RSS Underground - RSS Resources - Dynamic Directory - Article MenuFeatured RSS Underground Sitemaps ArticleAll About Sitemaps And How They Can Improve Your Online BusinessMuch has been said about search engine optimization (SEO). Many web publishers actually pronounce it as the key to the Promised Land of online prominence. After all, 80% of the traffic you can generate for your web site will come from the search engines. 80% is a pretty huge number, one which should not be neglected. Capture that much a percentage and you can rest assured that your online endeavor - whatever it may be - will most certainly have a good chance to achieve success in the World Wide Web. And the way to win the search engines' favor is through SEO practices. SEO tactics are as varied as they are many. Most of us know about keywords, keyword density levels, and keyword placements. A good number of us know about the need to regularly update our content, the importance of back links, and the essence of link popularity. But times change and so do the requirements of search engines. And the newest kid on the block? Sitemaps. What Are Sitemaps And How Can They Help Your Website? To understand sitemaps, you must first have to understand XML. XML stands for extensible markup language, a programming that will allow the particular content to be syndicated to a variety of recipients. XML is the driving force behind RSS and the weblog boom since 2 years ago. A sitemap is an XML-generated map of your web site. A sitemap contains all the pages as well as all the sub-pages of your web site, together - ideally speaking - with some description for each entry. If you think this is a complicated matter, do bear in mind that most of the HTML editing programs these days, most notably Coffee Cup and Xsite, include a feature that makes sitemap-creation automatic. How can a sitemap help your web site? The answer is two-fold: 1. Sitemaps will help your visitors navigate your web site. Instead of giving up on your site if information they're looking for is not readily available to them, they can instead resort to your sitemap to find the same.
2. More importantly, sitemaps will guarantee that once indexed, Google - the most widely used search engine in the planet - will crawl through each and every page of your web site and that its search engine spiders will instantly be alerted every time you will publish new content. Sounds Complicated? It's Actually Quite Simple In Theory Since sitemaps are powered by XML, the contents thereof will be syndicated to the most interested party of all - Google. Your sitemap will make it easier for the search engine spiders to find your web site, and to know that new content is published when such is indeed published. Indeed, sitemaps will do the job that the search engine spiders are tasked to perform. The burden will be eased on the part of the search engines. The result? Faster indexing and more control for the user on what pages and what content should be categorized. In effect, sitemaps do provide for a more efficient process in placing a good position in search engine results. Generating Your Sitemap As we have mentioned earlier, most HTML editors these days have built-in sitemap generators, owing to the fact that sitemaps have become absolute necessities in this day and age. Nonetheless, since Google promotes the inclusion of sitemaps for the web sites they will eventually index, their services have provided an official sitemap generator which can be found in the link below... https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/docs/en/sitemap-generator.html There are other free online sitemap generators which you can use, of course. Since these generators will only create a code which you will copy and paste on your source code, there is no need for installation. Google itself has compiled a directory for these free sitemap generators. Give the following services a try, if you'd prefer them... http://code.google.com/sm_thirdparty.html Related: Content Development Team - Corporate Blog RSS Underground Featured Article Author BoxIncrease Website Traffic using Mark Flavin's very own personally developed traffic methods. These methods are extremely underused & will drive thousands of targeted visitors to your web site for free. Click Here Now Google Sitemaps for Newbies and ProfessionalsThe Google Sitemaps is a new program that allows webmasters to create a sitemap of their site. Why is it worth the extra trouble? Well, partially because the web site masters don't have a choice, but also because it leads to the two things that can improve search engine ranking: it's easier for Google to index all the pages (thus avoiding the problem of accidentally 'skipping' key information) and it's easier to upload new and relevant content. Essentially, you use the XML program. That's easy enough for webmasters. After that, three options await--ranging from the simple and straightforward, to what we'd like to call "Challenging". Let's start with challenging. Of course that's a relative term; if you're so comfortable wit your server and so smart you can install scripts in your sleep, then this won't be much of a problem. You use Google's Python Generator. You'll need to install this, and that requires a little more technical know-how than reading "IT Management for Dummies." How does it work? The search engine gives you a link to a generator. Download this link, and set it up on your server. While you go off and get yourself a well-deserved cup of coffee, the computer does it thing and you come back and find that your sitemap XML file has been automatically fed to Google. Once that's done, open a Google Account so you can follow your sitemap's progress and read any diagnostic data. Or, alternatively, you can sign in using your accounts for GMail and Google Alerts. Not too keen on Python Generator? Not a problem. Use is a PHP Code Generator. This program spiders your site, then takes charge of developing the XML sitemap file. Cool--it does everything for you! Except you'll have to have a basic understanding of PHP files and scripts, or you'll be lost. Not something for the average Joe (or Jane) who just wants to make a personal web site, but relatively simple for professional webmasters or a particularly smart weekend tekkie. If you think Python Generator and PHP are way too complex, or just too complicated, don't panic. You still have plenty of options--the numerous free online generators that are all over the web, ready to rescue you from the hassles of XML sitemaps. Google itself keeps a directory of these third party suppliers (for lack of a better word), so just visit its web site or Google them yourself. One such option that is provided by XML-Sitemaps requires minimal supervision. Click it, and let it spider your site and index as many as 500 pages into a handy sitemap XML file. (Although, if you really do have 500 pages, it may be a good idea to get a webmaster--that's a lot of content to handle on your own. Then you can make him worry about the XML sitemaps for you.) Once the sitemap is generated, these programs will also let you download files and make minor changes. Another advantage: you can establish the priority of the pages, indicate the kind of frequency you want and adjust it accordingly, and other nifty features that give you more control over your web site. If you are doing daily updates, however, you should use PHP or Python Generator. Upload the file to your web site, tell Google Sitemaps that you've "done the deed", and let the hits come. XML-Sitemaps.com provides a free online Google Sitemaps generator which will also help you find and fix broken links. Why To Use Google SitemapsWhy are sitemaps important? Sitemaps help search engines to better crawl your web site. Sitemaps are an easy way to tell the search engines about all the pages on your web site, which pages are most important to you, and when those pages change, for a smarter crawl and fresher search results. In this article, we'll cover how to create and submit a sitemap of your web site to Google Sitemaps. What the giant says itself: "Google Sitemaps answers questions you might have about how Google sees your site. For example, you can learn about errors (such as if we're having trouble crawling your pages) and statistics (such as and what search queries return your site in the results)." Search engines find information about your site by using software known as "spiders" to crawl the web. Once the spiders find a site, they follow links within the site to collect information about all the pages. The spiders revisit sites regularly to find new or changed content. "Google Sitemaps is an experiment in web crawling. By using Sitemaps to inform and direct our crawlers, we hope to expand our coverage of the web and speed up the discovery and addition of pages to our index." A Sitemap file doesn't replace search engines' normal methods of crawling the web, it simply gives additional information. Google Sitemaps is a beta program, so it cannot make any predictions or guarantees about when or if your URLs will be crawled or added to Google's index. Over time, Google expects both coverage and time-to-index to improve as they refine their processes and better understand webmasters' needs. You can see statistics and errors about your web site if you have a Google Account. Even if you don't have a sitemap, you still can see the statistics and errors about your web site. You can simply add your web site to your account and verify ownership of it. Let's get started: 1) Create a Google Account. You can create a Google Account at www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps. See the right side of the Google's page to continue. 2) Log in with your Google Account and add your web site's URL. 3) Verify your site ownership. If you can upload a verification file to the same location as your Sitemap or to the site's root, Google considers you a site owner and will show you site details. 4) Create a Sitemap in a supported format. See the tools' section at manfred-knows.com and search for the ROR Sitemap Generator. Download it, install it and generate a sitemap file (xml file) 5) Add the Sitemap to your Google Sitemaps account. 6) Congratulations ! You are done ! I recommend you to update your sitemap when your site changes. When you've updated your sitemap file, remember to resubmit your sitemap in your Google's account, too. I hope this article was useful ! Visit Manfred-Knows.com to read more articles like this. Manfred-Knows.com also provides free seo tools (including Sitemap Generator) ! Why Google Sitemaps is a Win-Win Situation for WebmastersThe process of informing search engines about new pages in your web site or about new web sites in your care can be quite a time consuming task. The submissions process is just way too much trouble for its own good that even the search engines have realized that it is a path not worth pursuing and completely stopped using this method a long time ago. There have been many innovations presented since then as a way of simplifying the submission process and eliminate most of the drudgery that has been associated with this task. With the development Google Sitemaps, the process has indeed been a big help to many webmasters and business owners. In fact, many people contend that Google Sitemaps is probably the most important development on the internet since the RSS, blogs and ping.
Free RSS to JavaScript conversion tool, easily integrate any RSS or RDF feed into your web-site RSS, weblog and ping had actually been used by webmasters as tools in informing search engines about new additions to their web sites even though this function was not the primary purpose of the aforementioned innovations. Of course, Google Sitemaps is so much faster and easier to use compared to the said systems and this is the reason why it has risen in popularity and is now acknowledged as the most effective way of updating a web site to search engines. In fact, this new innovation of using sitemaps for the search engine submission process has become a very vital part of operating a web site and a webmaster can ignore it at his own risk. There may still be some sceptics who may still not believe that a sitemap method of submitting new web pages or new content to a web site is very effective. One reason why using the sitemap method like Google Sitemaps is that the technology was developed from the ground up with solely one primary goal, which is to alert and direct the Google search engine spiders to the web pages that you have specified. All the other methods are considered as indirect and submissions to search engines are not their primary purpose either. Clearly, using Google sitemaps provides a win-win situation for webmasters and online business owners. First, Google sitemaps limits the huge waste of the resources needed to crawl web site that have not changed. The technology allows webmasters to inform Google which pages have changed or if there are new content added to a web site and then direct Google's spiders directly to those pertinent pages. Google Sitemaps also radically speeds up the process of discovery and addition of pages to Google's web site index. This can only be achieved if you use the technology and nothing else. Google Sitemaps offers a level of usability that is different from conventional sitemaps because it offers a directory of all the web pages in the web site that the webmaster or online business owner wants the search engine to visit. Without the assistance of sitemaps like Google's, it may become hard for a web page to be found by the search engine crawlers. There is even a chance that the page may not be found at all. XML-Sitemaps.com provides a free online Google Sitemaps generator which will also help you find and fix broken links. What is Yahoo SitemapsOne of the most common problems ecommerce web sites have with rankings is that portions of their web sites are not included in the search engines. The cause can be any of a variety of reasons like complicated URL strings to slow server response or lack of a proper internal linking structure. If Yahoo can't find your pages, they won't get into the search results. Create a list of all the URLs you want indexed in a text file and name it something like, urllist.txt (Yahoo's suggestion). You can also provide a compressed file and call it urllist.gz. If you are providing a plain text list of URLs to Google Sitemaps, then you can use that same file for Yahoo. Place the file in the main directory of your web site and submit the URL to the Yahoo free submission form at: http://submit.search.yahoo.com/free/request. Devendra Jaiswal (SEO Professional) Hey, please visit the Internet Marketing web sites: Recently Added Internet Related Articles: Associated Content - RSS, Newsletter, Blog, Website...with so many places you can publish your web content to, how do you choose; especially when articles and time to publish them is limited. Besides, why should you publish your content in so many different formats? If you've been doing business online for any amount of time you know that building a list is integral to success. Rss Feeds Article - Blog is short for web log and became popular during the 2004 Presidential Election as blog writers all over the world opined and investigated both the president and John Kerry. There are literally hundreds of thousands of blogs out there. Web Content Theft - There is of course a huge amount to learn in setting up and running a Web Site, which is why, I believe, that most newcomers tend to put their trust in a web designer, aka webmaster and leave them to get on with things hoping that all will go well. Big Mistake! Blogging Tips - The more you understand about any subject, the more interesting it becomes. As you read this article you'll find that the subject of Blogging is certainly no exception. If you run a small company, you may find that the world of blogging for business owners is a world that you want to be a part of. Blogging is a great way to get the word out to consumers about your product or service, and it can even be useful for inspiring employee loyalty and helping you keep your workers at peak morale. Internet Online Business - Blog is short for weblog. A weblog is a journal (or newsletter) that is frequently updated and intended for general public consumption. Blogs generally represent the personality of the author or the Web site. External Content - 10) Not setting the stage. An introduction should be more than just ""Hello. Today we'll be discussing _____."" If you just jump into the content without setting up the presentation, it can get you off to a jumpy, disjointed start. An introduction should give the audience a sense of who you are, what you're there to do and what's in it for them to listen." Content Needs - In this day and age of online marketing, content has been heralded as king, and for good reasons. People flock to sites not because of the flashy graphics nor the astounding features nor the witty domain name of the said pages, but because of the information contained therein that would enlighten them with their queries of the moment. Blogging Market Share - I am going to bet that you are not one of the richest people in the world. As a matter of fact, you are probably an average guy or gal who works 40+ hours a week (making money for someone else) and when all the bills are paid, you have very little left to show for it. How do I know this? This describes just about everyone who starts trying to make money online. Content Developer - The practice known as "scraping" is a spam technique and is condemned by all the major search engines. Articles on the web
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