I am creating a site map for a website.I have recently come to know that instead of site map I can give footer links.So I am confused whether to have a site map or footer links or both.Can anyone suggest me? (considering both Search engine optimization and users navigation)
When you submit sitemap to google - googlebot will visit your site more frequenly, and when you create new site it will index it sooner.
Adding a sitemap will not damage your website. Even with a good set of footer links it's good practice to submit your sitemap to Google et al.
Considering user navigation though I must say a good footer can prove a real good tool to show users what's what and how to find it. A footer isn't a sitemap though, just a summary usually. So why not add both?
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I was searching on the web after I analyzed the link structure of Yoast. There he uses links to redirect users to a different page.
Here a example:
https://yoast.com/out/synthesis/
Can someone tell me what this is called, or how I create such links as well?
It's actually really simple. He isn't using it for SEO purposes since it's just a 301 redirect. He is purposefully hiding the affiliate url AND adding 'onclick' Google Analytics tracking to the link. Also - the "/out/" directory is being blocked by robots.txt and then redirect's back to the index page.
To answer your question:
This is not for SEO reasons. He is using it for both tracking click and hiding his affiliate link/url.
These are called internal links, when you link to you one of your domain or subdomain pages. Internal links adds values for SEO as it makes the crawlers aware of those existing pages. There are many options for generating internal links. It depends on your page structure etc. Some of the common options are by using html sitemap like trip advisor's does, using header and footer. For html sitemaps, go to http://www.tripadvisor.com/, scroll all the way bottom to the footer section. There you can sitemap link, which is a path way for many internal links.
I have a site with an input text.
User types the name of a city, hits enter and it's linked there.
my sitemap.xml looks like this:
<urlset>
<url><loc>http://www.example.com/rome.html</loc></url>
<url><loc>http://www.example.com/london.html</loc></url>
<url><loc>http://www.example.com/newyork.html</loc></url>
<url><loc>http://www.example.com/paris.html</loc></url>
<url><loc>http://www.example.com/berlin.html</loc></url>
<url><loc>http://www.example.com/toronto.html</loc></url>
<url><loc>http://www.example.com/milan.html</loc></url>
<url><loc>http://www.example.com/edinburgh.html</loc></url>
<url><loc>http://www.example.com/nice.html</loc></url>
<url><loc>http://www.example.com/boston.html</loc></url>
...
</urlset>
My question is:
Will I be penalized (from a SEO point of view) because my links only appear on the sitemap.xml instead as in a list of anchors in the html page.
Note: the anchor approach was excluded because I have about 5,000 listed cities
It won't be penalised. Google themselves say the primary purpose of a sitemap is "a way to tell Google about pages on your site we might not otherwise discover."
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/156184?hl=en
You are rare in that you are using the sitemap correctly to help Google find your pages.
Often SEOs just add one for the sake of it, rather than taking the time to identify and using it to fix potential crawling errors.
The only negative aspect for SEO I can think of is that page rank will not flow between your pages if there is no direct link.
No, you will not be penalized. The sole purpose of sitemaps is to tell search engines where to find your content. That content may or may not be available through hyperlinks on your website.
My neighbour popped over last night to ask me for help with regards to his company's website. He said that it used to be ranked pretty high on Google but has since fallen off completely.
Now, I'm a Windows App programmer hence my request for help. I took a look and there the meta tags seem ok. I recommended that he add a <h1>heading</h1> to the pages with a page title to help reinforce the content.
I also suggested that finding related websites and getting them to link to his site was good for search ranking.
Are there any other general strategies / tools that could help?
He site is: http://www.colofinder.co.uk/
ps. BTW: this isn't just an attempt to have StackOverflow link to my neighbour's site - I'm aware that links from SO don't add to its ranking.
Go to http://ooyes.net/blog/a-step-by-step-15-minute-seo-audit-%28a-sample-from-seo-secrets%29 and read it. Then go to http://www.searchenginejournal.com/55-quick-seo-tips-even-your-mother-would-love/6760/ and read it. Then go to your friends site and look at it with that information in mind. Off the top of my head, I would add flip the company name and page title in the "title" tags. Look at the google analytics account and see how people are coming to the site. That will give you an idea of where you should start your efforts to build a workable base.
First of all he needs to be make sure that his website contents are well managed and to the point. Then Page title has to be pin point, meta tags are obsolete so try meta description. Then Main Heading should be under h1 tag, sub heading under h2 and further sub heading h3. Try to update your website one in a month.
Use community websites like Facebook, Twitter and linkidin and other related forums for posting updates about completed projects and must give inbound links. You can use your company name as an inlink to your primary website and project name as an inlink of subpage of your company website.
Keep on posting at least once in a week. Post website URL to online directories will be a great help. Do not use Blackhat SEO techniques like cloaking. Do not use any invisible text/div in your website. Make sure that whenever you give your website link any where, give the most to the point and appropriate link.
Your link should have to have that stuff against you are posting your link/sublink. Make a section on your website for tag clouds/google tags, this will be a great attraction for search engines and they will link your website to other popular websites.
Make sure these tags should be directed to top ranking website which should have relevant material. I hope this will help. Feel free if you have trouble to understand anything i have mentioned above. Best of Luck
I'm maintaining an existing website that wants a site search. I implemented the search using the YAHOO API. The problem is that the API is returning irrelevant results. For example, there is a sidebar with a list of places and if a user searches for "New York" the top results will be for pages that do not have "New York" in the main content section. I have tried adding Yahoo's class="robots-nocontent" to the sidebar however that was two weeks ago and there has been no update.
I also tried out Google's Search API but am having the same problem.
This site has mostly static content and about 50 pages total so it is very small.
How can I implement a simple search that only searches the main content portions of the page?
At the risk of sounding completely self-promoting as well as pushing yet another API on you, I wrote a blog post about implementing Bing for your site using jQuery.
The advantage in using the jQuery approach is that you can tune the results quite specifically based on filters passed to the API and playing around with the JSON (or XML / SOAP if you prefer) result Bing returns, as well as having the ability to be more selective about what data you actually have jQuery display.
The other thing you should probably be aware of is how to effectively use #rel attributes on your content (esp. links) so that search engines are aware of what the relationship is between the actual content they're crawling and the destination content it links to.
First, post a link to your website... we can probably help you more if we can see the problem.
It sound like you're doing it wrong. Google Search should work on your website, unless your content is hidden behind javascript or forms or something, or your site isn't properly interlinked. Google solved crawling static pages, so if that's what you have, it will work.
So, tell me... does your site say New York anywhere? If it does, have a look at the page and see how the word is used... maybe your site isn't as static as you think. Also, are people really going to search your site for New York? Why don't you input some search terms that are likely on your site.
Another thing to consider is if your site is really just 50 pages, is it really realistic that people will want to search it? Maybe you don't need search... maybe you just need like a commonly used link section.
The BOSS Site Search Widget is pretty slick.
I use the bookmarklet thing but set as my "home" page in my browser. So whatever site I'm on I can hit my "home" button (which I never used anyway) and it pops up that handy site search thing.
I Produced a page which I have no intention to let Search Engines find and claw it.
The advisable solution is robot.txt. But it is not applicable in my situation.
So I isolated this page from my site by clearing all links from other pages to this page, and never put its URL in external sites.
Logically, then, it is impossible for search engines to find out this page. And that means no matter how many out-bound links nesting in this page, the PR of site is save.
Am I right?
Thank you very much!
Hope this question is programming related!
No, there's still a chance your page can be found by search engine crawlers. For example, it's been speculated that data from the Google Toolbar can be used to alert Googlebot to the presence of a page. And there's still a chance others might link to your page from external sites if the URL becomes known.
Your best bet is to add a robots meta tag to your page, this will prevent it from being indexed, and prevent crawlers from following any links:
<meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow" />
If it is on the internet and not restricted, it will be found. It may make it harder to find, but it is still possible a crawler may happen across it.
What is the link so I can check? ;)
If you have outbound links on this "isolated" page then your page will probably show up as a referrer in the logs of the linked-to page. Depending on how much the owners of the linked-to page track their stats, then they may find your page.
I've seen httpd log files turn up in Google searches. This in turn may lead others to find your page, including crawlers and other robots.
The easiest solution might be to password protect the page?