XML Sitemaps

An XML Sitemap is a specially formatted text file that lists your website’s URLs for the search engines. A Sitemap might help a search engine find all of your pages if it would otherwise have a hard time indexing your site, for example, if your site has a very large number of pages, dynamically generated pages, Flash, or Ajax-based navigation. Here are the basics:

Do you need a Sitemap? SEO industry opinions on Sitemaps range from “Every site needs a Sitemap” to “If you need a Sitemap, something’s wrong with your site navigation.” We tend to agree that a Sitemap shouldn’t be necessary for a small or mediumsized website. The majority of these websites should be navigable by search engine spiders without any help. And, since Sitemaps don’t speed up indexing or improve ranks, their benefit is hard to identify.

We think that Sitemaps are best used for the exceptional situation: a site that uses insite search as a primary mode of navigation, or a large and busy site that shuffles links and doesn’t always show all its pages in the navigation. And, of course, they’re good for the head-of-the-class marketer who wants to be sure they’ve done absolutely everything possible to advance a website’s search position.

How to create a Sitemap The simplest Sitemap consists of a text file listing all of your site’s URLs. You can supply more information if you wish, such as how often the page is updated and how important each page is to you. Everything you ever wanted to know about the Sitemap protocol that’s geek-speak for the rules and instructions for building a Sitemap can be found at http://sitemaps.org.

Lucky for you, Google, Yahoo!, and MSN all abide by the same Sitemap format, so you can create one Sitemap file and use it for all three search engines. There are numerous free or cheap Sitemap generators out there that will help you create your Sitemap file and keep it up-to-date. A hefty list of providers can be found at http://code.google.com/sm_thirdparty.html.

You’ll want to automate the process if you have a site that adds or changes URLs regularly. If you run a blog, there’s a good chance that your blog authoring tool already generates a Sitemap, or that a plug-in is available to do so. Similarly, a Yahoo! store will automatically generate a Sitemap if you enable the option in the management interface.

Sitemap Submittal Next, you need the search engines to notice your Sitemap. There are three ways to do this:

• Our recommended approach: Sign up for a webmaster tools account at each search engine and then submit the Sitemap location from within the interface.

• Can’t be bothered to sign up for webmaster tools? List the Sitemap inside your robots.txt file, using the following format: Sitemap: example. com/sitemap-file.xml (where example.com and sitemap-file.xml represent your domain and file name). In a rare feat of cooperation, all of the major search engines have agreed to autodiscover your Sitemap file by looking at the URL you provide in robots.txt.

• Feeling lucky? You can inform search engines of your Sitemap location (and resubmit every time the Sitemap is modified) simply by typing specially formatted URLs into your browser window. This process is called a Sitemap ping. Every search engine has a different specification for this process check yourseoplan.com/seo-sitemaps.html for links.

Using XML Sitemaps won’t help you rank higher or increase your PageRank, and it doesn’t guarantee that your pages will be indexed. But it can certainly give your deep or dynamic pages a fighting chance!

Video Sitemaps

One of the more promising ways to submit videos to Google is with a video Sitemap. Google Video Sitemaps (in beta as of this writing) are an extension of the XML Sitemap protocol discussed in the previous section. They allow a site owner to submit not only the URL where a video is located, but also the title, description, and thumbnail location bonus information that Google might otherwise struggle to find. With Video Sitemaps, Google is setting a new course away from the media RSS feed format that has been accepted for years. But we all know that when Google shows up at a party sporting a new fashion, the whole school will be wearing it the next day. So be sure to include a Google Video Sitemap submittal in your video promotion efforts, and keep an eye out for similar offerings from the other search engines.

Checking Competitors’ Directory Presence

You researched whether your competitors were sponsoring paid search campaigns. It may also be helpful to know whether your competitors have taken the time to create directory listings. Finding a directory listing, whether paid or unpaid, is an indication of how well your competitors are covering all their SEO bases.

Start by searching Yahoo!’s directory:

• Open your web browser and go to http://dir.yahoo.com. This page allows you to exclude search results other than Yahoo! Directory listings.

• Moving one by one through your Big Five competitors list, search for each competitor’s name.

• Since this is such a specific search, there will probably be very few listings. Look for one belonging to your competitor.

• If you don’t find your competitor’s listing, search for a product or service that they offer. If this search turns up no listings, broaden your search to a general term related to what they offer. If you still don’t find your competitor, you can feel comfortable that they probably don’t have a listing in this directory.

You can do the same with niche directories that you think are appropriate for your own site. Whether the directory listing is fee based or free is actually not important here. What’s important is knowing whether a competitor is aggressive and savvy enough to find a directory and get their site listed.

Optimizing Press Releases

We encouraged you to get your organization’s press releases online. Follow these guidelines to maximize your press release visibility:

• Include keywords in press release titles and page copy, but don’t go so overboard that you sacrifice good writing. There is no magic formula for the perfect keyword density. Find the same balance that you found for your landing page text.

• Be sure to include links to relevant locations on your website. However, since press releases generally will not be edited after they are distributed, pay close attention to choosing URLs that you do not expect to change in time.

• Submit your press releases to free online wire services and consider a fee-based distribution service if your release is particularly newsworthy. PRWeb at www.prweb.com is one of the best-known online distribution services.

• Don’t count on newswires alone to distribute your press release. Find on-topic publications, blogs, or journalists and send them a brief, personalized e-mail including a link to your press release.

• Feed, feed, feed make an RSS or Atom feed for your press releases. This will help them get listed in news services and blog search engines. To simplify this process, you can use a blog creation tool to post your press releases.

Many in the media use search engines to find information on the Web. If you spend the time to optimize and distribute your press releases, you’re making great strides in improving your search engine visibility and media presence.

Robots Visiting Your Site

We discussed search engine indexing of your landing pages. With a little sleuthing, you can determine which search engine robots have visited your site and when. To scope out robot visits to your site, do the following:

• First, find the name of the robot that you are interested in monitoring. Table 10.1 lists the robot identifiers for Ask, Google, MSN, and Yahoo!, but be prepared for some variations. Search Engine Robot Name

Ask Teoma

Google Googlebot

MSN MSNBot

Yahoo! Slurp

• Then, review your website analytics program. Look for a section called “User Agents,” “Robots,” or “Browsers” (servers interpret a search engine robot as a type of browser). Here’s a bit of a bummer: Tag-based analytics programs such as Google Analytics typically won’t track robot visits.

• Depending on the sophistication of your analytics program, you may be able to specify a date range and view robot visits. You might even be able to see exactly which pages within your site were visited.

If this all feels a bit too tedious, you may wish to look into software that provides simple yet detailed reports on robot visits. One such program is Robot Manager, available here: www.websitemanagementtools.com.

Whether you’ve followed Your SEO Plan to a T, had to make some tough choices to cut out some tasks, or have earned yourself an A for extra-credit effort, be proud of yourself! You’re well on your way to becoming an SEO pro!