If you haven’t heard already, Google, MSN, and Yahoo have joined forces in support for a single xml sitemap format - Sitemaps 0.9. In the easiest terms, sitemaps are xml formatted files that provide a way for a website to list the URLs (along with related data) so that search engine spiders can index the website in the easiest way possible. It’s basically an easier way for us (webmasters) to talk to search engines and recommend to how we’d like to have our websites crawled. This is great news! There is now a common sitemap protocol which will alleviate the drudginess of having to create different sitemaps for each search engine. In light of this merging of forces, the big three (Google, MSN, and Yahoo) have announced the launch of www.sitemaps.org, which will provide details of the current release of the Sitemaps protocol and will include future updates.
OK, so now that that’s out of the way, it’s time to create an xml sitemap. This can easily be done in notepad if you have a site with a small amount of pages (50 or less). You just need to follow the correct protocol (syntax). On the other hand, if you’re working with a site larger than 50 pages, then you may want to consider a sitemap generator. Google provides a long list of third-party recommendations. My personal favorite is www.XML-Sitemaps.com. It’s as simple and inserting your domain and letting it take care of the rest. Depending on how big your site is, you may need to wait for a bit. Once finished, it will spit out a fully formatted and compliant sitemap in several different formats of your choosing (up to 500 URLs). Go ahead and check it out!
Moving through life, we all try to keep our roots close. In light of keeping my roots close, I’d like to highlight one of the best web design reference guides from a college of which I am not alumni of. For many years, the great people from the ITSS department of University of Minnesota - Duluth have built out an amazing archive of some of the best web design articles, tutorials and references from all over. The reference covers topics ranging from accessibility to usability.
Got a burning question that you need answered? Then consider asking it on Yahoo Answers. With a solid user base, you’re sure to get a response from every point of view. While browsing the questions and answers, finding something of interest shouldn’t be difficult and could provide a great backlink opportunity. With a mass of open questions, people are open to recommended sources and feedback that could potentially provide them a resolution.
If you’re promoting a real estate website, then search for real estate questions. Then get ready to roll-up your sleeves and dig into the questions. If you find something where your website could provide a credible solution, then throw your link up there along with a decent description describing it. You’ll be amazed how quickly the visitors will start rolling in.
Over the past couple of years, I’ve had a difficult time finding a decent link checker program for finding broken links. Just recently a co-worker recommended Xenu Link Sleuth and it has worked great! Check it out!
If you haven’t heard of or used Wordpress yet, then you are one of few in the web world. After reading a recent posting in the Sitepoint Forums asking web developers to supply their Wordpress SEO checklists, I decided to post my own.
After installing Wordpress, download and install the following plugins:
Wordpress.com Stats - quick and simple stats that are important to your blog.
Contributing factors:
.htaccess: force the www rewrite for your website so all the urls.
#Force www domain RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^yourdomain\.com [nc]
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.yourdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]
#End force www
XHTML/CSS: Develop a wordpress theme that has clean XHTML with semantic tags and clean CSS.
Robots.txt: identify your sitemap and make sure your content is crawled correctly with the robots.txt file. Be sure to disallow the “wp-admin” directory.
Permalinks: set to custom use %postname%. Ultilize keywords in your URL.
More Tag: utilize the more tag so your entire post doesn’t show up on your homepage and it’s own page.
Page redirection can be accomplished very easily and can be well received by users. In order to best satisfy the needs of search engines a 301 redirection is the optimal way to redirect pages across your website. A 301 status code means “moved permanently” and can be accomplished very easily with some slight variations between coding platforms. Ideally, you will want to focus more on the server side redirects. Client side redirects are prone to issues if users or search engine spiders can’t read javascript.
HTML Redirect
<html>
<head>
<title>301 Moved Permanently</title>
<meta http-equiv=”refresh” content=”4;url=http://www.yakiji.com/newpage.html”>
</head>
<body>
<h1>301 Moved Permanently</h1>
This page has moved. You will be automatically redirected to its new location in 4 seconds.
If you aren’t forwarded to the new page,
<a href=”http://www.yakiji.com/newpage.html”>http://www.yakiji.com/newpage.html</a>.
</body>
</html>
ASP Redirect
<%@ Language=VBScript %>
<%
Response.Status=”301 Moved Permanently”;
Response.AddHeader(”Location”,”http://www.yakiji.com/newpage.html”);
Response.End
%>
In Google’s efforts to continually improve search results, Google Experimental Search launched three new views to it’s experiments program.
Map View (Example) - recognizes the user’s need to map the results of their search query and provides a map courtesy of Google Maps.
Timeline View (Example) - pretty self explanatory, this feature provides a timeline relating to the user’s search query.
Info View (Example) - with this view the user is provided a control panel to further refine their search through images, dates, or other relevant attributes.
Do you have a competitor whose website you’d love to destroy? Well, then you’ll think Net Disaster if flippin’ brilliant. Blow-up the website or pee on it - either way, you won’t get bored with what you can do to the website. Enjoy this time killer!
With the writer strike in full effect, it’s hard to get much out of TV these days. Personally, I see this as my chance to catch up on old re-runs. What better to catch up on old episodes than indulging in the blooming, but plentiful TV and film library of Hulu. Under the joint ventures of two TV networks (NBC Universal and News Corp), Hulu offers a vast TV and film library that seems to grow everyday. If you’re like me, then when you think TV on the web your first question would be “how’s the quality?” Believe it or not, the quality is superb and the download time seems to be relatively fast as well - far exceeding YouTube in my opinion. By the looks of it, they are even beginning to test the waters with High Definition as well!
“Hulu offers current primetime shows like The Office, Prison Break, Bionic Woman, House and Bones, and episodes from TV classics like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Miami Vice, Arrested Development and more. We’ve also partnered with premier content owners like E! Entertainment, FUEL TV, SciFi Network and USA Networks to add to our growing collection of premium programming. ” - Hulu.com
Well now that I have your attention, take note that Hulu is not currently open to the public since it is still in beta testing. If you are OK with waiting a little while then you go sign-up to be a beta-tester at Hulu and be assured a first glimpse. Since Hulu seems eager for beta testers, it shouldn’t be long before you get accepted.
If you haven’t heard already, Google, MSN, and Yahoo have joined forces in support for a single xml sitemap format - Sitemaps 0.9. In the easiest terms, sitemaps are xml formatted files that provide a way for a website to list the URLs (along with related data) so that search engine spiders can index the website in the easiest way possible. It’s basically an easier way for us (webmasters) to talk to search engines and recommend to how we’d like to have our websites crawled. This is great news! There is now a common sitemap protocol which will alleviate the drudginess of having to create different sitemaps for each search engine. In light of this merging of forces, the big three (Google, MSN, and Yahoo) have announced the launch of www.sitemaps.org, which will provide details of the current release of the Sitemaps protocol and will include future updates.
