So, one of the highlights I found this week, amongst many others, was the news that Google has sent us a bigger helping hand in the creation of XML sitemaps for our larger sites. I have since sent this helpful generator onto my dev team. I was in a tech meeting with my team this past week and they were asking if there was an easy application that could help with the creation of generating sitemaps for our 20+ international sites and I sent them this link.
One of the other cool things about this application is the fact that is a very smart application as well. Give it a try. I have so often encouraged my teams to create and upload an XML sitemap for the site. I have never experienced any negative indexing or any negative SEO whatsoever, in fact, what had happened was a huge increase in the number of pages indexed over a very short period of time.
So why are so many so reluctant? Who knows, there are so many SEO heads out there who proclaim to say one thing and do another, or think that something as simple as this must not possibly work, but it does. Not sure if you have seen this recent survey from within Sphinn on whether sitemaps actually help get things indexed faster and without a doubt an overwhelming number of voters agreed that the sitemaps are aiding in pages indexed in Google.
If you haven’t done this yet for your site, why not give it a shot? Run a baseline before you upload the sitemap and then within 30, 60 and 90 days following see what you find, my guess is you should see some very cool results!
January 17, 2009
Happy 2009!
After a very difficult past year for a lot of folks, losing a job can be very discouraging and down right depressing. It could also give you the opportunity to step up your career a bit. If your not currently a professional SEO, this might be a good time to think about making a career move. If you are currently a professional SEO or SEM, and perhaps if you lost your job there are a few things that I have shared with some of my colleagues that I thought might be best shared here as well.
Whether your beginning an interest in SEO or are currently a seasoned professional, one thing you might ask yourself is (and I really hope your way ahead of me here) when I Google my name, what comes up? Besides your last triathlon stats from the local parks and recreation is there anything there on the first page of Google that shows your prospective employer that your an expert in your field? Hint: there should really be.
Start by creating your own blog, much like many others before me have done. This does multiple positive things all at once. If your a geek of any kind, build your blog on your own, don’t go the wordpress.myname.com route, which simply means having Wordpress or Blogger or any other Blog host your blog, you should really be hosting your own, this isn’t great for SEO and it’s just not as professional looking especially if your trying to showcase your work the best it can be. Yes I know it’s very quick to just have it hosted with the blog provider, but seriously so is building your own.
I began by going to YouTube, then I searched for “how to build your own wordpress blog” (FYI: wordpress is one of the best SEO blog platforms and I like it), there are others of course, try a few and see which you like best.
There are tons of videos, skim through a few until you find one that just gives you step by step instruction on downloading and installing wordpress. I also searched for best hosting provider. GoDaddy, is not my favorite and they now think who they are and charge more money than is necessary. After finding many reviews on HostMonster, all very positive, I went to HostMonster.com, and I can honestly say that after working as a web developer on so many other sites, using so many other hosting platforms, this company gets 5 stars from me! (more…)
January 1, 2009