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Using Google Sitemaps
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Loading ...The Google Sitemap tool has been around for a while now. It allows you to make an XML file with all the pages on your website in it. According to Google it’s supposed to help you get indexed faster and better.
Just recently I read a post that adviced against using this service. Now I’ve always been a sceptec in other peoples advice, especially when it comes to SEO. But they do make several points.
A clipnote version would be:
- You don’t know if you have indexing / linking problems
- Pages that aren’t worthy may be included in the index, which again prevents you from finding out they aren’t worthy
- Search engines loose the natural way of flowing through the web
I think they are right on all of these points. You can use the sitemaps to check the indexing status of you’re website, but I wouldn’t submit a XML file with all my pages to it. That will only work against me in finding potential problems.
Google Following Yahoo’s Webmaster Tools
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Yahoo has been running a public beta for a while that lets you explore a domain or webpage, called Yahoo SiteExplorer. I always thought this to be a very useful tool in finding out some info on my websites. It generated a summarized list of other websites linking to me.
I just noticed that Google has recently included a similar service in the Webmaster section. In the past they didn’t release much information on who is linking to you. This new tool was actually released on February 5th as I read on Matt Cutts blog today. I was actually pleasantly surprised that the Webmaster Tools gave a better indication then the “link:www.domain.com” version in the search engine.
Granted it probably is still hiding most of the inlinks Google is counting in their algorithm, but it helps getting an indication of how your website is doing.
Google Sitemaps Improved
I’ve been using Google Sitemaps for a while to keep track of how my site is doing. Not in rankings, but in crawlabillity and errors. For the past month I haven’t had to much time to watch the stats on the Sitemaps website. But today I did. And to my suprise they improved it.
I think some of the best improvements I noticed were:
- Abillity to set the crawl-speed, don’t know if it works but it’s a good feature if googlebot keeps hammering your webservers.
- The averages of download speed, page size and number of pages indexed per day (not really useful but fun to see anyway
)
Now there are still somethings that could be improved. Like the fact it keeps reporting a broken page on my website, but fails to tell me which one.
Phishing Killing User Experience
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Most people will know about the fake PayPal e-mail spreading across the web. Sent by people trying to gain access to the PayPal accounts of innocent and ignorant consumers. When hitting the link in the e-mail the consumer is taken to a fake PayPal website where they give away their username and password. That’s a classic example of phishing.
You might think that you as a company will never have to deal with any such problems. But you are wrong. If you are making money online, then your company may become victim to these type of scams sooner or later.
I hear you think that it’s not important. But realize that when ISP get wind of the fact that e-mail scams are going around for your company they may decide to block you. And what’s the use of you e-commerce if you can’t mail your users. Not to mention the risk of your customers actually falling for the scam and getting ripped off.
If you are victim of phishing then you should always take the following steps:
- Make a clear note on the front-page of your website about the scam e-mails circulating.
- Explain to users what you will never do (e.g.: ask for their password in mail)
- Update the policies of the website to include detailed steps on how users can identify scams
A final word: keep track of all e-mails that are sent in your name. You may just prevent phishing or other scams against your users.
Should Blogs Be Part of Your SEO Strategy
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...It’s been a while since I posted something about optimizing your website for search engines. So to continue my trend, and help you all a little, here’s the next article.
In the past I’ve talked about how to do some small optimizations on your website and how you can track your successes. Now it’s time to look at if and how you can raise rankings by using a blog. I now that there are a lot of SEO companies that claim to use blogs to do just that, but is it possible??
Having a blog can definitely be a positive experience for your users. It gives them the change to share their thoughts. Gives them some more insight into your company or goals. But does this also mean increased rankings.
After all now you’ve started a competition between your blog and your website. You want your website to rank good, but will the blog start to outrank your website. It’s likely to! Especially when you start optimizing it. And corporate blogging is even more difficult, as is explained in ‘A Lot of People Have to Die for Corporate Blogging to Succeed’.
Are you still interested in starting a blog. Then read ‘Optimizing blogs for the Search Engine’ written by Shari Thurow for some pointers on how to optimize it. I also suggest you read the article ‘Email vs. Blogs’, which will help you in what to write and what not to.
