SEO Article:
Site Maps: A Force To Be Reckoned With
Another important component of search engine optimization is the use of site maps. If you want visitors -- and search engine spiders -- to find every page on your Web site, a site map can be your biggest ally especially if you have a lot of content on your site (and if you've been reading all the advice on our site, you should know by now that the more content you have the better your chances are for top ranking).
So, what is a site map? Basically, it is a navigation tool. It lets visitors know what information you have, how it is organized, where it is located with respect to other information, and how to get to that information with the least amount of clicks possible. A good site map is more than a hyperlinked index, which only provides the user with a list of alphabetically arranged terms.
Site maps also provide lots of nutritious spider food for search engine robots that crawl your site and eventually index it. Once the robot gets to the site map, it can visit every page on your entire site because all the information is clearly indicated on that one page. However, in order for your site map to work most effectively, you must include a link to your site map in the navigation on every page of your site.
To make your site map most appealing to both the search engine robots and human visitors, be sure to include descriptive text along with the page URLs and links. Be sure to use your targeted keywords in that text. Remember not to be too repetitive with your keyword phrases, though, or you may be penalized.
When you make it easy for people to navigate your site, they will find what they are looking for and will most likely be a repeat visitor. Likewise, when your site is easily navigable by search engine spiders, you increase your chances of being favorably listed in their search results.
So, if creating a site map isn't part of your current search engine optimization strategy, maybe it's time you thought about adding this beneficial -- and fairly simple -- tool to your repertoire.
For an example of Submit Today's site map, go to: http://www.submittoday.com/site_map.htm.
About The Author
As Submit Today's copywriter and editor, Kristy Meghreblian has written online content for many successful companies, including Monster.com. She has successfully combined her excellence in journalism with the delicate art of keyword density as it relates to search engine optimization. As a result, she has helped many Submit Today clients achieve top ranking. Submit Today (http://www.SubmitToday.com) is a leading search engine optimization, submission and ranking company located in Naples, Florida.
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Get Better Search Engine Rankings with RSS
RSS is the latest craze in online publishing. But what exactly is RSS? RSS or Rich Site Syndication is a file format similar to XML, and is used by publishers to make their content available to others in a format that can be universally understood. RSS allows publishers to "syndicate" their content through the distribution of lists of hyperlinks. It has actually been around for a while, but with the advent of spam filters and online blogging, it is fast becoming the choice of ezine publishers who want to get their message across to their subscribers. However, not much attention has been given to the advantages RSS provides for search engine optimization. Why Search Engines Love RSS Many SEO experts believe that sites optimized around themes,or niches, where all pages correspond to a particular subject or set of keywords, rank better in the search engines. For example, if your website is designed to sell tennis rackets, your entire site content would be focused around tennis and tennis rackets. Search engines like Google seem to prefer tightly-themed pages. But where does RSS figure in all this? RSS feeds, usually sourced from newsfeeds or blogs, often correspond to a particular theme or niche. By using highly targeted RSS feeds, you can enhance your site's content without having to write a single line on your own. It's like having your own content writer - writing theme-based articles for you - for free! How can RSS improve my Search Engine Rankings? There are three powerful reasons why content from RSS Feeds is irresistible bait for search engine spiders. 1. RSS Feeds Provide Instant Themed Content There are several publishers of RSS feeds that are specific to a particular theme. Since the feed is highly targeted, it could contain several keywords that you want to rank highly for. Adding these keywords to your pages helps Google tag your site as one with relevant content. 2. RSS Feeds Provide Fresh, Updated Content RSS feeds from large publishers are updated at specific intervals. When the publisher adds a new article to the feed, the oldest article is dropped. These changes are immediately effected on your pages with the RSS feed as well. So you have fresh relevant content for your visitors every hour or day. 3. RSS Feeds Result in More Frequent Spidering One thing I never anticipated would happen as a result of adding an RSS feed to my site was that the Googlebot visited my site almost daily. To the Googlebot, my page that had the RSS feed incorporated into it was as good as a page that was being updated daily, and in its judgement, was a page that was worth visiting daily. What this means to you, is that you will have your site being indexed more frequently by the Googlebot and so any new pages that you add to your site will be picked up much faster than your competitors.
Anatomy Of A Top Ranking Web page
Optimizing web pages for high rankings in the search engines involved two main processes. Firstly there is the on-page factors which include what keywords you place where on the page itself. The second, and more important process is getting the off-page factors right - incoming links.
Search Engine Traffic: Winning With Content
Targeted traffic is the lifeblood of any online business. The best source of free-targeted traffic to your site is the search engines. To be visible at the search engines, you have to appear in the first three or so pages of the search engine result pages (SERPS). The quest for attaining high rankings at the search engines has spawned a whole industry, the search engine optimization (SEO) world.
- Use text links, avoid image links.
- Anyhow, if you have used image links, then always make sure to put your keywords in the alt tags.
- Put your prime keywords in text links and always insure to put a short descriptions of your website/page in minimum of 20-30 words or more if allowed.
- In text links if you are not allowed to add descriptions then always try to put a short descriptions in title tag. E.g.: < a href =" link-exchange.html " title =" Link Exchange Tips, No Tricks ">Link Exchange< /a >
- Avoid repetition of keywords, repetition will lead to low rankings.
- Always try to exchange links from related websites (e.g. if you have a football league website, then a link from other sports websites will be known as related website links)
- Never, exchange links with unrelated websites/pages.
- Always ensure that the website that you are exchanging links with, is well optimized and has a good content.
- Never try to exchange links in quick sessions. Since search engines ignores or does not index those sites who gets bundles of links in quick time.
- Give your link exchange works few hours every day, to ensure that you get limited but quality links.
- Mainly for new websites, avoid exchanging bundles of links in quick sessions.
- Avoid creating a link/links.html file, since search-engines do not index link/links.html files, often.
- Always make a 'resources' (any appropriate name) folder and create an index.html file for that named folder and create appropriate html files for appropriate links going into them. (a sort of web-directory)
- Never, never exchange links with pages bearing more than 50 back-links. Generally 25 is appropriate and should not be more than two clicks away from the index/main page.
- Always ensure yourself that the page/website you are exchanging link is being indexed by the search engines or not.
- Also ensure on your own that the page/website you are exchanging link with, is not being blocked by any scripts, or disallowed by robots.txt, or disallowed by using noindex, nofollow on html page.
- Avoid linking to those tricky and false websites, and if possible inform already linked websites about the matter and ask them for link-exchange, if related to your websites.
- Links from the main/index page of the related website is the most quality link that a website can get. But, never try to place more than 20 back-links in index/main page.
- Exchanging links with your competitor's back linking website/pages are also the quality links that a website can get.
- Never post your website links to FFA, Guestbook, or other unrelated areas. Since search-engines completely ignores such links and may penalize your website.
- Site bearing good Google page rank are appropriate for link-exchange. Generally 4+ Google page rank is great for link-exchange.
- Exchanging links with old website is excellent.
- Link exchanging with new websites, with decent Google ranking at first, but bears quality contents and is well optimized, is also an excellent option for exchanging-links, since new websites bears less outgoing links than the old websites.
- While exchanging links for homepage of your website, also try to exchange links for sub-pages of it, for better ranking for that particular sub-page.
- Personal verification of the linking partner's website is recommended.
- Check for total incoming and outgoing links for whole website or for particular sub-pages of your linking partner's website and off course of your own before getting link exchanged.
A link back to the author's article page Link Exchange Tips, No Tricks is compulsory, in case of publication of this article in featured article websites or others. Example of author's search engine optimization and link building work can be found at The Indian Handicrafts.