Let’s Get Crawled
by Joshua Hay / E-Web Design & Marketing
How to create a site map and what to look for in linking partners
Over the last couple of articles I have tried to touch on a few of the easily implemented aspects of optimising a web site for the search engines as I set out to break the myth that “SEO is all about page titles and Meta tags”. At the end of last month’s article I promised that in this month’s article I would explain the uses and implementation of site maps, as well as touching on the (more complicated than is often thought) topic of inbound linking strategy. So let’s get straight into it!
Site Maps, On and Off-Page
A site map acts as a doorway to your website, allowing all of your pages to be found and crawled by the search engine spiders, which helps your site saturate the search engine results. The search engine spider will follow the “Site Map” link and be able to crawl into every page of your site and back again. A site can ensure the search engine spider reaches and crawls its site map as often as possible by adding a text link to it from the footer of every page.
The concept is simple enough – develop a page that links to all of the pages within your site (using the linking techniques we discuss below). If your site is run from a database, it can be used to generate a dynamic site map page that updates as each new page is added to the database.
A recent tool developed by the search engines to aid in the indexing of pages is an XML schema for site maps that can be submitted directly to the search engines. Placing this XML on your server allows the search engines to come and download a copy which is then processed and the details of each of the pages in your site are added to the queue for crawling. These site maps can be generated using scripts on the site or by programs such as GSiteCrawler.
Details on how to submit to each of the engines vary and can be easily found on each of them by doing a quick search, but aside from this the search engines have started to employ an auto-discovery method to find and make use of your XML sitemaps if they are present on your server. To make use of this, simply add the following line to your robots.txt file:
Sitemap: http://www.yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml
For more information on the XML sitemaps protocol now used by all of the major search engines visit http://www.sitemaps.org.
Linking Popularity
Link popularity is simply the total number of pages that link to your website. Most search engines, including Google, consider that when one page links to another page, it is effectively casting a vote for the destination page. This indicates to the search engine the popularity of your site and therefore improving your potential ranking in the search engine results.
However, with the growth of link building schemes, search engines have placed less relevance on the number of links obtained and now pay more attention to the relevancy and quality of the links from other pages linking into your site.
An inbound link is considered relevant if it relates to your webpage. For example, if your site offers interior decorating services, relevant inbound links could include decorating directories such as Decorators Catalogue, home maker or decorating sections of news sites, related businesses selling the products you use for your work or services that go hand in hand with your own, and so on.
The search engine will consider the quality of the websites that are linking to you. If you have inbound links from high quality websites who are also ranking well this can positively influence your ranking. However, if you have suspicious looking links from unrelated websites or too many links from low quality, low ranking websites, the site’s ranking will be negatively affected.
A quick way to check the quality of a site, aside from just having a look at it and using your common sense, is too check the Google PageRank of the site. PageRank is a number from 0 to 10 and is one of the many factors that Google uses to evaluate a web site and determine its position in the Google search engine results. A site with a high PageRank is one that Google must already see as a quality site – so an inbound link from the site will benefit your ranking if setup properly. The easiest way to see the PageRank of a site is to install the Google toolbar available at http://toolbar.google.com. Upon installing the toolbar in your browser you will see the PageRank (PR) of whichever site you are visiting. We have quite a few articles related to PageRank on our website should you want to do some more reading up, however it is important to note that PR is only one of MANY contributing factors in a website’s ranking.
This Link Popularity tool measures the number of inbound links that have actually been indexed by a range of the most popular search engines. The Search engines don’t always report on every single link they have indexed for your site, and you can expect to see very different numbers of links indexed in each of the engines as they all do it their own way. Similar to the pages indexed commands that we discussed last month, you can manually determine the number of links indexed for your site using the following search queries;|
Search Engine |
Command |
|
Google.com.au |
“link:www.yourdomain.com.au” |
|
Yahoo7.com.au |
“link:www.yourdomain.com.au” |
|
Ninemsn.com.au |
“linkdomain:www.yourdomain.com.au” |
I myself am not a huge fan of link building as I strongly feel that the time spent does not equal to the rewards earned. If I were given an hour to do something beneficial for a site I would prefer to spend it building quality content – which if done properly should attract links from external sites naturally anyway!
Linking, however, can help to get a site indexed faster and can weigh in on the difference between one or two positions when you have already made it to the top. The best source of links without the headaches can be to ensure your site is listed in all the relevant directories for your industry. Simply do a few Google searches and you will discover a wealth of directories - a lot of which will accept free submissions.
Link Reputation
Link popularity is seen as whenever a page linked to another, that page was thought of as “casting a vote” for the destination page. With link reputation, it is not just a vote that is cast, but the link is also saying something about the destination page, and what is said has a large influence on search engine rankings! Link Reputation can sometimes have an even greater influence on a webpage’s rankings than Link Popularity.
The “reputation” is derived from the text used to link from one page to another page, for example the red text here;
Link text
The rationale behind the search engines using link reputation as a ranking factor is that they can easily crawl a site to determine what its creators feel it is relevant to, but what do outsiders think it’s all about? Link reputation, however, also applies to the internal navigation of your site by telling the spider what the page is about before it even gets to it, be it from an external link or an internal navigation link.
To effectively use Link Reputation, all links to and on a site should be:
When exchanging links with quite a lot of sites it is important to vary the text used by the sites linking to you. 100 links from different sites reading the exact same phrase may be seen as too uniform (or maybe even seen as spam) and can end up being given a lower weighting – effectively ruining all your hard work!
- Absolute, not relative, e.g. “http://www.yourdomain.com.au/page.html” is better than “/page.html” or “page.html”. Keyword Rich and relevant i.e. instead of “Click here to find out more”, use targeted keywords that describe the page being linked to.
- Preferably be text, although image alt tags are (sporadically) indexed by Google.
My tips for a successful SEO campaign
There is a virtually never ending and always evolving list of changes, recommendations, and opinions revolving around SEO so it is not possible to cover them all, however if you can implement the types of changes I have outlined in my last 3 articles you should be well on the way to seeing your rankings move on up. I will leave this subject with a list of what I feel to be important tips for your SEO campaigns;
- Ensure your website can be crawled! SEO or not, your site cannot rank until its pages can be indexed by the search engines.
- Choose an SEO firm that takes the time to explain the process to you with specific relevance to your site. Whilst there are some standard changes to be made to enhance a site’s rankings, each site and each set of keywords are unique and should be approached as such by your SEO professional should you choose to outsource the work.
- Target keywords that are feasible. There is no point in a 2 page website aiming for the stars. The keywords feasible for you will depend on the size of your site, as well as the number of and size of the competition.
- Do not expect miracles. Rankings take time. The amount of time taken is going to depend on numerous factors such as the search engines updates, the competitiveness of your industry, the age of your domain and so on. SEO is a marathon rather than a sprint so patience and persistence are a must.
- Do not throw your arms up in dismay when your rankings slip. Your rankings for any given keyword phrase will change constantly. This is due to a variety of factors such as algorithm changes, different data centers being queried, geo-targeted searches, competitors entering/leaving the market and much more.
- Get involved. When you hire an SEO company or individual they should want to hear from you and learn about your business and its goals. In my experience, those clients willing to be part of the team and follow our recommendations will, in the end, achieve the best results.
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