SEO With Google Sitemaps
By Matthew Coers
What is a Google Sitemap?
A Google Sitemap is a very simple XML document that lists all
the pages in your website, but the Google Sitemaps program is
actually much more important than that. In fact, the Sitemaps
program provides a little peek inside Google's mind - and it can
tell you a lot about what Google thinks of your website!
Why Should You Use Google Sitemaps?
Until Google Sitemaps was released in the summer of 2005,
optimizing a site for Google was a guessing game at best. A
website's page might be deleted from the index, and the
Webmaster had no idea why. Alternatively, a site's content could
be scanned, but because of the peculiarities of the algorithm,
the only pages that would rank well might be the "About Us"
page, or the company's press releases.
As webmasters we were at the whim of Googlebot, the seemingly
arbitrary algorithmic kingmaker that could make or break a
website overnight through shifts in search engine positioning.
There was no way to communicate with Google about a website -
either to understand what was wrong with it, or to tell Google
when something had been updated.
That all changed about a year ago when Google released Sitemaps,
but the program really became useful in February of 2006 when
Google updated it with a couple new tools.
So, what exactly is the Google Sitemaps program, and how can you
use it to improve the position of your website? Well, there are
essentially two reasons to use Google Sitemaps:
1. Sitemaps provide you with a way to tell Google valuable
information about your website.
2. You can use Sitemaps to learn what Google thinks about your
website.
What You Can Tell Google About Your Site
Believe it or not, Google is concerned about making sure
webmasters have a way of communicating information that is
important about their sites. Although Googlebot does a pretty
decent job of finding and cataloging web pages, it has very
little ability to rate the relative importance of one page
versus another. After all, many important pages on the Internet
are not properly "optimized", and many of the people who
couldn't care less about spending their time on linking
campaigns create some of the best content.
Therefore, Google gives you the ability to tell them on a scale
of 0.0 to 1.0 how important a given page is relative to all the
others. Using this system, you might tell Google that your home
page is a 1.0, each of your product sections is a 0.8, and each
of your individual product pages is a 0.5. Pages like your
company's address and contact information might only rate a 0.2.
You can also tell Google how often your pages are updated and
the date that each page was last modified. For example your home
page might be updated every day, while a particular product page
might only be updated on an annual basis.
What Google Can Tell You About Your Site
Having the ability to tell Google all this information is
important, but you don't even need to create a sitemap file in
order to enjoy some of the perks of having a Google Sitemaps
account.
That's because even without a Sitemap file, you can still learn
about any errors that Googlebot has found on your website. As
you probably know, your site doesn't have to be "broken" for a
robot to have trouble crawling it's pages. Google Sitemaps will
tell you about pages it was unable to crawl and links it was
unable to follow. Therefore, you can see where these problems
are and fix them before your pages get deleted from the index.
You can also get information on the types of searches people are
using to find your website. Of course, most website analytics
tools will give this information to you anyway, but if the tool
you use doesn't have this feature, then it's always nice to get
it for frëe from Google.
But the best part of the Sitemaps program is the Page analysis
section that was added in February of 2006. This page gives you
two lists of words. The first list contains the words that
Googlebot associates with your website based on content on your
site. The second list contains words that Googlebot has found
linking to your site!
Unfortunately, Google limits the number of words in each list to
20. As a consequence, the inbound links column is partly wasted
by words such as "http", "www", and "com" - terms that apply
equally to all websites (hey Google, how about suppressing those
terms from the report?). That said, this list does provide you
with a way to judge the effectiveness of your offsite
optimization efforts.
When you compare these two lists, you can get an understanding
of what Google thinks your website is about. If the words on
your Site Content column are not really what you want Googlebot
to think about your site, then you know you need to tweak your
website's copy to make it more focused on your core competency.
If, on the other hand your inbound links don't contain any
keywords that you want to rank well for, then perhaps you should
focus your efforts in that direction.
Above all else, you really want these two lists to agree. You
want your inbound linked words to match up to the site content
words. This means that Google has a clear understanding of the
focus of your website.
Additional Benefits of the Sitemaps Program
Google has even started notifying Sitemaps-participating
Webmasters if they are breaking any of Google's Webmaster
Guidelines. This can be very valuable information if your site
suddenly becomes de-listed on Google and you don't know why.
Only Sitemaps participants can get this information, and it is
only provided at Google's discretion. In fact, Google will NOT
notify you if you are creating worthless websites that offer no
original content, or if you are creating thousands of doorway
pages that are redirecting to other web sites. Google doesn't
want to give the sp@ammers any clues as to how to improve their
techniques.
How Do You Get Started with Google Site Maps?
The first thing you must do is obtain a Google Account. If you
already have a Gmail, Adsense, or Adwords account, then you are
all set. If not, you can register an account by visiting the
Google
Accounts page.
Building your sitemap file is pretty easy to do if you are
familiar with XML, and if you aren't you can always use a
third-party tool such as the ones that are
listed on
Google's website. Google also has a "Sitemap Generator" that
you can download and install on your server, but unless you are
fairly adept at managing Python scripts, you should probably
stick to the third-party tools.
At any rate, once you have your Google Account and your Sitemap
file built, the rest is very easy. All you have to do is:
1.
Log into your account
2. Type your website's URL into the "Add Site" box and clíck on
"OK"
3. Clíck on the Manage Sites link for the website you are
adding, and add your sitemap file to your account.
Google Sitemaps - An Excellent SEO Tool
Google Sitemaps help Googlebot quickly find new content on your
website. They allow you to tell Google what's important, what's
new, and what changes often. The tools provided to webmasters
through the program can play a vital role in helping you
understand how the search engines (especially Google) view your
website.
Using this information you can dramatically improve the position
of your website and quickly clear up any issues Google finds.
You can also use the tools provided by Google to gauge the
effectiveness of your off-site optimization efforts so you can
better focus your time and energy on activities that bring you
the most success.
About The Author
Matthew Coers is an Internet marketing expert. His website,
ProfitChoice.com
contains online courses designed to teach entrepreneurs
how to build
a website and
make monëy
online. Download his FR-E-E Internet Marketing report,
7 Days to Website
Success.
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