaps to your Web Hosting space

3. Register for a free Google Account if you don’t already have one

4. Login to your Google Sitemaps Account and submit the location of your sitemaps

5. Update your Sitemaps when your site changes and Resubmit it to Google

From your Google Sitemaps account you can also see when your sitemap was last updated and when Google downloaded it for processing. It will also tell you if there were any problems found with your sitemaps.

Google Sitemaps can be used with commercial or non-commercial websites, those with a single webpage, through to sites with millions of constantly updated pages. However a single Google Sitemaps file is limited to 50,000 web pages. For websites with more pages, another Google Sitemaps file must be created for each block of 50,000 pages.

If you want Google to crawl more of your pages and alert them when content on your site changes, you should be using Google Sitemaps. The other added benefit is it’s free.

If you’re expecting this special alert process with Google Sitemaps to improve your Page Rank, change the way Google ranks your web pages, or in any way guarantee inclusion of your web pages, Google has made it clear it will make no difference.

Google Sitemaps web pages are still subject to the same rules as non Google Sitemaps pages.

If your site has dynamic content or pages that aren’t easily discovered by following links, Google Sitemaps will allow spiders to know what URLs are available and how often page content changes.

Google has said that Google Sitemaps is not a replacement for the normal crawling of web pages and websites as that will continue in the conventional way. Google Sitemaps does however allow the search engine to do a better job of crawling your site.

The Google Sitemap Protocol is an XML file containing a list of the URLs on a site. It also tells the search engine when each page was last updated, how often each page changes and how important each page is in relation to other web pages in the site.

Google Sitemaps 7 Benefits You Can’t Ignore

1. Alert Google to Changes and Additions to your Website Anytime You Want

2. Your Website is crawled more Efficiently and Effectively

3. Web Pages are Categorized and Prioritized exactly How You Want

4. Speed up the process of New Website and New Web Page Discovery

5. No Waiting and Guessing to see when Spiders crawl your web pages

6. Google Sitemaps is likely to set the standard for Webpage Submission and Update Notification which will extend the benefits to other Search Engines

7. The Google Sitemaps service is Free

Exactly how to create a Google Sitemaps file to upload to your website is in the continuing part of this article in Google Sitemaps.

Tony Simpson is a Web Designer and Search Engine Optimizer who brings a touch of reality to building a Web Business. It’s a No-Hype, No B.S approach from his own 5 year experience. He provides advice, product reviews and products at Web Page Add Ons to Make Automation of Your Web Site Work for You.

The continuing part of this article about creating Google Sitemaps is at Google Sitemaps

The chase for a high web ranking is constantly on and is in fact very demanding given the tough competition provided by all the other websites out there who happen to be putting up material on the same subject as you. All websites with average or below average content become victims of isolation and cyber ostracism. A good web ranking while ensuring a website’s popularity pays off in the form of greater earnings from advertisers on the your website.

In order to attract maximum search engine traffic and enhance ones website ranking, it is not only wise but in fact mandatory to include in the website, expert content. Expert content is relevant, pertinent, comprehensive as well as intensive content.

The relevancy of the content would depend on how much affinity it seems to show for the latest developments in the area if the website is regarding current, developing, organic issues for instance. On the other hand, if it is regarding an issue which is historical in nature it must contain comprehensive yet intensive information about the subject. It may in such cases even include expert opinion on the issue along with attached links to other relevant websites that may add ancillary information. While being relevant the content becomes pertinent if one is wise to keep it short, precise and neat.

The layout of a website is crucial as well, as it must be easy for the surfer to manoeuvre through. It must accordingly be more user-friendly rather than being customised according to ones personal likes and dislikes. Personal choices may not always be the most sought after.

Even though eventually the popularity of a website depends on how useful it turns out to be for the user and how easily the user is able to navigate through the layout, attracting the surfer to your website depends on its being listed in search engine results. Most search engines including Google use a standard an algorithm (indexing capabilities) that enables them to track websites with relevant material. In order to make optimum favourable use of these indexing capabilities of search engines it becomes mandatory to include not only relevant material but make repeated and pronounced use of ‘keywords’ that reflect on the essential theme of the web content and highlight the matter in context.

Most search engine while producing results for a search conducted by a surfer display along with the concerned link and the title of the website, an extract from the website that contains the word or phrase with which the surfer may be conducting his search. Therefore the combined use of relevant material as well as appropriate keywords will in turn not only assure an identification in search engine results but will also result in display of importunate details of your website content and give the surfer exactly what he may be looking for while conducting his search.

Adding only expert content on ones website definitely enhances the quality of the website and makes the battle for high web rankings fair and interesting.

Mr. Vishnu is CEO and founder of easternBrain Inc. a gen nex .com company based in Rajasthan, India. easternBrain Inc. specializes in providing professional content and copy writing services. They provide a full spectrum of writing services and have written on varied topics like politics and economics apart from web content and copy writing. Under the supervision of Vishnu easternBrain Inc. has also written business plans and eBooks.

You can reach Vishnu at emailvishnu@gmail.com