There is a lot of info out there about sitemaps, but I haven't found exactly what I am looking for.
I am building a site which has separate mobile/desktop pages and also english and polish. In other words, every page in the site has four copies:
Example the index.html has m/index.html pl/index.html & m/pl/index.html
I have found that you can make a sitemap for mobile sites, according to google info but the sitemap must only hold urls of the mobile pages.
Then, google developers info says that you place the mobile urls in the same sitemap as the rest.
My question is, which is correct? Or have I missed the point completely.
Tim
that is a great question! The short answer is that in order to maintain control and be better organised, you're best off having 4 separate sitemaps - for English, Polish, English mobile & Polish mobile.
Let me explain this: When you have multiple sub-sites, using 4 different sitemaps allows you to easily organise the URLs for each section together. It also clearly indicates to Google the site organisation, and allows you to uniformly indicate the equivalent alternate versions for the pages.
You should note that the Google Webmaster help doc does not tell you to combine mobile and desktop sitemaps. What they're saying is that you should reference the two versions to each other. So, in the desktop sitemap, you could point out the mobile equivalent pages using a rel="alternate" annotation. If you read the documentation closely, you'll see they call it a "two-way ('bidirectional') annotation"
The same principle applies in the multlingual scenario. You should use hreflang annotations to point out the equivalent English & Polish pages on each of the versions.
If you follow the hreflang and rel="alternate" annotations properly, you're allowing Google to easily determine which version (desktop v mobile and English v Polish) is most suitable for your users.
Related
can anyone please tell me why websites will be having the extension with a different name such as .html,.com,.net,.php,.asp?
I found some info on .html but I didn't find for other extensions.
Thanks
It mainly depends on the way the website was written. Web browsers are relatively smart beasts, and they know how to display and interact with a number of different interchange formats.
For example, php code allows you to do certain things that are not available in html, but could be produced in html with the use of javascript. It just depends on the server and the stack used by any particular website, which technologies they will choose to deploy.
When user try to share my page on google plus, google gives suggestions for some extra images which I don't want. I wan't only one image to show up in share windows. Is any way to tell that? I already use og:image tag, but it doesn't help.
The same problem is when Google Chrome Pin it extension is used for Pinterest.
Although Google+ generally respects the "og" tags, it frequently has trouble doing so. What works much better is to use Schema.org microdata. You can find a configuration tool to help, and some very brief documentation, at https://developers.google.com/+/web/snippet/.
More information about Schema.org markup is available at https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1211158.
Does anyone know or recommend a method for a simple way to convert a site into a different language. I just need the site to change from spanish to english and vice versa, but the site will load in spanish first. Perhaps a plugin is available? Most of the content is dynamic and the site is being developed with Concrete5 CMS. Any ideas would be appreciated. Thank you.
I think you need to install an add-on for this. Check out Internationalization, it's free: http://www.concrete5.org/marketplace/addons/internationalization/
Here is a YouTube video showing it in action, so you can quickly see if it's what you had in mind: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hd936iaDLqw&feature=player_embedded
You need some automatic translation tool (since you said your content is dynamic).There are many in internet, you just have to search for "Automatic translation API".
I recommend you using the Google Translate one.
As background, I currently develop for a university, and we have problems with departments demanding "web 2.0 content" and accessibility requirements.
How do really big sites that are JavaScript based deal with 508 Compliance? Some sites degrade, and others require enabling JavaScript. How much impact does one decision have versus the other?
Also, in a realistic sense, how much development time should be devoted the accessible versions of sites versus the "main" versions?
I'm a blind developer and find it possible to use many Web 2.0 sites - this is most certainly possible.
Firstly, I strongly advise against making a separae accessible site, regardless of how many people advise you to do this. This is bad practice and will end up being more work, even if it initialy seems simpler.
Next, try to use progressive enhancement (particularly if this is a new site). Code the site without any Javascript; it's not just accessibility which benefits. Then, in your OnLoad() go through and attach Click events to the anchor tags; this way if you have Javascript you'll see the Ajax version, otherwise you will have a full page refresh and see another HTML page.
Luckily, there is a new standard, WAI-Aria (www.w3.org/WAI/intro/aria.php) which makes this much simpler. You attach attributes to HTML tags to identify the semantics of an Ajax control, for example. The only problem with Aria is that it only works with newer screen readers and web browsers. The university may well require the site be accessible to people running older software.
I'm a screen reader user and often use Javascript enabled sites. Javascript is not an accessibility issue, the way it is used can be. For example if the site uses javascript that requires the use of a mouse and doesn't have keyboard alternatives it will not be 508 compliant. An example of a site that uses Javascript and is accessible is stackoverflow.com. The only feature that isn't accessible is the ability to determine if you have accepted an answer to a question. I would take a look at the links in Annie's answer. All the blind college students I know use a fairly modern browser with Javascript enabled, Lynx is no longer popular in the blind community. If you want to try using a screen reader a good open source one for windows can be found at
http://www.nvda-project.org/
and it works well with firefox. If you want to try using the web with out Javascript install the Noscript addin.
Sites don't have to disable JavaScript to be accessible. Many sites use ARIA roles to work better with screen readers. There's a giant list of articles on accessible AJAX applications here. You could try something like AxsJAX.
There are several quality solutions for deep linking a flex application or site. For seo purposes which one produces the best indexing results?
Asual's SWFAddress, Adobe's BrowserManager or urlKit. All three of which seem viable and easy to implement.
Update
This guy at unitedmindset seems to have pulled it off using the BrowserManager and SWFObject.
The deep-linking libraries would not affect page rank or any SEO result directly. It mostly depends on how you put your alternative content.
It is because most search engine do not run JavaScript, which the deep-linking libraries built on, so they wouldn't see the deep-links.
But one thing worth mentioning is, Google can detect and index Flash contents (deep-linked or not), when the swf is embedded by Adobe's solution (AC_OETags.js) or the more standard SWFObject.
You may see Google's Webmaster Central Blog.