What IS the goal of search engine optimization?

The goal of search engine optimization is to bring new customers to your web site. Liverpool SEO is about being found by the right people. It’s about matching a prospect with the right offer. It is as simple as that.

What is NOT the goal of search engine optimization?

Liverpool SEO is NOT about getting listed for every possible keyword. This is the biggest mistake that is made by webmasters and web designers. Most people try to get as many high search engine rankings as possible, AND for as many keywords as possible. That is not only a lot of work, it is also a complete waste of time.

It is not important that your web site is listed for a lot of keywords. It is important that your web site is listed for the right keywords, and that your web site then turns visitors into buyers. Without achieving this you will not be successful.

How can YOU improve your search engine optimization results?

1.Create convincing web pages

That really is a very important step. If you do not have web pages that appeal to your target group, then do not bother with trying to get visitors.

Your web pages must be designed so that your visitors become buyers.

2.You must also first create trust, and convince your visitors by making your web pages easy to use.

3.Find the right keywords

You must find the keywords that work best for you, and for your website. Build a keyword lists that is related to your business. There are many Free Keyword Generators that can help you with finding the right keywords for you.

Yahoo offer one here:

http://inventory.overture.com

4.You can then use the keywords that you find in a pay per click (PPC) campaign on say Google’s Adwords, or with Yahoo’s Overture. What this will do is give you a quick way of testing your new keywords. It is also important that you then track these keywords with a conversion tracking tool, which will tell you which keywords lead to sales, and which keywords are just a waste of both time and money.

5.Optimize your web pages for these keywords

Once you know the keywords that lead to conversions, (sales) you should then set about optimizing your web pages for these keywords. While PPC allows you to quickly test keywords, and you can see the results within only a few days, optimizing your web pages allows you to get targeted visitors, WITHOUT you having to pay for them.

Search engine optimization can lead to great results if you concentrate on the right goals. Search engine optimization is about improving your business. It is not about getting as much traffic as possible. Focus on your target group, and on keywords that work best for you. You will save a lot of work while at the same time increasing your profits.

There have been many innovations presented since then as a way of simplifying the submission process and eliminate most of the drudgery that has been associated with this task. With the development Google Sitemaps, the process has indeed been a big help to many webmasters and business owners. In fact, many people contend that Google Sitemaps is probably the most important development on the internet since the RSS, blogs and ping.

RSS, blog and ping had actually been used by webmasters as tools in informing search engines about new additions to their websites even though this function was not the primary purpose of the aforementioned innovations. Of course, Google Sitemaps is so much faster and easier to use compared to the said systems and this is the reason why it has risen in popularity and is now acknowledged as the most effective way of updating a website to search engines. In fact, this new innovation of using sitemaps for the search engine submission process has become a very vital part of operating a website and a webmaster can ignore it at his own risk.

There may still be some sceptics who may still not believe that a sitemap method of submitting new web pages or new content to a website is very effective. One reason why using the sitemap method like Google Sitemaps is that the technology was developed from the ground up with solely one primary goal, which is to alert and direct the Google search engine spiders to the web pages that you have specified. All the other methods are considered as indirect and submissions to search engines are not their primary purpose either.

Clearly, using Google sitemaps provides a win-win situation for webmasters and online business owners.

First, Google sitemaps limits the huge waste of the resources needed to crawl web site that have not changed. The technology allows webmasters to inform Google which pages have changed or if there are new content added to a website and then direct Googles spiders directly to those pertinent pages.

Google Sitemaps also radically speeds up the process of discovery and addition of pages to Googles web site index. This can only be achieved if you use the technology and nothing else.

Google Sitemaps offers a level of usability that is different from conventional sitemaps because it offers a directory of all the web pages in the web site that the webmaster or online business owner wants the search engine to visit.

Without the assistance of sitemaps like Googles, it may become hard for a web page to be found by the search engine crawlers. There is even a chance that the page may not be found at all.

Here I am going to define the Search engine with respect of two view as given below :

1.In the respect of Visitor (Who want getting best results)
2.In the respect of Website (Who want make best results)

In the respect of visitorthe Search engines enable to their visitors to enter a specific word or term, known as keywords. Once submitted, all pages containing those keywords that can be found in the search engine’s directory are listed on the search engine result pages.

In the respect of websitewho wants listing to search engine a search engine is a website such as Google on which people can search for other websites on the Internet. Search engines do not include sites manually, but have an automated “search engine spiders” that “crawls” the web through links. If your website has just one link to it, it will eventually be found and indexed in a search engine. The term “search engine” is often used generically to describe both crawler-based search engines and human-powered directories.

There are two type of Search Engine:

1.Crawler-based search engines
2.Human-powered directories

These two types of search engines gather their listings in radically different ways.

Crawler-Based Search Engines

Crawler-based search engines, such as Google, create their listings automatically. They “crawl” or “spider” the web, then people search through what they have found.

If you change your web pages, crawler-based search engines eventually find these changes, and that can affect how you are listed. Page titles, body copy and other elements all play a role.

Human-Powered Directories

A human-powered directory, such as the Open Directory, depends on humans for its listings. You submit a short description to the directory for your entire site, or editors write one for sites they review. A search looks for matches only in the descriptions submitted.

Changing your web pages has no effect on your listing. Things that are useful for improving a listing with a search engine have nothing to do with improving a listing in a directory. The only exception is that a good site, with good content, might be more likely to get reviewed for free than a poor site.

Visit us:
http://www.halfvalue.com/top-articles/Manchester SEO-resources.html

The majority of online users wont venture beyond the first or second page of hits in order to find what they are looking for. Instead they will do a new search with modified keywords. Therefore it is essential that you continually work to get your website recognized among the top listings on the major search engines.

The only way you can do so is through the process of search engine optimization, commonly referred to as London SEO. This can be a very tricky area for many business owners and almost completely overwhelming if you dont take your time to follow the entire process. All of the elements of it have to be in place for London SEO efforts to be successful.

You have to carefully balance providing what the robots for the search engines want while maintaining information that your consumers will find interesting as well as understandable. There is a great deal of research that has to be done in order for London SEO to be effective. You need to find out what the most common keywords and phrases are for your product or service so that you can add them to the materials on your website.

It is important to understand that your London SEO efforts will never be completed. They will always be a work in progress due to the constant shifts in the consumer market. By adding fresh materials to your web pages the robots for them will continue to categorize your information.

The various search engines make money off the advertising that is on their pages so they have to be able to offer the newest and most relevant information for consumers. Otherwise they risk losing the consumers to other search engine sites. Therefore they are careful not to index duplicate information. This way you wont type in a keyword and get 20 hits all with the same or too similar of information to meet your needs.

Almost half of the new online businesses fail because they arent engaging in such practices and therefore they cant reach their target market. Before you launch your website or start advertising your products you need to have effective London SEO strategies in place. There are several to choose from so look for those that will work well for your type of business as well as the budget you have available.

If you arent comfortable with doing London SEO for your business you need to find someone reliable to do it for you. There are plenty of freelancers and professional businesses out there that specialize in London SEO. Dont fool yourself into thinking you can have a successful online business without making London SEO a priority.

Internet traffic flow is simply the paths taken by people to navigate between web pages. Some of these paths are eight lane freeways with thousands of people passing through each minute. Others might seem more like a city street with a four way stop every other block. Then there are the back trails in the woods, rarely traveled and known only to a few.

Think back on your daily internet activities and you will realize that you have traveled a few paths, some more traveled than others. When you logged on you probably checked your email. I might be going out on a limb here but this is probably a fairly narrow yet beaten trail. You are probably the only person to travel this path and I would guess you navigate through it often.

Then you may have traveled to your favorite blog to see what PtrWigg thinks about international business today. You read his latest blog and find he has a link to a related business site to illustrate his point. You decide to swing by that site to get more background information. While there you find a link to another interesting site on globalization. The process of traveling though the blog, through the business site and into the globalization site is in itself a path.

Alright, that is all pretty basic. Im sure you already understood this much even if you have never thought of the internet in this way. While this concept is very simple in nature I dont think webmasters always take it into consideration when developing a website and Bristol SEOs seem to rarely consider it while optimizing for one.

So how does a webmaster develop a site with the Flow in mind? I believe the first step is in realizing that each page not only contains a path within itself but more importantly is a step within a path. Lets say you have created a page with an article on how to give a business presentation. You may have superbly supplied a facet of information but all information by itself is useless.

Does it really matter if you know how to give a business presentation if you cant dress yourself, tie your shoes, comb your hair, eat breakfast, drive to work, operate a projector and speak in public? Obviously we are going to assume that your users are capable of doing everything up until the operate a projector step. Information is only useful when it is collaborated with other bits of information.

So ask yourself what path your average user is most likely on and if possible provide for him or her to continue on that path. All it takes is a little forethought and a few links to appropriate resources.

I think for the most part webmasters are pretty good about developing their sites with traffic flow in mind. While professional Bristol SEO experts may take the internet traffic flow model into account when promoting a website through link building this does not appear to be a common practice among webmasters.

Today the primary objective in link building seems simply to get ranked by the top search engines. The two most common link building techniques completely ignore internet traffic flow. Webmasters like to get links from directories and exchanging reciprocal links. The problem is the average user does not spend very much time viewing average directories and even less time viewing link exchange pages.

Doesnt this seem a little backwards? Webmasters are trying to gain exposure for their sites by spending time listing their sites in places that other people generally dont visit. If we were to apply this to offline marketing it would be like if I purchased a billboard in the middle of the desert promoting bottled water. People in the middle of nowhere may want bottled water but doesnt it seem like a better idea promoting where there may actually be people to see it?

Im not saying webmasters should not submit their sites to directories but I absolutely believe that their marketing mix should not consist of only directory submission and reciprocal link exchanging. I believe it is very important to focus on link building within the flow.

The concept isnt difficult. Figure out where your site naturally fits within the flow. Then try to contextually exchange links or purchase links on pages within paths your target user is most likely on. This will help you tap into long term sources of targeted traffic regardless of your search engine rankings. This method will require considerably more time to build the same number of backlinks but the search engines will reward you for the superb quality of links.

The major players in the search engine world, like Google, Yahoo, Alta-vista and Lycos, all have their own systems for indexing and ranking, so what might be great for one of them, may not be so great for another. As there are millions of web pages competing for the top rankings, there are also lots of companies out there promising to make your site achieve top spot. Lets just stop and think for a minute. As with all business’s in life, you will have your reputable ones, and then you will have the opposite. Can they really achieve what they say they can? We are not doubting that there are a lot of professional companies out there who could do such that, but if you do choose to go down that road, we think you should do your research and choose carefully. There are lot of companies offering to submit web designs to thousands of search engines, but realistically, it is the major search engines you should be interested in.

So how can you get your web site in the higher rankings of the major search engines? That is the million dollar question that everyone wants to know and would like to be done yesterday. The answer is not that easy, but then again it is not impossible.

First of all, consider the field your site is competing in. Obviously the first thing you should be looking at are the sites which are ranked highly. What are they doing that you are not? Take a look at their web site. Are they graphically intense. Do they use frames and so on and so on. Viewing other sites which are top of the pile for your chosen subject will give you an indication of how the search engine indexes and ranks and what criteria it uses.

Now, lets take a look at your site. Keep in the back of your mind what you have learnt from looking at other web designs. How does your compare?

Content within your web design. Has your site sufficient content? Search engines love content. This might be hard to achieve if your web site is just a few pages and is of brochure style. Is the content on your site relevant to the overall criteria of your site?
Inbound and outbound links in your web design structure

Do you have links on your site and do other sites link to yours? Certainly Google will look at this when ranking your site. Google uses a page ranking algorithm and judges the importance of your site with the amount of inbound and outbound links. If you do not have any links, or very little, you will not achieve a high page ranking score, thus affecting your overall ranking.
Graphically intense web design?

Take a look at how you are using graphics on your site. A graphically intense web site results in longer download times and bandwidth consumption. Another downside to using graphics, especially for buttons that link to your pages and other sites, is that search engines don’t really see them. If you are going to use graphics for buttons and links, try and make sure that you use text links somewhere on your pages. That way, the search engine spiders or robots will be able to follow your sites link structure. Another good practise to adopt is to always use the alt tag for your images.
Web designing using frames

Try and avoid frames if you can as search engines do have trouble with framed pages. In our opinion, unless you are really sure of what you are doing, leave frames alone and look for an alternative way of designing web pages for your site.

Utilising meta tags in your web design

Although strictly speaking it is not a meta tag, it is certainly the most important part of your web page. The Title! Having a well written and descriptive title is crucial to search engine optimisation. Google displays a maximum of 66 characters from the Title in their search results. Try and write a title that will catch the eye of the surfer, whilst utilising keywords.

Meta keywords are used by search engine spiders or robots to index your page, so think about the audience you are trying to target. Think of words you would enter into search engines to find a site similar to the yours. Think of other combinations of words. Are you targeting the specific area in which you live? If so, make sure you put your location into the meta keywords. Have a look at the example below:

In our example, this is something which could relate to our site, so be creative and think about keywords that could tell the search engines what your site is about. Do not repeat the same words though and most importantly, ensure that these words you use as keywords, actually appear in the main body of your content. Do not put words that are not in your page content!

The meta description tag is also very important and is used by search engines to inform users what your site is all about. For example:

The text within the meta tag description will be displayed under the title in the search engine ranking, so it is important to be descriptive. We recommend that you use a maximum of 155 characters for the description of your page. A well written description is certainly 100% better than just keyword stuffing.

Although this article is not an exhaustive explanation to search engine submission and search engine optimisation, hopefully you will understand a little more of the complexities of search engines. It is no easy fte to get you web design to the top of the pile, but it is achievable. We will let you know when we achieve it for ours

Of course, the whole goal of the search engines’ ranking schemes is precisely to deliver good, relevant content to users. The mechanism for how search engines select and reward good, relevant content is essentially just a technical issue, though admittedly an extremely important technical issue.

But even in purely technical, mechanistic, terms, web content affects search engine rankings three ways:

1. inbound links

2. website mass

3. keyword optimization

1. Web Content and Inbound Links

Inbound links are the number-one factor in getting search engine rankings. They also yield plenty of traffic on their own. The importance of links is what has led many people to say that content is no longer important. But those people forget that content really does play a big role in getting links in the first place:

* At the very least, good content will make potential link partners more comfortable with linking to your site. No one wants to link to a link farm, splog, junk site, or even just an unprofessional-looking site.

* Lots of good content gives other webmasters (and particularly bloggers) a reason to link to your site spontaneously without being asked.

* You can allow other websites to post your content in exchange for a link back to your site.

2. Web Content Mass

More web pages of content = more search engine traffic

Heres why:

1. Adding pages to your site is like putting out extra nets to catch surfers.
2. Search engines see bigger websites as more prestigious and reliable.
3. The more content you have, the more reasons you give other webmasters, particularly bloggers, to link to your site spontaneously, without being asked.

3. Web Content Keyword Optimization

Keyword optimization used to be the most important step in Birmingham SEO. Now it matters little in ranking for highly competitive keywords.

Still, keyword optimization can really help you get traffic from searches not on competitive keywords. While you may never rank number 1 for “finance,” you may still show up tops for a search on “household finance rent federal tax deductions” if you have that phrase somewhere in your content. Such non-competitive searches make up a very large proportion of total web searches.

Web Content Keyword Optimization Checklist:

There are four legs to keyword optimization:

* Research/selection
* Density
* Prominence
* Stemming/Variation

Keyword Research and Selection

You need to identify keywords searched on by your target audience. Use tools such as those offered by WordTracker and Yahoo Search Marketing (formerly Overture).

There are two big pitfalls to avoid:

* “Negative keywords” that look relevant but are not really searched on by your target market. For instance, “website copy” is a synonym for “website content,” but most people searching on “website copy” are looking for software that copies an entire website to the hard drive for offline browsing.

* Impossibly competitive keywords that you have no realistic chance of ranking high for them. How do you know if a keyword is impossibly competitive? One rough measure is to look at the PageRank of the webpages currently ranking in the top three for that keyword. If the PageRank of those pages is much higher than the PageRank your site will likely have in the future, you will probably never outrank those pages.

A pay-per-click campaign with Google Adwords of Yahoo! Search Marketing will help you to find which keywords really are searched on by your target audience.

Keyword Density

Keywords appear in the content the right number of times for search engines to recognize the page as relevant, but not so often that it looks like keyword stuffing. The longer the content, the more times the keyword should appear.

Keyword Prominence

Keywords appear in just the right positions within your web pages for search engines to recognize them as relevant. The page title, headings, and first lines of the page are often considered the most prominent positions.

Keyword Stemming/Keyword Variation

* Using variations of the keyword will help ensure web pages appear relevant to the next generation of more sophisticated search engine algorithms.

* In the meantime, variations of popular keywords helps your site appear for the “non-standard” searches on variations of the keyword.

There are three main types of keyword variations:

* Word-stem variations. A stem of a word is its base. For instance, “optimize” is the stem of “optimized.” Other stem variations of “optimize” include “optimizing,” “optimizer,” and “optimization.” You can also shuffle the component words of multiple-word keywords. Variations of website content would be web site content, web content, content for websites, and site content).

* Synonyms (such as web page content, internet content, or writing for the web for website content).

* Related terms (such as internet, Birmingham SEO or web page).

For many people, the Birmingham SEO side of content feels like a moot point. You need content for your visitors even if no search engine spider ever notices. But every website budget, both of money and time, is finite. If you’re ever choosing whether to invest in another link to please search engines or another page of content to please your visitors, don’t forget: search engines still like content, too.

Here are five shortcuts that will help anyone engaged in a link building campaign to get better results, faster.

1)Remember The Link Building Exponential

Google has many ways of telling when a webmaster is creating an artificial network of links to a page, but savvy Bristol SEOs will avoid trouble by considering the link building exponential. This is a measurement based on the premise that incoming links to a page should increase more or less at the same rate as the popularity of the page. In other words, adding too many links too fast to a page that does not seem to merit them blow-up in your face. Avoid this setback by taking your time and get quality links.

2)Get Links From Pages That Are Closely Related To Your Own

My experience has shown me that some of the most valuable links you can possibly get are from web pages that use not only the same key words that you do, but which have links from the same pages that link to you. Get links from these perfectly related pages and the effect on your rankings will seem almost magical.

3)Identify Directories That Are Relevant To The Content Of Your Page

There must be tens of thousands of directories on the web and that number will only continue to grow. Some Bristol SEOs waste their time by registering their web page in any directory that will accept the listing, but I have found that it is worth spending the extra time to register the directories that have a direct relationship to the web page I am trying to place. I do not get as many links, but the links I do get have a much stronger effect on my rankings.

Finding the directories that are a good fit for the page you want to place is easy if you use two of Googles operators: INURL and INTITLE.

Say, for example, that you are trying to position a web site dedicated to graphic design, logically you would want to find all the directories that have a Graphic Design category and see them ordered by relevancy:

INURL: phrase returns all of the pages that contain phrase within its URL.

The search in Google would be:

INURL: web design + add url, or, INURL: web design add url, or, INURL: web design + add your site

Another option to find directories relevant to your web page is to use the operator INTITLE which shows all the pages that have the keywords in the title.

In this case the search would be:
INTITLE. phrase , which returns all the pages that contain phrase in its title.

The search in Google would be:
IN directory + web design

These simple steps can save countless hours in finding the right directories, and the links you can build from these focused sources will give your page more weight.

4)Position For Certain Regions Or Countries

Google determines the location of a page by the extension of its domain (ex. .uk, .es, .com.ar, etc). In the case that the domain has a generic suffix, (such as .com, .biz, .net, .org, etc.), Google will assume that the country of origin is the same as the country where the page is being hosted.

Depending on the content of the page I am working on, I will sometimes want to position the page in international AND country specific search engines. If this sounds like a strategy that would help you, simply concentrate your efforts on obtaining links from pages and directories which, in the eyes of Google, reside in the country you want to target.

5)Vary Your Anchor Text

Too many Bristol SEOs use only their main keywords in the anchor text that links to their page. I have found this to be bad practice, since search engines interpret these links to be unnatural when they find too many of them.

Get around this by switching the order of the key words in your anchor text to create new variations. For example, say you want to build links to a web page that specializes in link building, your anchor texts could read: link building service; cheap link building; effective link building, or link building company. Get 500 links using these four different descriptors, and you will get more than twice the effect as 1000 links using only link building. This strategy has worked for me, and it should work for you, too.

Of course, every search engine already has an automated program commonly called a “spider” that indexes all the web pages it locates online, and it does this for free. So whether you pay or not, your web page will eventually be indexed by all Internet search engines, as long as the spider can follow a link to your page. The major issue is, then, how quickly your page is indexed.

A search engine that offers a paid URL inclusion uses an extra spider that is programmed to index the particular pages that have been paid for. The difference between the spider that indexes pages for free and the spider that indexes only pages for a fee is speed. If you have paid for inclusion, the additional search engine spider will index your page immediately.

The debate over paid URL inclusion centres around the annual fee. Since the regular spider of these search engines would eventually get around to indexing your web page anyway, why is a renewal fee necessary? The fee is necessary to keep your pages in the search engine’s index. If you go the route of paid inclusion, you should be aware that at the end of the pay period, on some search engines, your page will be removed from their index for a certain amount of time.

It’s easy to get confused about whether you would benefit from paid inclusion since the spider of any search engine will eventually index your page without the additional cost. There are both advantages and disadvantages to paid URL inclusion, and it is only by weighing your pros and cons that you will be able to decide whether to spring for the extra cash or not.

The advantages are obvious: rapid inclusion and rapid re-indexing. Paid inclusion means that your pages will be indexed quickly and added to search results in a very short time after you have paid the fee. The time difference between when the regular spider will index your pages, and when the paid spider will, is a matter of months. The spider for paid inclusion usually indexes your pages in a day or two. Be aware that if you have no incoming links to your pages, the regular spider will never locate them at all.

Additionally, paid inclusion spiders will go back to your pages often, sometimes even daily. The advantage of this is that you can update your pages constantly to improve the ranking in which they appear in search engines, and the paid URL inclusion spider will show that result in a matter of days.

First and foremost, the disadvantage is the cost. For a ten page website, the costs of paid URL inclusion range from $170 for Fast/Lycos to $600 for Altavista, and you have to pay each engine their annual fee. How relevant the cost factor is will depend on your company.

Another, and perhaps more important, disadvantage is the limited reach of paid URL inclusions. The largest search engines, Google, Yahoo, and MSN, do not offer paid URL inclusion. That means that the search engines you choose to pay an inclusion fee will amount to a small fraction of the traffic to your site on a daily basis.

Google usually updates its index every month, and there is no way you can speed up this process. You will have to wait for the Google spider to index your new pages no matter how many other search engines you have paid to update their index daily. Be aware that it is only after Google updates their index that your pages will show up in Google, or AOL results.

One way to figure out whether paid URL inclusion is a good deal for your company is to consider some common factors. First, find out if search engines have already indexed your pages. To do this, you may have to enter a number of different keywords, but the quickest way to find out is to enter your URL address in quotes. If your pages appear when you enter the URL address but do not appear when you enter keywords, using paid inclusion will not be beneficial. This is because your pages have already been indexed and ranked by the regular spider. If this is the case, your money would be better spent by updating your pages to improve your ranking in search results. Once you accomplish this, you can then consider using paid inclusion if you want to speed up the time it will take for the regular spider to revisit your pages.

The most important factor in deciding whether to use paid URL inclusion is to decide if it’s a good investment. To figure this out, you have to look at the overall picture: what kind of product or service are you selling and how much traffic are you dependent on to see a profit?

If your company sells an inexpensive product that requires a large volume of traffic to your site, paid inclusion may not be the best investment for you; the biggest search engines do not offer it, and they are the engines that will bring you the majority of hits. On the other hand, if you have a business that offers an expensive service or product and requires a certain quality of traffic to your site, a paid URL inclusion is most likely an excellent investment.

Another factor is whether or not your pages are updated frequently. If the content changes on a daily or weekly basis, paid inclusion will insure that your new pages are indexed often and quickly. The new content is indexed by the paid spider and then appears when new relevant keywords are entered in the search engines. Using paid inclusion in this case will guarantee that your pages are being indexed in a timely manner.

You should also base your decision on whether or not your pages are dynamically generated. These types of pages are often difficult for regular spiders to locate and index. Paying to include the most important pages of a dynamically generated website will insure that the paid spider will index them.

Sometimes a regular spider will drop pages from its search engine, although these pages usually reappear in a few months. There are a number of reasons why this can happen, but by using paid URL inclusion, you will avoid the possibility. Paid URL inclusion guarantees that your pages are indexed, and if they are inadvertently dropped, the search engine will be on the lookout to locate them immediately.

As you can see, there are numerous factors to consider when it comes to paid URL inclusion. It can be a valuable investment depending on your situation. Evaluate your business needs and your website to determine if paid URL inclusion is a wise investment for your business goals.

What is a sitemap, you ask? Just as the name implies, this is an aid that makes navigating a website easier. The premise is basically the same as in an ordinary map. A sitemap contains the structure of the website as well as links to the sites major parts and subsections. Now, if your site offers sufficient information as well as easy navigation then you have hit the jackpot. Your site will probably generate more traffic than your competitors.

Another advantage to having a site map is that search engines love it, mainly because of two things — text and keywords. Therefore, it might also prove beneficial to combine relevant keywords with hypertext links. For instance, if your sitemap has a link to website promotion, then your hyperlink should contain the words ‘website promotion’ and then linked directly to that page in your site.

Contrary to what a lot of people think, a site map need not be fancy. Its good for it to be catchy, though whats important is for it to be clear and easy to navigate. In order to have a good site map, one must remember four things.

First, a prominent link to your sitemap should be placed on every page. It should be labelled as SITE MAP so that surfers can easily spot it.

The next thing you need to remember in order to have a good sitemap is that your sitemap should show all your web pages through different levels as basic text links.

The third thing to remember is to use standard colours for links and for the visited links as well.

Lastly, your sitemap should show a quick and easy-to-follow overview of the site without the need to scroll around in the web browser.

Google and Yahoo had begun allowing people to submit site maps to their account as a way of informing them about your web pages as well as the updates to your site. Although it does not help your page ranking any, its still worth taking the time to set up properly.

As more people came to the conclusion that sitemaps are indispensable, more and more sites have began offering free software for generating site maps. A quick search on Google for advice on creating a site map initially cropped up many links to software you could buy or download for free to create a site map. One such site is www.xml-sitemaps.com, which offers a free online sitemap generator.

When you are done with your sitemap, do not forget to tell Google about it so they can nose about and hopefully index all the pages of your site.