Posts Tagged ‘databases’
Spring Sale at Global Search Directory
April 24th, 2008 | Author: Jeremy
For a limited time only I have dropped the price of Regular Links at the Global Search Directory site. They were £3.00 but are now HALF PRICE at £1.50 per link. This is a one-off lifetime price. You’ll never have to pay for this link to be included ever again!
Come on over to www.globalsearchdirectory.com and get some more links back to your site now!
Site Maps and Search Engine Optimisation
April 19th, 2008 | Author: Jeremy
This post is designed to give an overview of the importance of using a Site Map on your web site. It is only an introduction and not an exhaustive article on the subject.
What is a Site Map??
A Site Map is little more than a page of links to all the pages on your web site. It serves 2 purposes:
- Providing Easy Navigation and Site Search for visitors:
It provides a quick overview for visitors to your site to be able to see at a glance what is on your site;
- Providing ‘food’ for Search Engine Spiders:
This is the function that we will concentrate on here.
Search Engine spiders depend on links to the content of your site in order to find something to index in the Search Engine’s databases.
As Search Engine spiders cannot ‘read’ graphics, scripting such as Javascript and Flash, you need to provide links that they can read. A Site Map can be a great way of getting sites with dynamically generated pages found by spiders that may not otherwise found. It provides a set of static links that point to your dynamic, script generated pages. A Site Map is the ideal way of providing your site links all in one place to find as once the spider gets to the site map page, it is able to go to every page on your entire site.
The importance of having as much of your site indexed in their databases is simply this: the more content from your site is indexed, the more likely you are of being found when someone searches for content that is related to your site.
What Does a Site Map Look Like?
It can vary according to how you produce one. Essentially there are 2 ways:
- Automated Scripting
- Manually designed
Automated Site Maps:
There are good PHP and ASP scripts that you can get that will automatically create a Site Map according to which file types to include or exclude. This has the advantage that whenever you add new content to your site, the script automatically adds the link to that content in the Site map. But you need to keep an eye on it when you add new content to make sure that you keep up to date the file inclusions and exclusions in the script to make sure you don’t add content that you don’t want other visitors (or spiders) to see.
The creation of Site Maps is made even easier if you are using a Content Management System (CMS) or Blog, such as Wordpress, as there are numerous plug-ins and modules available that are easy to install and configure. For Wordpress I have used Dagon Design’s Sitemap Generator Plugin. You can get it at http://www.dagondesign.com/articles/sitemap-generator-plugin-for-wordpress/
Manually Created Site Maps:
This is simply creating an HTML page on your site with text links to all your pages. The downside to this is that if you have a big site, you’ll have a lot of typing to do!!
Creating Your Site Map:
Whether you use an automated script or add a page of text links yourself, as a minimum you need to add links to all the most important pages in your site. My personal view is that the more pages you add, the better, as this gives spiders more.
Summary:
Providing a Site Map is good both for site visitors and for Search Engine spiders. Your site visitors get to find their way round the site easier and so are more likely to not get frustrated and go to another site, and the Search Engine spiders can find their way round your site, increasing your chances of getting indexed.
