The Rank Magic Blog

Do You Need an XML Site Map?

January 30, 2010 ::: We often get asked by our clients if they need an XML Site Map. Google has promoted these, but a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. An XML site map is a way to tell the search engines what pages you have on your site and allow the search engines to easily find, spider, and index your pages.

For a large eCommerce site with hundreds of products and multiple ways to get to them, an XML site map can help the search engines a lot. When I say "multiple ways to get to" a product, I'm referring to the pull down navigation many eCommerce sites use. You might search this way: (widget | style = waterproof | color = blue, size = large) and someone else might search this way: (widget, size = large, color = blue | style = waterproof). Although both are looking for the same thing and end up on the same page, the URLs of the pages will be different.

If that's the kind of web suite you have, you'll benefit from having an XML site map.

But if you're like most of our clients (a local service business) and if you've set up search engine friendly navigation for your site, then there's no need at all for an XML site map.

Watch How You Redirect Traffic to Your Site

January 21, 2010 ::: If you change your domain name, you'll need to redirect all your old pages to their new web addresses. Otherwise, people going to your old domain won't find it ... and may think you're out of business.

If you restructure your site, you may need to redirect people from old pages that aren't there anymore to your new pages. Otherwise people get the dreaded "404 Page Not Found" error.

There are several ways you can redirect people from one page to another, but almost all of them will hurt your search engine rankings. Your webmaster or web host is probably familiar with these:

• JavaScript redirect is a technique sometimes used by search engine spammers to show one thing to people and something else to search engines. Avoid this like the plague.

• Meta refresh redirect is an old type of r3edirect that's fallen into disuse, and for good reason. It won't pass any SEO value. Don't use this.

• 302 temporary redirect has been reported to cause trouble with your rankings in the search engines, so I recommend against it. This seems to be the kind of redirect many webmasters use by default, and they may need to be asked not to use it.

• 301 permanent redirect tells the search engines the content has been permanently moved to the new location, and as a result the new location should inherit the link popularity of the original page. Always use this kind of redirect.

  

Raise Brand Awareness with Social Networking

January 15, 2010 ::: Now that Google is showing real-time results from Twitter, Facebook and other social networking sites, you may want to consider using those sites to improve your brand awareness. Increasingly, businesses are realizing, as reported in the Online Marketing Blog, "search doesn’t just happen on Google, Yahoo and Bing". Depending on how you look at it, YouTube may be getting the second largest number of searches, after Google and before Yahoo.

See Your Site As Google Does

January 11, 2010 ::: It can be very revealing to see a page on your web site the way Google does. Google's spider, Googlebot, doesn't see your page the same way you or anyone else sees it. Graphical text is incomprehensible to it, as an example. Google Webmaster Tools now has a helpful tool called Fetch As Googlebot, that lets you see your web page as Google sees it.

The result is a bit geeky and shows your code as well as your normal text content, but it can help you figure out why your page doesn't rank for an important keyword. You'll need to log in to Google Webmaster Tools and claim your web site (if you haven't already done that). Then on the left, click on Labs and then Fetch As Googlebot. It takes several minutes for Google to get you back the results, but it can be worth the wait.

6 Website Redesign SEO Secrets Your Developer May Not Know

January 4, 2010 ::: If you're redesigning a web site that has decent visibility in the search engines, you're at risk of de-optimizing it and seeing some of your rankings drop or even disappear. We've seen some businesses get their web sites redesigned without consideration of SEO and end up with a site that could never be found in the search engines. About the worst case scenario is having your new design be an all-flash website.

Here are six issues you and your web designer need to keep in mind when redesigning your web site to preserve your rankings.

You'll want to know more about each of these. You'll find a terrific discussion of them all here, along with some specific recommendations..

Other blogs of interest

The Computer Lady