Sitemap promotion: White hat methods for promoting your sitemap/website

Using a sitemap generator to make a sitemap for your website is a great decision. With a sitemap generator it makes the task of establishing fully functional and useful sitemap a breeze. What’s more with a sitemap generator, any changes to your website is usually updated without you doing it manually. This is a huge time saver and eliminates the tedium of doing this task manually. However, even if you have the best sitemap in the world it is not worth anything unless you religiously promote your sitemap and/or website. There are many ways to promote your website/sitemap and it ranges from the typical to the illegal. Of course, as a conscientious web master or business owner, only so-called white hat methods are in your arsenal of sitemap promotion tools and tactics. Below are some white hat methods that you can also incorporate in your own promotions plans: Visit online forums – You can use signature links or refer to your website whenever appropriate when you post replies in any forum. Of course, this should not be seen as an opportunity to spam online forums. Don’t construct replies that look like ads because it turns off forum members and may be used as a reason for you to get banned. Reply within context of the subject. Post comments in blogs – again, do not use the comments capabilities of a blog to spam people. Make real comments on the blogs and again reply within the context of the blog entry or previously posted comments and then introduce your website within reason. Establish a relationship with website owners – this method requires a lot of subtlety and careful handling. You can email the webmasters of websites you are interested in and maybe ask questions about their site. You can even ask where they acquired the information in the website. The idea here is quite simple – establish a relationship with the website owners/webmasters of websites that would benefit your own website. The ultimate goal here is to get some links Distribute content to industry portals – This is a great way of establishing your reputation as well as your website’s reputation as authorities in the field or sector in which you have dedicated your website. Join award programs and submit your website for consideration – By joining award programs, you will get links to your sites from their sites. There are some sites that even demand that you link to them. Take advantage of this unique opportunity to build up your reciprocal links. Submit the website to industry directories – submitting your website for inclusion in online directories especially those that cater to niche markets is a great way of promoting your website. Listing in directories is also a wonderful method for making the content on your website more easily reached and discovered by people. Post physical ads – by promoting your website through traditional means (billboards, flyers, and even merchandise) you get to reach audiences that may not frequent the internet that often but may be interested in what your website may be offering.

Striking out on your own: Do you really need a sitemap generator?

There are so many responsibilities that are associated with starting a website. Each step towards the realization of a website requires a lot of hard work and utmost dedication to achieve results and to pay attention to detail. Only by doing this can one ensure that a website is set up successfully and able to meet the goals set for its creation. Aside from the mental mind frame that a website creator or business owner must possess in order to make an effective website there are also certain tools that are a requirement to ensure the success of a website. One of these important tools is a sitemap. A sitemap is an instrument that is used in order to make the navigation on a website so much easier. The word “map” truly describes what it does as it serves the same purpose in a website. A sitemap contains the website’s structure, indicating the pages and how each one is interlinked to one another. This is indicated through the form of the various links that point to the major sections as well as subsections of the whole website. The sitemap that a website uses is not just made for cosmetic purposes. It has a real useful and very essential role to play in making a website more effective. Its most important use is to make it so much easier for visitors to the website to navigate through all of the pages inside it. In effect, a sitemap prevents a visitor from getting lost inside a website – a very frustrating and irritating experience that turns off visitors and effectively makes them refuse to go back to the website again. The sitemap also ensures that they find the information that they are looking for immediately and without too much effort. A visitor who is able to find the information that he is looking for quickly (and painlessly) will be enticed to visit the website again. This return business is ultimately the foundation of a website’s success. As a way of helping web designers and business owners who have websites make effective sitemaps, sitemap generators have been introduced to make the task easier. With a sitemap generator, making sitemap becomes fool proof and easy. Is it possible to make a sitemap on your own without the aid of a sitemap generator. Of course, it is possible. Before the creation of the various sitemap generators, web designers make sitemaps on their own. But this process is quite long and tedious, not to mention fraught with errors. Even though it would ultimately be the choice of the website owner, web designer or business owner if they will use a sitemap generator or not, there really is no compelling reason not to use one. With a sitemap generator, making sitemaps are made so much easier and error free. What’s more, with a sitemap generator, every single change in the page line-up or content change is abruptly reflected, something that needs to be done manually every time if one will not use a sitemap generator.

The Newest Features of Google Sitemaps

Google has announced the addition of some truly useful features to make Google Sitemaps an even better tool for the web. They’ve given their site a facelift and made it easier to navigate. They asked for feedback and they listened. Hopefully, the result is something everyone will love.

A feature that many webmasters will be happy to know about is the notification of violations. No longer will they be left in the dark about what is happening. They will know if they have violated the webmaster guidelines and why.

The rules are pretty simple. Create your site that is truly helpful to your users and avoid doing naughty things just to increase your ranking. Linking to bad sites, hidden texts or links, installing viruses, trojans or other “badware” are just a few of the reasons why your URL will not be included in any Google index.

You don’t even need to look far to know if you have a violation. Google notifies you directly on the summary page of your account. They also place a link to webmaster’s guidelines so you can double check that your site is once again in proper form to be included in Google’s index – this is the second new feature.

Google does not want to exclude any sites that are good. It is possible that the violations were unintentional. It may even be that the webmasters truly have overlooked some items on their site. Google says clean it up and get the chance to be re-included.

Re-inclusion is absolutely simple and easy. Once you see the violation notification, check what needs to be fixed. Correct the item that Google felt is a violation of their rules. Now all you need to do is click on the request reinclusion link on your summary page, or the link at the Google Sitemap home page, and fill out the form. Just don’t forget that you don’t need to request reinclusion if you haven’t received a violation.

If you’re a new webmaster and need a helping hand, Google has a help center for webmasters. It has all the information you need to know about Google Sitemaps. If you have questions about Googlebot, crawling, indexing, ranking and the like, this is the place to go. If the answer you’re looking for isn’t there, no worries; the Google Sitemaps community is there to interact with as well.

By the way, not everybody by the way receives a notification of violation. Google has chosen not to notify certain webmasters of their penalty in certain cases. For example, they will not notify a spammer that he’s been caught. Doing so will only alert him that they have caught on to his game and possibly trigger his making even sneakier ways to get in.

On the whole, these improvements are wonderful additions and long overdue. Google really wants to improve their services and the best way is for people to keep using their products and giving feedback. The team behind Google is definitely listening.

I, robot: How do search engine spiders and robots work?

Some internet surfers still hold on to the mistaken belief that actual people visit each and every website and then input it for inclusion in the search engine’s database. Imagine, if these were true! With billions of websites available on the internet and with a majority of these sites offering fresh content it will take thousands of people to achieve the tasks made by search engine spiders and robots – and even then they won’t be as efficient or as thorough.

Search engine spiders and robots are pieces of code or software that have only one aim – seek content on the internet and within each and every individual web page out there. These tools have a very important role in how effectively search engines operate.

Search engine spiders and robots visit websites and get the necessary information that it needs to determine the nature and content of the website and then adds the data to the search engine’s index. Search engine spiders and robots follow links from one website to another so that it can consistently and infinitely gather the necessary information. The ultimate goal of search engine spiders and robots is to compile a comprehensive and valuable database that can deliver the most relevant results to the search queries of visitors.

But how exactly do search engine spiders and robots work?

The whole process begins when a web page is sent to a search engine for submission. The submitted URL is added to the queue of websites that will be visited by the search engine spider. Submissions can be optional though because most spiders will be able to find the content in a web page if other websites link to the page. This is the reason why it is a good idea to build reciprocal links with other website. By enhancing the link popularity of your website and getting links from other sites that have the same topic as your website.

When the search engine spider robot visits the website, it checks if there is an existing robots.txt file. The file tells the robot which areas of the site are off limits to its probe – like certain directories that have no use for search engines. All search engine bots look for this text file so it is a good idea to put one even if it is blank.

The robots list and store all of the links found on a page and they follow each link to its destination website or page.

The robots then submit all of this information to the search engine, which in turn compiles the data received from all the bots and builds the search engine database. This part of the process already has the intervention of search engine engineers who write the algorithms employed in evaluating and scoring the information that the search engine bots compiled. The moment all of the information is added to the search engine database this information is already made available to search engine visitors who are making search queries in the search engine.

Anatomy of a Good Sitemap

A sitemap is an aid used in making navigation through a website easier. It contains the structure of the website along with the included links to the major parts and subsections of the website.

A website’s sitemap has a practical and essential use. It makes it easier for visitors to visit through and navigate the website. The navigational help ensures that they do not get lost and that they will not have to look futilely for the information or page that they need. A visitor who immediately finds the information that he needs quickly in a website has a higher chance of coming back for another visit.

Many website administrators, designers and webmasters do not fully exploit the uses and benefits of having a good sitemap. For most of them, merely providing a list of links that do not really give a good service to visitors to the website is more than adequate. For them, as long as spiders can find the pages in their website then they are content. But wouldn’t it better if you can design a sitemap page that is not only big help to your visitors but also adds value to your website?

The characteristic of a good sitemap is that each link has an accompanying description about the target page for each link. This helps visitors who go to your site and would rely on it in navigating through your webpages.

Let’s look at two examples:

Example 1

Link with no description

Rock music

Example 2

Link with description

Rock music, the history of British rock music, From the Beatles to the Rolling Stones, David Bowie, Duran Duran, U2, The best British bands and rock acts in history. Trace how rock music in Britain evolved.

There is a definite difference between these two examples. From a mere cursory look at the two examples it is obviously apparent that the second example is far more effective in giving the proper information to visitors. Website visitors are more likely to appreciate the kind of listing illustrated in Example No. 2. This is because most people are more at home with a search engine style listing because it is easier to navigate. No one would like to visit a website and see a sitemap presented similarly to the first example because there is a complete lack of information.

There is also an added benefit to making a descriptive sitemap. It helps in raising your search engine ranking.

By building your sitemap in such a way that you put all the links to related pages on each sitemap page, you are making, in effect, a themed sitemap page. Let us say that you have 7 pages that all relate to British rock music, by putting it all together you make a British rock music themepage. This kind of page will have the element a search engine considers is essential for a high ranking web page: keyword rich text.

It pays to make a good sitemap. Making a conscious effort to make one will bring great benefits to your website.