Archive for February, 2010:
How to choose a cost effective SEO firm
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the method of attaining top rankings in a search engines’ result page. For any business that seeks high quality visitors and customers, SEO is an important practice. Information on achieving high Google rankings is readily available as well as tutorials on specific SEO practices. One can certainly attempt it on their own and achieve noticeable results down the road. However, most business owners do not have the time to execute a proper SEO strategy much less the time learn the SEO business in the first place. Building an online presence is a time consuming and tedious process that calls for expertise and experience.
The SEO method demands comprehensive evaluation from the Web site and what it provides; optimal keyword research; writing keyword rich content, link developing, directory submission, article submission to several article directories; press release distribution; and much more. Additionally, one has to continuously monitor and evaluate the ranking, and make adjustments and modifications as needed. It is a complete time employment, and outsourcing the SEO procedure to SEO experts is the best way to concentrate on your core skills.
You can find a lot of corporations these days that are offering SEO similar services as our own. Many of these firms provide inexpensive services. When choosing an SEO service one should not just ask about the pricing, but how these individuals plan to achieve these rankings and build back links. You should ask them what specific strategies they intend to implement in achieving your desired SERP rankings. You should take some time and read the Google Webmasters Best Practices. Many SEO services employ “black hat” methods; that is, methods that are frowned upon and forbidden by Google and other search engines. Search Engine Optimization is not an overnight process. It can takes months, or even years (if you are in a competitive niche) to build quality, organic back links. Those who employ ethical SEO practices will reap the rewards of high Google rankings, but those who execute black hat techniques will ultimately lead to your website getting banned or de-indexed.
How to create a sitemap xml file
A sitemap.xml file is a file which allows you to tell search engines about URLs are available for crawling. It basically tells the search engine bots where to look for content on your web site.
The Sitemap.xml file helps search engine bots sort through your organization of your website. By submitting a sitemap.xml file, you are basically helping a search engine’s crawler to do a better job of crawling and indexing your web site. Having one is better than not having one!
A Sitemap Index File
You can create multiple sitemap.xml files, however each sitemap.xml file that you provide must have no more than 50,000 URLs and must be no larger than 10MB (10,485,760 bytes).
Here is a typical set-up of a sitemap.xml index file:
<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?> <sitemapindex xmlns=”http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap/0.84″> <sitemap> <loc>http://www.example.com/sitemap_1.xml</loc> <lastmod>2008-05-01</lastmod> </sitemap> <sitemap> <loc>http://www.example.com/sitemap_2s.xml</loc> <lastmod>2008-05-01</lastmod> </sitemap> </sitemapindex>
What the tags in the Sitemap.xml File do!
The URLSET Tag
Encapsulates the file and references the current protocol standard.
The URL Tag
Parent tag for each URL entry. The remaining tags are children of this tag.
The Loc Tag (Location)
This is the URL of the web page. It must be fully qualified URL.
The Change Frequency Tag
This setting indicates how frequently the content at a particular URL is likely to change. It can be set to always, hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly or never.
The Last Modified Tag
The time the URL was last modified. This information allows crawlers to avoid re-crawling documents that haven’t changed. This date should be in W3C Date/Time format.
The Priority Tag
The priority of a particular URL relative to other pages on the same site. The value for this tag is a number between 0.0 and 1.0, where 0.0 identifies the lowest priority page(s) on your site and 1.0 identifies the highest priority page(s) on your site. The default priority of a page is 0.5.
The priority assigned to a web page has no influence on the position of your URLs in a search engine’s result pages. Nor, does assigning a high priority to all of the URLs on your web site will help you.
These are just the basic set-up tips for creating a sitemap.xml index file or a regular sitemap.xml file. For a complete listing of all of the sitemap.xml variables and options, go to http://www.sitemaps.org/protocol.php
It’s a great source of information on the actual creation and working samples of sitemap.xml files.
How to Share Website Content with just a Simple Button
A great way to boost traffic is to give your viewers the option to share your website content with their friends. If you read a lot of blog websites, you’ll start to notice that some of them have a sharing button.
Two very popular sharing buttons are Addtoany.com and Addthis.com
Share anything, anywhere, and boost traffic back to your site. It only takes seconds to get AddThis/AddtoAny, and it’s free! It makes it easy for all types of blogs, websites, and flash related content. Some of these buttons strong features are automatically translations to over 50 languages, so anyone can share, you can choose to receive statistics on sharing trends/top content shared, and these buttons are customizable. It’s obviously worth trying and its as simple as copying and pasting a simple code.
