Table of Contents. Part 1 Content Is King - page 3 Links Are Queen - page 9 Structure - page 15 Sitemaps - page 18

Transcription

1

2 Table of Contents Part 1 Content Is King - page 3 Links Are Queen - page 9 Structure - page 15 Sitemaps - page 18

3 Content Is King The single most important factor to ensure success on your website is unique content. Content must also be fresh and relevant for each category page. We cannot stress enough the importance for this type of content in order to garner search traffic. Nothing is more critical in achieving solid organic and paid traffic. Your content, coupled with the keywords your customers are searching for on your product, should tell your customers what you want them to know about your product. Your content should engage your readers! Ideally, content for main category should contain between words. If it is more than that take the opportunity to break the content out into a next page. Over 500 words on one page is a choking point for the spider. Creating additional pages is an additional opportunity for indexing and linking. One of about.com s secrets to success was to provide the content into bite sized morsels and multiple pages then ID different target words for each of the pages and cross link them. The end result was more pages for the spider to crawl and more indexed words, which resulted in more traffic. As inner pages under a given category are created the word content does not need to be as extensive. Content could only be words. However, the descriptions must be unique, relevant, and fresh. The more unique, fresh, relevant content written on the page and via blogs, forums, fan clubs, social networks, and so forth about your site and the more deep links to it the more potential link power you have. What Spiders Like! When the spider hits a site and enters a page it s like a blind person entering a room. You have to tell the spider what it sees. You must tell it this is a site about your product. The best way to do this is not only supply the spider with relevant and fresh content that employs keywords based on word research, but to place additional clues for the spider to discover. These additional clues are things like: Page title Meta description Header tags File names Images named with relevant words and alt text tabs. These, coupled with the most critical element, content on the topic, are a powerful combination. Page Scrapes Knowing what the spider sees when it encounters your web pages is critical. Following are simple steps for determining exactly what the spider sees upon encountering your pages. 1. Go to the page you want to scrape. 2. Select all by pressing Ctl A, copy the selection into a buffer with a Ctl C. 3. Open a text editor such as word pad not a word processor. 4. Copy contents into the text editor by pressing Ctl V. 5. Review what you see. 6. Will the content in the text editor convey to the spider what the page is all about?

4 Here is what a user will see when visiting our sister company, CastleWave.com Here is what the spider sees when it visits CastleWave.com. Italics and highlighting added CastleWave LLC Home About Us Us * Link Building * Customer Acquisition o Search + Pay Per Click + Viral Search Traffic o Affiliate Marketing o Online to Offline Marketing * Strategic Web Consulting * SEO * Software Engineer Outsource * Content Creation Home Link Building Link building can be a laborious task but it is critical to the long term success of your web site. You need link juice! Why? Links are crucial when it comes to building page rank. more... Customer Acquisition Want more customers? Our viral marketing strategies can help. CastleWave uses automated tools to discover the relevant sites for link building which speeds up the process of sending link requests to the other websites. more... Strategic Web Consulting CastleWave is dedicated to helping you achieve your web presence goals. From your initial creative ideas to converting users into loyal customers, we can help. more... Search Engine Optimization and more CastleWave was created to satisfy the need of serious web site owners to drive traffic to their sites. We understand the power of relevant, fresh content on your site and how to get customers to it Search Engine Optimization! You want search engines to find and feast on your site. Content is king but you better understand the importance of link building, how to

5 structure your pages to accommodate search engines, and key html elements. Just because you have your page up doesn t mean search engines will find it and know what it s all about. Content Creation! Because content is so important you need to know how and where to use it. We build landing page content, blog, articles, product AdCopy and more. We write content that will optimize and ensure effective execution to convert traffic into customers who are looking for your products. We do this for, Pay Per Click advertisements, blogs and other word related services that allow you to get your message to customers. Link Juice! Links help drive traffic but not just any link will do. You need the right kind of links. Our insightful team understands how to build your link power. CastleWave will only participate in white hat linking practices and we employ automated tools to determine relevant sites for link building. Customer Acquisition! Want more customers? Our viral marketing strategies can help. Software Engineer Outsource! Now that you have the idea in your head, how do you make it a reality on the web? How do you create the application that will show the world your idea? Let us show you how! Endorsement of our software development outsource program is evident by the fact that several of our Software Engineers are contracted to high visibility customers helping them achieve strategic technology objectives. These engineers work on a contract basis assisting clients build simple to complex software applications and design compelling web sites That s ABOUT 500 words. Does the above content give the spider the clues it needs to know what this site is all about? One of the common mistakes site designers make is allowing menu structures to get in the way of content. Keep in mind that spiders will only crawl through approximately the first words on a page. It is critical that your key message be clearly identifiable within this range. Content is king, not menus, not flash, not images. Content And The BIG Giveaway Structures set up using duplicate content will not have marked success with search engines. Be careful when using a sort function on the page or you may end up with duplicate content issues. You must be very careful in both giving and receiving standard, ubiquitous XML feed product descriptions as your content. Many ecommerce sites with the same distribution supply chain all get the same product descriptions. The spiders will see this duplicate content. Its best to keep content fresh and relevant. Avoid giving away your fresh content via XML feeds to anyone else. Make sure the spider credits you as the author of your content. Below are the steps you need to follow to ensure you get credit. 1. Distribute to you first and notify the spider to search your site 2. Delay send to others until after spider comes to your site 3. Self reference the info sent to other sites and get a link from them pointing back to the original site There is great value in sending your content out via XML, just ensure the process is followed so other sites don t get your credit. The more unique, fresh, relevant content written on the page and via blogs, forums, fan clubs and so forth about your site and the more deep links we get to it the more potential link power you have.

6 Content & Keywords There are two ways to go about choosing what keywords to use in your site content: you can guess or you can analyze. Most companies with web sites employ the guess method. You MUST take the guesswork out of the equation. To win traffic you must persistently use analysis feedback. Following is a sample of research results on the keywords dealing with IPOD. Notice the huge difference in traffic between the keyword ipod nano and ipod nanos. Also notice the ipods does not even show up but ipod is at the top of the traffic column. If you had to choose one term what would it be? Keywords can be categorized as Big Head words or Long Tail words. Big Head words are high traffic words that require deliberate and conscious effort to obtain ranking on. These are the words used to create titles, headers, meta tags, content, and generate external links. Long Tail words will naturally be searched because of the way you lay your content out. There isn t as much traffic on these words as they are more specific. However, the aggregate of Long Tail words can represent substantial traffic. Building out inner pages based on Long Tail words will result in additional high purpose, targeted traffic. Here is a strong example of how long tail traffic can make a significant increase in traffic. This is based on

7 the search term Villancicos mp3s. (Villancicos is a Spanish Christmas album). The following are traffic stats for a sample site taken for a 30 day period: The #7 organic traffic driver to the above sample site was the keyword Villancicos mp3. A search for Villancicos mp3 in Google gives the following results: The music site is the top result! Then we went into our keyword research and sure enough, Villancicos mp3 has a comparatively strong KEI: Just a couple external links were enough to get the Villancicos page on the music site to the top Google ranking! Here is a high ranking external site that links to the Villancicos page:

8 There s a tremendous amount of traffic on long tail artist names, album titles, and song titles. The music site is strongly positioned to get a lot of this traffic with some tweaks to the site. As you apply keywords to your content employ the following two guidelines: Density: The number of times a keyword/phrase occurs in the content. The suggested density is once for every words of content. Prominence: Where the keywords are placed in the content. It is most effective to place keywords at the beginning of content paragraphs. Content & Header Tags HTML header tags (<H1>, <H2>, <H3>, etc.) are more than a quick way to format text. Their most significant function should be to define your page s organizational structure and simplify page navigation. Well-written header text enlightens visitors, helping them navigate through your site. Additionally, using targeted words in the header tags will increase your site ranking. Relevant header tags will even increase your site ranking on some search engines. Specifically, use the targeted keywords of the page as your header tag. On each product category main page set up H1 tags corresponding with the content of the page. Anchor Text Your Content By correctly anchor-texting your targeted big head words or categories you are giving weight to the words and giving the search engine a jump start in ranking these words in organic search. This shows the relevancy of your pages to search engines & helps rank for desired keywords. It anchors big head words and the primary value is navigation, but it also tips off and gives link weight to search engines. Google considers this practice important and relevant to rankings. You should anchor text words in your page content and via menus at the bottom of your pages. The main/index (home) page is the most influential real estate found on your site when it comes to anchor text. Using your keyword-dense content on the index and category pages allows you to link to inner pages. All words in your content that refer to other categories should be linked. This is a great method for pushing spider traffic while associating the keyword (anchor text) with the specific, relevant page being linked to. Links on inner pages are not as vital to search engine rankings as is the main page, having said that, inner linking is still an important component of your link strategy. Link inner pages between themselves and back to main category pages and the index page.

9 Links Are Queen Content is King and Linking is Queen. Once you have created unique and original content, it is mandatory to create internal and external links to pages with targeted keywords. In this section we will discuss and present multiple linking strategies. Oftentimes link building is a very laborious project. The External Link External links are links that come from other URLs. External link should be built around targeted words.external linking is second only to content in importance. An html code link example another site might use to link to your site: <a href= yoursitehomepage.com >YOUR CHOSEN KEYWORD</a> Search engines continually seek opportunities to ensure search results are accurate and specific. That s just what searchers want. As an example, two competing sites may have the same link popularity and comparatively equal amounts of content. The only difference between the two sites is that one has relevant external links. The site with the relevant external links will get preferential treatment from the search engines. The most powerful links your site can receive are high page rank sites in your industry. Sites external to the industry add some weight but not as much as those focused on the industry. When receiving links it is best to have the words others are linking to you on match with the words of the page. Frequently you will provide someone giving you a link with an <href> tag, like the example above. When giving an external link make sure it is pertinent to the contents of the pages you link to. Giving away too many external links dilutes your link power so give them sparingly. Steer clear of linking to inconsequential, blacklisted, or banned URLs. External linking example:

10 Notice the external link used in the red box in the left navigation area. The National Buyers Agency Association (NBAA - features The Real Buyers Agent in Charleston, South Carolina. If you go to the NBAA site and click on that link, you will be sent to the home page for The Real Buyer s Agent ( Great example of someone giving an external link to another site. Linking & Directories Directories are search engines powered by human beings. Human editors compile all listings in a directory. Getting listed with the web s key directories is very important as it results in many eyeballs seeing the listings. In addition, if you are listed with directories, crawler-based search engines are more likely to find your site and add it to their listings free of charge. Submittal to these directories is accomplished by providing a 25 words or less description of your entire web site. Usage of 2-3 keywords (you researched!) should be included in the description. This description must be written in natural language no marketing hype. There are hundreds of directories that must be submitted to one-by-each. The two most notable and important are the Open Directory Project and Yahoo! Directory. The Open Directory Project (aka ODP or DMOZ) Following are specific instructions about submitting to this directory. 1. Go to 2. Use (a) the search engine or (b) the directory links to find the perfect category for your site. 3. Look in the upper right-hand corner of the directory page for a text link that says, add URL and click on it. 4. Carefully read the page. If you ve used all of your wits, and you are truly at the most appropriate category for your site, then fill out the form. Just put your URL in the text field labeled Site URL which already includes Then put the title of your site in the text field labeled Title of Site. Put a description of your website in the field marked Site Description. Put your address in the field marked Your E- mail Address, and hit the button at the bottom of the page marked Submit. That s the whole process. Following are tips for ensuring that you get each step right, which is harder for some people than many would guess. Step 2 is often a challenge. There is a tendency for Webmasters to think of their sites as being more comprehensive and useful than they really are, and thus to submit their sites to higher level categories than are appropriate. There is also a trend for Webmasters to search for the category that they think is most likely to be viewed by the type of customer they hope to attract, rather than searching for the category that best encompasses their website. For example, a Webmaster for a walk-in health clinic website is likely to submit his or her site to one of the hospitals categories, thinking that he or she will be doing the users a favor - helping them to find his or her clinic site when they re obviously searching for medical help. You should not try to choose a category by anticipating how users will browse through the directory. The directory may not be perfect, and you may think that by submitting your site to one category over another that is clearly more appropriate will help the users of the directory, but don t do it. That s the job of the Open Directory Editors. Don t look for a category where you think that your customers are going to search. Instead find the best branch in the DMOZ directory using logic. If your site sells jewelry made with amber, submit it to Top: Shopping: Jewelry: Bead and Gemstone: Amber and not to Top: Shopping: Jewelry: Bead and Gemstone. If you

11 are not sure about a particular category, click on the link in the upper right hand corner of the page that says Description for a detailed description of the category parameters. Completing step 2 correctly will insure that your site is reviewed faster. If you submit your site to the wrong category, then the editor of that category is going to forward it to the right category, causing a delay in listing your site. As you can imagine, some sites are very difficult to categorize. If you re not sure, submit to the category that you think is best and rely on the editors to do their jobs. Eventually the site will be properly indexed in the system. Step 4 includes several challenging elements, even for the geniuses among us. Correctly inserting the Title and Description for a website is often a challenge even for DMOZ editors. It can be a daunting task for people who are trained in marketing. When getting ready to write your title and description, it is helpful to think about the style of writing used in the instruction manual for your VCR. Notice that the instruction manual doesn t talk about how great or innovative the system is - it just describes the system and explains how to use it. For some of us with a marketing background, describing a website without using marketing or promotional language can be nearly impossible to master. Marketing language and techniques seep into your very way of thinking. If you have a friend that works for a PR agency, you can test this theory. Just ask them about their worst client. They are likely to give you some good dirt on the company, but they ll also tell you how terrific the company is at doing whatever the PR firm was hired to promote. They just can t escape it, even years later. Let s examine the Title requirement. As a rule, the title of a business website is the name of the business. The title of all other websites is the title listed on the site in question. The description, is the most difficult element in a DMOZ listing. There are basically two ways to learn to write a description for a site in DMOZ. The first way is to read all of the guidelines, assimilate the information, then follow them. The second way is to browse through the directory, looking at how sites are described in your category and in categories above and below your category, then imitate the style. Depending on your style of thinking, you may choose one way over the other. Yahoo! Directory Following are specific instructions for submitting to this directory. But we suggest you go to their site to ensure you have the latest updates. Here is the url for the site you should check out. This is fee-based and you should allocate the fee (about $299) required. This is the only paid inclusion that we recommend because it results in an instant jumpstart with high relevancy to crawlers and is important for getting preferential treatment from Yahoo. In order to add your web site to the Yahoo! Directory, you must first suggest it to Yahoo! s team of editors, who visit and evaluate every site added to the Directory. To suggest your site for evaluation by an editor, please follow the process outlined below: 1. Determine if your site is already listed (visit Yahoo! Directory Help for assistance). 2. Determine the appropriate category in the Yahoo! Directory. 3. Suggest your site from the link on the Directory category page most relevant to your site (Non-English sites please refer to the list of Non-English Yahoo! Directories). The Yahoo! Directory is made up of categories. To do a Yahoo! search to find the best category for your site: 1. From the front page, search on a term relevant to your site. 2. From the web search results page, select the Directory tab under the search box. This will confine yoursearch to sites listed in the Yahoo! Directory. 3. Under the search bar you will see a list of RELATED DIRECTORY CATEGORIES and relevant sitesfrom the Directory will be listed under TOP 20 DIRECTORY RESULTS. You can review the list of Directory categories related to your search term and you can see various categories listed under the description of each site listed in Directory Results.

12 4. When you click on a category, you will go to that page in the Directory. You will see a Suggest a Site link located to the right of the search box on the Directory page. Note: If you try to click on Suggest a Site from a broad or top-level category, such as Education, Regional, or Entertainment, instead of browsing down to a more specific sub-category, you ll be told that your suggestion is too broad. So make sure you search for and find the most specific category that describes the subject matter of your site. Business or Commercial Sites If you are suggesting your business or a site that is commercial in nature, it must be submitted to a commercial sub-category within the Business and Economy section of the Yahoo! Directory. The Business and Economy section contains two major sub-categories: A wholesale or business to business area labeled: Business and Economy > Business to Business A retail or consumer shopping area labeled: Business and Economy > Shopping and Services When you go to the appropriate commercial sub-category relevant to your site, you will see that the Suggest a Site links to the fee-based Yahoo! Directory Submit process --which is required when suggesting a commercial site. For more information please go to Yahoo! Directory Help. Linking & Press Releases Writing press releases provides the opportunity for you to imbed links to your big head or selected words. This sets the links up for others to grab the press release and distribute it to various servers. The distribution generates an abundance of links throughout the world-wide-web. Integral to your web strategy must be taking every opportunity possible to generate press and have it reviewed, linked, and submitted through an online news agency. This practice will give you great success and build links rapidly. We use PRweb.com. Only participate in white hat linking practices. Employing outsource firms to engage in acceptable linking practices is an inexpensive way to create relevant links and lots of them. Link building services can be categorized into three components: Finding the related Websites to link out to Sending the link request to the other websites Adding link backs to the your site to complete the linking Crexendo employs automated tools to determine relevant sites for link building. This effort speeds up the process of sending link requests to websites. We are able to send 20 to 30 requests per hour for link building. We have observed from our past experience that if the page rank of our link page (not the home page) is 3, then 30 to 40% sites link back to us. If the page rank is 4 then, 40 to 50% sites link back to us. If the page rank is 5 then, 50 to 60% sites link back to us. Links & Articles Crexendo has access to a database of 1000 Article Websites. Many websites allow us to submit the article without sign up or user registration. Others require registration as a user for the submission of articles. Without signing up we can submit articles to about 20 sites. With a sign up procedure, we can submit articles to an additional 10 sites. Once the sign up is done further articles will be submitted at about 20 per hour.

13 Links & Other Submissions Rss Feed And Xml Submission Crexendo has access to 300 RSS Feed submission sites and 100 XML feed submission sites and we can submit to15-20 sites per hour. Sites Submision To E-Directories Crexendo has access to a database of 800 E-Directories. We can submit 15 to 20 sites per hour. Search Engine Submission Crexendo has access to a database of 200 high-ranking search sites engines. We can submit 10 to 15 per hour. Forums & Social Network Linking Create a feedback option or a forum, which propagates content and tends to generate linking. Create social network structure or a series of tools that will auto generate links as customers and consumers use the tool. Partner Links One of the great successes companies such as Amazon, Ebay, and Eopinions have had is to use partners and vendors to link with. There are several levels of engagement in this scenario. Request, give incentive (place in contracts?) to all of your vendors and suppliers to put a link to your web site on their website. This is a manual process done on a relationship basis. Any of your vendors, distributors, suppliers, stores, or venues, with pages must link to your main site. Blog Blogging is one of the most powerful tools you can use at the present. Ensure again that content is fresh, relevant, and unique. In terms of controlling the link building efforts on your site this method is second only to submitting your site to the directories. It is an effective way to give yourself links and get back links, get search traffic, and create fresh content. Blogging in this manner is a simple and cost-effective differentiation strategy. Linking to authority sites via a blog is important. Your bloggers should be deep linking to your site. Link Exchange Programs As a general rule we strongly recommend not using link exchange programs, link farms, or any situation where you unnaturally obtain links. Google and the other search engines not only frown on this practice but in many instances will blacklist your site and remove you from the rankings. We are investigating a potential parallel link exchange and a three-way link exchange program. We will keep you advised on these. Individual Link Exchanges Create a page called links or references. All reciprocal linking you do is done on this page and it does not need to be a highly visible page. If someone links from their homepage to your homepage always link back to them from your homepage. If they link to you from an inner page, link back to them from an inner page. Know what the page rank is of the site that is linking to you. Don t waste links on low page ranked sites. The more links on a page the more dilution. If someone gives you a link and they already have 20 links in a page, you are diluted 1/20th. If you are the only link, you get all of the page rank passed on. Check out how many links a page has before accepting it. Some links are good to accept, some are not. As a general rule do not accept a reciprocal link exchange with someone whose page rank is lower than yours.

14 Ensure you provide any link exchanges you agreed to, the exact same naming format and correct targeted words. Don t leave it up to the other webmasters to decide the format used or the targeted words. When possible avoid the confusion all together by simply passing the appropriate href code with your chosen url and keywords inserted ensures you get the correct targeted word. Example: <a href= yoursite.com >YOUR CHOSEN KEYWORDS</a> Link Baiting Link baiting is merely link building with a twist: Instead of hunting, bring links to your sites via relevant, unique, fresh, and popular site content. The music industry really lends itself to publishing pages or articles on hot topics that draw user attention. The idea is that others pick up on the content, it appeals to them, and they link to it. The article is the bait and the link is the catch. With link building there are five basic types of hooks or pages to encourage links: News, Opposing Opinion, Attack, Information, and Humor. Provide an easy mechanism and encourage others to pick up your content and put it on their web sites. A good example is the fan club. They pick up your content and photos. The ultimate link baiting is YouTube, MySpace, and Amazon. Give them a way to get to your video, news snippets, photos, great content, or some cool tool.

15 Structure Content, Then Links, Then Structure After the importance of content and links, follows structure. Good site structure is critical because it: Enables you to obtain long tail traffic Enables spiders to navigate proficiently giving it the ability to get to more pages Allows the spider to clearly understand what the page is about File Structure/Database Naming When using the database ensure there are no question marks in the file structure name. Most databases have a mod-rewrite function which allows you to name the structure according to the categories and words rather than random alphanumeric symbols. Notice the url string in the search bar above. Even big sites, like American Airlines, make the simple mistake of not using correct structure. There is no reason for the?anchorevent=false in the URL. What does?anchorevent=false have to do with American Airlines or flying or NetSAAver special offers? We re all for giving the spider and your users all the clues they need to understand what your site is all about. Do not think that content and linking are enough. Your competition doesn t. SEO is a fine symphony, every piece needs to fit together to make just the right noise! An integral part of the naming convention is to include the product name and the category name, yet another clue for the spider. Check out this site (one of our favorites!). They know how to structure their url strings correctly: Notice how the url string contains the exact description of the product, Ibex 405 Full-Zip Sweater - Women s These guys do this time and time again and their effort gives their customers confidence they have ended up where they want to and the spider know that much better what the page is exactly about.

16 Appropriate use of Java is ok but building an entire page of Java or flash is not good for the spiders. Spiders do not see flash as content. When possible build them as static HTML pages. Static HTML pages don t change and the spiders like that. If a page is continually rebuilt the spider has difficulty interpreting that page and attempting to link to a page that changes every day is impossible. Titles, Meta tags, Meta Descriptions TITLES, META tags, and META DESCRIPTIONS should support each other and be relevant to the content of the page. As a spider enters a page it begins looking around. It is vital that the content and info on each page match title, meta tags, h1, and meta description. Otherwise the spider will get confused about what the page is really about. Many sites are so crammed full of junk or organized in such a manner that the spider is totally confused. Of course the opposite is just as bad. Not enough content (too much flash, java, and images not named correctly) results in the spider leaving the site clueless. Both results are to be avoided. In a nutshell: 1. Name titles according to page. 2. Make sure all pages are linked together 3. Make sure that spider is invited into the room. (robots.txt) 4. Ensure meta description words match the page content. 5. Use header tags whenever possible and ensure they match the title of the page. In the example below, this site has focused its title tag (noted in the red oval) on the keywords: Pizza Coupons, Free Pizza Coupons, and Online Pizza Coupons. Note how their Meta Description (in the HTML code, next page) supports that title tag.

17 Meta Description <meta name= description content= This site was created for one simple reason, to provide a single location for free pizza coupons to your favorite pizza maker. You could always get pizza coupons from your Sunday newspaper, but we ve made it quicker and easier for you to get online pizza coupons from 1pizzacoupons.com. A good rule of thumb for META DESCRIPTIONS is to keep the description about 25 words. They have also added an h1 tag (circled in the oval below) that includes a term found in their title tag and meta description. <h1><span style= color:#ff7b0e; >Pizza</span> Coupons</h1> Alt Text Tags Whenever possible images should be named something relevant to the keywords you are using to drive traffic to the page the images resides on. Every image needs to have a descriptive alt text tag. This will not only give hints to the spider, but also allow for more searched images. It is estimated that about 15% of searches on the web are image searches. For the pizza site we ve been using as our example, check out how they named their image of the juicy pizza in the left navigation bar. Note the Alternate Text: Online Pizza Coupons. Even though the spider does not understand what an image is, the alt text tag does provide it with an understanding of what the image represents. Missing and irrelevant alt text tags do not help. The overarching idea here is to ensure your content, title tag, meta description, h1, and alt text tags all are relevant to the site and support each other. Your customers will appreciate the consistency and it ain t bad for the search spiders either!

18 Sitemaps Site map submittal We strongly recommend that you build a site map in XML as outlined on This is one of the few initiatives where Google, Microsoft and Yahoo have all agreed to a common file format that all search engines will use: robot.txt format. All three search engines use this map to crawl your sites. It requires that your site is set up and created in such a way that every time a page is removed, changed, or deleted, the XML sitemap is updated. You will find specific examples on how to implement this at It is also possible to manually submit all of your pages to Google via the webmaster tools. For complete instructions in how to submit site maps to Google, Yahoo!, and Bing go to the addresses provided below Google provides the following great overview of sitemaps. Take a few minutes to review and understand this. Again this is one more action you can employ to give you an edge over your competitors. Overview: The Sitemap Protocol allows you to inform search engines about URLs on your websites that are available for crawling. In its simplest form, a Sitemap that uses the Sitemap Protocol is an XML file that lists URLs for a site. The protocol was written to be highly scalable so it can accommodate sites of any size. It also enables webmasters to include additional information about each URL (when it was last updated; how often it changes; how important it is in relation to other URLs in the site) so that search engines can more intelligently crawl the site. Sitemaps are particularly beneficial when users can t reach all areas of a website through a browseable interface. (Generally, this is when users are unable to reach certain pages or regions of a site by following links). For example, any site where certain pages are only accessible via a search form would benefit from creating a Sitemap and submitting it to search engines. This document describes the formats for Sitemap files and also explains where you should post your Sitemap files so that search engines can retrieve them. Please note that the Sitemap Protocol supplements, but does not replace, the crawl-based mechanisms that search engines already use to discover URLs. By submitting a Sitemap (or Sitemaps) to a search engine, you will help that engine s crawlers to do a better job of crawling your site. Using this protocol does not guarantee that your webpages will be included in search indexes. (Note that using this protocol will not influence the way your pages are ranked by Google.) Google adheres to Sitemap Protocol 0.9 as dictated by sitemaps.org. Sitemaps created for Google using Sitemap Protocol 0.9 are therefore compatible with other search engines that adopt the standards of sitemaps.org Google Webmaster tools is chuck full of handy items and information. The following is an example from the Google webmaster tool of an XML sitemap. The Sitemap in the example contains a small number of URLs, each of which is identified using the <loc> XML tag. In this example, a different set of optional parameters has been provided for each URL. <?xml version= 1.0 encoding= UTF-8?> <urlset xmlns= > <url> <loc>

19 <lastmod> </lastmod> <changefreq>monthly</changefreq> <priority>0.8</priority> </url> <url> <loc> <changefreq>weekly</changefreq> </url> <url> <loc> <lastmod> </lastmod> <changefreq>weekly</changefreq> </url> <url> <loc> <lastmod> t18:00:15+00:00</lastmod> <priority>0.3</priority> </url> <url> <loc> <lastmod> </lastmod> </url> </urlset> Onsite sitemap Don t confuse the above instruction with having a Site Map page on your site. You should create a page on your site that is called Site Map. We typically place the link to the site map in the footer menu but you are welcome to place the link wherever you like on your site. The site map page helps your customers navigate the site more easily. It also provides opportunity for internal linking on your site (see Links Are Queen).

20 The site map that appears to the customers coming to your site will look something like the site map below. Customers who go to this page may click on each entry in the Site Map and link directly to the page represented. By clicking on Contact Us the user goes directly from the site map page to the Contact Us page. This concludes the first part of Search Engine Express. To receive the second part please contact us at Part Two of Search Engine Express contains detailed information on search engine submissions, directories, measurement tools to track your success, and pay per click. Crexendo is here to help you succeed in your SEO endeavors so that you can get the most out of what the Internet can do for your small business. We thank you again for requesting Search Engine Express. The Crexendo Team