2 SEO No Brainers

[mtheory]

Add a wordpress blog to your site and add relavent posts.

Make sure your site has a Google xml sitemap file.

[chrispalko]

Yes, I have heard lots about the Google sitemap, however, I have been slacking, myself, with getting one.

I'll put it in my to-do list.

Don't forget titles for your pages!

Thanks for the tips.

[flnazrael]

Other than meta keyword tags, Google sitemaps are the most over-rated Search Engine Optimization technique ever.... if your site is well designed, you usually don't even need one.

[mtheory]

Interesting comment. Is there any documentation to support your statement or is it a rationalization for not having a sitemap on your site?

[flnazrael]

On our site there is no practical need for one... they do have some use as an Search Engine Optimization tool, but are extremely overrated. A sitemap does nothing for your link authority, which is by far the most important factor in Google anyway.

If your site is poorly designed, it may not get fully crawled... but if it's poorly designed, chances are you won't rank well with or without a sitemap.

If your site is well designed and you have any kind of decent link profile, it will get fully crawled without a sitemap.

If your site is well designed and you have no link authority, a sitemap may get a few more pages indexed, but your rankings will be bad anyway.

There is a purpose to them, but it's something like meta keyword tags that is talked about WAY too much, usually by people out to make a quick buck off unsuspecting site owners. (I'm not inferring that this is your intention, I'm just saying that all of the fly by night SEOs are all about meta tags and sitemaps - and nothing else.)

[mtheory]

I find it difficult to believe that Google would intoduce such a protocol if it was as trivial as you say.

With respect to link authority. You may find this a good read
Is Link Authority Dead (Dying)? | WebProNews

[flnazrael]

Did you read the comments of that article?

I've discussed Search Engine Optimization with Aaron Wall before. Trust me, he will be the first one to tell you that Google is OBSESSED with who is linking to you. More so now than ever. Their algorithm is also shifting more toward social media, ie., editorial links like blogs, social bookmarking, etc., but Google is still VERY link-centric, and it always will be.

The reason Yahoo and MSN are less popular is because the results are usually less relevant...and they're less relevant because Y and MSN rely very heavily on internal optimization. It's a lot easier to manipulate them than Google.

Anyway, there is a huge difference in what I consider "link authority" and the more widely known PageRank... if you read my other posts you will notice that I'm always talking about the decreasing irrelevancy of PageRank and the importance of other metrics like TrustRank, which is another link-based score.


As for Google... they're not going to give away gold. Sitemaps can serve a purpose, and Google introducing the XML sitemap program is their way of trying to be more "webmaster friendly", something they've been doing for a while now. But they're not going to give out, as general knowledge, anything that is super effective. There are already enough people gaming them.

The bottom line is that there is absolutely nothing that can be achieved from an XML sitemap that you can't get by having a search engine friendly site design and some decent links. That's what I'm saying. In fact, if your sitemap generator respects login sessions, or doesn't obey robots.txt or rel=nofollow directives, your sitemap can end up getting a bunch of content indexed that shouldn't be.


Slightly off topic, but a couple of interesting tidbits about Google:

- They introduced the nofollow attribute for links and said it was to fight blog comment spam. MSN and Yahoo adopted it. Then Google suddenly announced to webmasters that they were going to start doing penalizations of "paid" links that didn't have the nofollow tag. Google had ulterior motives all along. The thing they pushed to webmasters as a beneficial tool suddenly became something they started using against webmasters who made revenue from selling link authority and PageRank.

- Google used to own an Search Engine Optimization firm. Their old Search Engine Optimization guidelines page stated that an Search Engine Optimization firm should offer a full, unconditional money back guarantee (which is garbage anyway). But when they acquired Performics, which didn't offer that kind of guarantee, they removed the text front that page.

[mtheory]

I always enjoy a good Google SEO conspiracy theory. Thanks.

[gregdavidson]

Wow! You really do know your stuff. Well, not really. But you have to admit that blogs are one of the most well-liked websites by Google.

[operaentre]

I think you actually don't know exactly what do you mean by Google Sitemap. I will explain you, The Sitemaps protocol allows a webmaster to inform search engines about URLs on a website that are available for crawling.

[flnazrael]

Anyway, an article titled "XML Sitemaps: The Most Overrated Search Engine Optimization Tactic Ever" did well on Sphinn (Digg for SEOs):

Sphinn - XML Sitemaps: The Most Overrated SEO Tactic Ever

Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land - one of the most prominent, successful, and respected SEOs ever - was among the people who bumped the story.

Ironically, the author chose to describe sitemaps in the same words I did (I haven't seen this before). Read the article, maybe he will explain it better. There are also some links to further reading on this subject.

Trust me, don't believe the hype about XML sitemaps.

[1entrepreneur]

Sitemaps provide the structure of your site to the bots. Not only that, but each new sitemap shows the changes that were made to your site.

A sitemap will get your site pages indexed much faster than none at all, and that is from personal experience.

[mtheory]

I think you actually don't know exactly what do you mean by Google Sitemap. I will explain you, The Sitemaps protocol allows a webmaster to inform search engines about URLs on a website that are available for crawling.

You nailed it.

The whole site map concept is not well received by hardcore Search Engine Optimization'ers because it is Google's attempt to level the playing field and make Search Engine Optimization more pragmatic.

Search Engine Optimization companies see this type of KISS protocol as a threat to their self procliamed, highly specialized, complicated, and high priced services.

I'm still waiting for the American Psychiatric Association to recognize Search Engine Optimization OCD as a treatable condition.LOL

[flnazrael]

Personal experience with sitemaps vary (there are some discussions out there where people have had the opposite results that you reported.)

And, like I said...if you have a clean, search engine friendly site structure, the bots will get the structure anyway. An XML sitemap can be a Band-Aid over a bad design, but it doesn't fix much.

Anyone - whether you're a spammer or have a legitimate website, can create an XML sitemap. So Google is not going to magically give you a huge boost because you too have one. And anyone can generate a sitemap where each URL is tagged as highly important, crawl frequently, etc...it's like a meta keyword tag that everyone abuses, why is Google going to give very much weight to that?

Google has started allowing people to add KML format geodata to sitemaps, which is actually worth the trouble of doing if you have a brick and mortar or are targeting a certain region. So I'll say that to be positive.

[flnazrael]

The whole site map concept is not well received by hardcore Search Engine Optimization'ers because it is Google's attempt to level the playing field and make Search Engine Optimization more pragmatic.

Search Engine Optimization companies see this type of KISS protocol as a threat to their self procliamed, highly specialized, complicated, and high priced services.

I'm still waiting for the American Psychiatric Association to recognize Search Engine Optimization OCD as a treatable condition.LOL

LOL

I know it seems I'm being argumentative, when I'm not trying to ... but in discussions with other SEOs (including Aaron Wall, who charges $1,250 for a 1.5 hour consultation ), the concensus has been that Search Engine Optimization is moving AWAY from the technical side and into something marketing, generating buzz, and securing links. The reason is that years ago, a site could be internally Search Engine Optimization'd to the teeth and perform will in a competitive niche, now, not so much.... now it needs a natural link profile in hard markets. But the thing is - they LIKE this shift, because it is increasingly weeding out the type of "Search Engine Optimization firms" that have given a black eye to the industry (ie., "We'll submit to 1000 directories and adjust your meta tags for $49.95", then the customer gets nowhere)

And guys like Danny Sullivan have been offering free high quality Search Engine Optimization advice to people for a long time (searchengineland.com) Aaron Wall sold SEOBook (which is geared toward helping any webmaster learn serious, comprehensive SEO) for less than $100. Rand Fishkin at SEOMoz has always put out a lot of great, free content. All the other big names have offered blogs, forums, etc. So the idea that us evil full time SEOs are trying to keep down the man is silly.

Serious SEOs are not secretive either (well, black hats are). There are plenty of SEO firms who will tell you to run from someone who won't explain exactly what they do to achieve rankings. Personally, I've adopted this practice, and answer any question potential clients have about what I'd be doing. I also submit full reports every month. The blog talks about the 13 points I just link quality by, as well as some other free advice and discussion. So this whole idea that SEOs are trying to be secretive is also silly.

About "high fees" though, I don't consider their fees, or especially ours (which are considerably lower) to be outlandish at all, because of the incredible ROI. My business gives much better ROI than, say, a billboard. Plus, real Search Engine Optimization in competitive verticals takes a lot of time, creativity, and work. It is not easy whatsoever, and a good Search Engine Optimization/SEM deserves to be paid accordingly.

Everyone uses the Web, but no one appreciates its value. The same people who will drop thousands of dollars on printed advertising will shy away from a serious expenditure on their website or search engine marketing, which in the long run, is 10x more important.