May 05
Google offers something called Webmaster Tools. Do not be alarmed, this is not anything technical that the average Joe could not figure out. It is actually quite simple. You simply need a Google account, which most people already have; here you can set up a webmaster tools account. Google’s webmaster tools is by far the best of the Big 3 Yahoo, MSN/Live also have their own versions of webmaster tools.
Initially what you need to do is add a Meta tag to your site. Google will generate a Meta tag for you, all you’re required to do is cut and paste this information above the body section of your html right below the <head> section. In doing this you’re letting Google know that your the owner of this domain (if you use a Wordpress blog like this, they alternatively offer you the ability to upload an html file, which is simply a blank web page that is named Google80948478734876 example only, do not use this). Once you have proved to the all mighty Google that you are the website or domain owner or webmaster, they will start to show you lots of cool information about your site and about how Google see’s your website.
Once you in here make sure you read my earlier post on sitemap creation and submission. If you have not yet submitted your sitemap to Google, please click on the sitemaps icon, and add it so Google knows about every single page in your site and will in good time index most every page, this is very important for long tail search terms.
OK back to webmaster tools. Once the Meta tag or html file is uploaded, you will need to verify this, this is instantaneous. Google will confirm this, now Google will track lots of cool things, like how many and what pages from your site are indexed (with the Google search results), what the top search queries for your website are, and where you rank in the Google index for various search queries. It will also show you when the last time Google visited your home page, if Googlebot (the name of Google spider) encountered any issues indexing your site, show you a list of all internal links (links within your website that exist) and how many external links your site has (links from other websites to yours).
Lastly Google webmaster tools offers a tools section where you can review your robots.txt file (topic for another day). You can generate a robots.txt file review Google’s crawl rates etc. Lots of neat eye candy. What I look at often is how many pages are within Google’s index, how often Googlebot visits my site and what the top search queries are and in what position my site appears.
May 04
I was rebuilding site maps today, updating them and ensuring they are all (this can be labor intensive with 50+ websites) in the current XML industry standard format so all search engine spiders can index your website and do it effectively. You can find additional information about site maps and the latest industry protocol sitemaps.org
You need to make sure that when creating your sitemaps that they are in .xml format; this is the preferred method of acceptance across all search engines. Be sure to submit your sitemaps to the big three, Google, MSN (aka Live.com) and Yahoo. Submitting your sitemap to the big three search engine is one of the first steps in getting your websites search engine optimization ramped up. Adding a sitemap to the search engines is the telling the search engine spiders everything there is to know about your website, its structure and what pages are available for indexing.
It can be a little annoying setting up three accounts across all three search engines, but it will pay big dividends. You can use the features available in each search engines webmaster tools for various SEO projects, and you should visit these sites relatively often. I will get into the various versions of webmaster tools at a later date.
Stop doing whatever it is your doing, and make sure you have current xml sitemaps submitted to the big three search engines.
May 03
I woke up this morning to find out that Google had seriously altered the path of my weekend, two of my clients pages dropped in search. Man, why is it that Google has to play big brother? Google created a good system for ranking websites based upon numerous criterion, based upon meta info, page content, website architecture, links (both internal and external) and numerous other off site components. The problem is that smart people have figured out what Google does to rank websites, and they are exposing it. Now, instead of Google constantly working to improve its method, it has decided to simply become the enforcer of its territory. They invented numerous technologically advanced theories 10 years ago, and have basically become the fat cats and not continued to expand on their technology. There are numerous things they could do to improve their search results, but they are now a public company with billions of dollars in profit and are spending every resource possible to ensure that their profits and revenues continue to soar.
People involved in search engine optimization (aka SEO) are constantly watching, reading and sharing everything they figure out about search engine spiders, how they act, and what works and does not work. The internet (the vehicle in which Google has used to reach fame and fortune) is the ultimate tool for real time communication, the internet is what people involved in search engine optimization use to share insights and theory about search engine spiders, they post these thoughts and ideas across the net, on blogs, forums, wikis and email. Amazing how the internet (Google’s Playground) has become its biggest hurdle for future growth …funny how that works.
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