A Google Sitemap is a small XML file that sits on your server alongside your webpages. It allows Google to see how your site is structured, how importantly you rate indvidual pages and how often those pages are updated.

Why do you need one?

Google Sitemaps was released in 2005, and up until then getting the optimisation right for Google was just a guessing game, with the algorithms that they use to rank a site kept secret and no communication from Google to Webmasters (neither of which have changed!). Once a site was submitted, all there was left to do was to wait and hope. Once submitted a site might not resurface at all or certain pages might rank higher than others with no way of contacting Google and controlling the process or letting them know when a page had been updated.

With Sitemaps, Google have now given Webmasters a chance of supplying them with valuable information about their websites and also given Webmasters the ability to see what Google thinks about each website and what can be done to improve its standing.

Lets eleaborate on that. Within the Sitemap XML code there is the ability to ‘rate’ pages on how popular you think they should be from 0.1 to 1.0. So if you think your home page is the most important page, you could rate it 1.0, with your product pages at 0.8 and your contact page at 0.2 for instance.

In return Google lets you know what the Googlebot (an automated program that lists pages in sites) has found, whether its a page or a troublesome broken link. Furthermore, a Google Sitemap account will let you know what words Google associates with your website, judging by what the Googlebot has seen on your site (useful for accurate optimisation) and a list of words that Googlebot has found linking to your site from elsewhere on the web.

How do you get one?

If you want to enhance your website with a Sitemap or make it part of an overall optimisation package and improve the way Google indexes your webpages, just contact Webgear Design Solutions and we will do the rest.

A Top Level Domain refers to the last bit of a web address, the part after the last (.)dot. There are many Top Level Domains (TLDs) to be had, .com, .co.uk, .net, .biz etc. but some are regarded more highly than others both by internet users and by the Search Engines. The most obvious is .com but there are country code TLDs, for example .co.uk (United Kingdom), .au (Australia), .ie (Ireland).

Choosing a TLD can be important, for instance if you were selling internationally you might not want a country code TLD, because this would limit your visitors as not everyone is familiar with country codes. The answer is to register more than one TLD per domain name. A .com and .co.uk would cover international and UK specific audiences and would also stop your competitors purchasing your domain name with a different TLD.

As a rough guide, .com, .net and .org are some of the most highly regarded TLDs, with .biz, .nu and .ws being amongst the least respected domains.

Tip 5 - Buy up misspellings

If you have a domain name that you think may be misspelled such as www.optimise.com (US visitors might type www.optimize.com) then purchase both domains. Sometimes you might have a domain name that if only heard and not seen could be spelt in various ways (eg. www.thyme.com, www.time.com). Again, by purchasing all the variations, you could save yourself a lot of lost sales.

Tip 6 - Avoid litigation

When choosing a domain name be careful not to tread on anyones toes and avoid copyrighted and trademarked names. The days of seeing someone sell www.multimillionpoundbusiness.com to its rightful owner and retiring on the profits are over. Nowadays you might just get a letter from their Lawyer.

Tip 1 - Use Descriptive names where possible

Choosing a Domain Name is a subject that I find is taken too lightly, “oh, just have our name with dot com on the end” is a common answer, and in some cases that’s fine, but usually only if their company name describes what their company does.

And its here where we reach the crux of this tip - www.we-sell-computers.com, will do better than www.theowners dogsname.com. Unless the owner has a dog with a name that describes what he sells, an unlikely prospect… “here computer hard drive, thats a good boy”. Search Engines like descriptive domain names and it will partly help towards optimising your site.

You might be thinking, well yes, Amazon.com doesn’t have descriptive name - and it’s true, but what they do have is a huge marketing budget and many years head start on most of their competition, can you say the same?

When choosing a descriptive name its important not to be too ‘generic’. For example people who are doing a search will have some idea of what they are searching for, so for instance instead of using www.cars.com, use something more specific like www.offroadvehicles.com or www.familyhatchbacks.com.

If you do have a descriptive domain name please read Tip 2.

Tip 2 - Register your company name

This is a no-brainer. Register your own company name to stop your competitors getting it and taking all the custom from anyone typing www.yourcompanyname.com in their browser. Do it now if you haven’t already! You can always point this domain to the same website even if its not the name you have submitted to the search engines.

Tip 3 - Make it easy to remember

Having a descriptive URL (Uniform Resource Locator - techie name for web address) can sometimes over complicate things. A balance needs to be found between describing what you sell/do and keeping it easy to remember. Hyphens can help seperate words that would otherwise confuse: www.harperswords.com could either be ‘Harper Swords’ or ‘Harpers Words’, but with a hyphen I definitely sell swords: www.harper-swords.com. Athough, do remember that excessive hyphens can create confusion when your domain is being verbally communicated. www.hyphen-after-the-dash.com try getting someone to remember that!

Part 2 - Tips 4-6 to follow soon.

Concern arose when I received an email from a client who had been approached by an SEO company promising (yes you guessed it… sound familiar?) top 10 placement in Google for their company.

They had already parted with their hard-earned cash and were paying a monthly fee with what appears to be a binding contract. Now, if someone needs to sign you up to a binding contract the alarm bells should already be ringing… shouldn’t they?

They were pleased, because this company had also told them it had got them top 10 rankings for 2 seperate keyphrases (neither of which were chosen by my client!), which sounds great and I hear you say “well what’s the problem then?”

The problem lies in the method of gaining these top 10 rankings, and how useful these ranked pages actually are. Let me explain how they did it and you can decide if your business would want to follow suit.

1. The ‘SEO company’ sets up 2 (very) cheap looking template websites each with a domain name made up of the keywords similar to but not the same as my client had wanted to be ranked for. i.e. “big-red-boxes.com” & “big-blue-boxes.co.uk”.
2. In turn these two sites are then packed full of keywords and keyphrases using every possible combination of the word big, red, blue and box.
3. There is a link from these sites to their main site.

So now, anyone searching for “big blue boxes” on the web will find a top 10 ranked page. Great. Hmmm, hang on a bit, the page looks a bit cheap doesnt it? The people who find the page arent actually looking for my clients products (due to the keywords being different). The keywords are obscure enough to rank highly but also so obscure that they won’t get searched for anyway (unless told to by the SEO of course!). The sites are packed full of keywords and no real content which will most likely get it banned from Google for spamming. And more than likely, the visitors who are looking for products my client doesnt sell will just see a page of keywords, nothing useful and just navigate elsewhere thinking they had just wasted their time. All that for a monthly fee. Doesn’t sound like such a good deal now does it?

The title of this blog entry is a generalism, of course some SEO companies (if not most SEO companies) can be trusted. But this experience is proof that some can’t be, some will take your money and don’t care that what they do might see you banned from Google. They don’t care that in the long term it makes no difference to the amount of visitors you get to your site.

If in doubt, ask. Ask them what methods they are going to employ to get you higher rankings. If they won’t tell you, give them a wide berth. If they tell you they will use ‘doorway pages’ or other methods frowned upon by the search engines, again - give them a wide berth.

If you need further proof that there are unethical SEO companies operating and information on ways of spotting the good from the bad, please see Googles own report on this subject here.