Sitemaps Tutorial and its Effects on SEO

What is a Sitemap?

In simple terms, a Sitemap is an XML file that is full of your individual webpage’s URLs. It’s like an archive of every webpage in your website. This file should be easily discoverable in your site in order for search engine crawlers to stumble upon it.

What is a Sitemap for?

A Sitemap is usually used for the purpose of letting the search engine crawlers follow the links to all your individual webpages so that it won’t miss out on anything.

Sometimes we leave out URLs or hide them from all visible pages because we don’t exactly want some of the users to go there. As a result, some of these URLs are uncrawlable to search engine spiders.

We can still leave those URLs hidden from some users without having to lose out on those pages not being crawled by search engine spiders through including hem in an XML Sitemap.

How do you create a Sitemap?

A Sitemap is pretty easy to create. For WordPress users, you can download the Google XML Sitemaps plugin to make it easier for you. This plugin helps you generate an XML sitemap without having to do anything but activating it.

After the plugin has generated your Sitemap, you can find the Sitemap at an address like this:

http://YourURL/sitemap.xml

My Sitemap can be found at http://seo-hacker.com/sitemap.xml but I usually place the website’s Sitemap at the footer too so that it would have a stronger crawlable presence.

For those who are not using WordPress, you can use this online XML-Sitemaps generator tool. It’s pretty easy and they provide a step-by-step approach for you to implement your own Sitemap in your website.

How does your Sitemap affect your SEO?

Search engines should see all the pages that you want them to see. The more pages that they index from you, the more trust your site gains. It only means that your website has more information to offer.

Making sure the search engine spiders get to crawl all the stuff they need to crawl from your website is the exact purpose of a Sitemap. It’s not for navigation, it’s not for internal linking. It’s for the search engine spiders.

It won’t greatly boost your on-site SEO, but it would definitely help.

Tips for Keeps: Get your own Sitemap if you don’t already have one. It’s easy and it’s necessary.

Google Says No To Phone Numbers In PPC Ads, Forcing The Use Of Call ExtensionsYou may have missed Google’s quiet and brief announcement that starting in April, AdWords ads with phone numbers in the text will be disapproved. Advertisers who want to display phone numbers will have to use the call extensions Google Logo - Stockfeature instead.

You may have missed Google’s quiet and brief announcement that starting in April, AdWords ads with phone numbers in the text will be disapproved. Advertisers who want to display phone numbers will have to use the call extensions feature instead.




Google states in the announcement, “We are making this change to foster a safer, more consistent user experience across desktop, tablet, and mobile devices.” As others have stated, what this change really does is allow Google to charge for mobile ad engagements as part of its transition to enhanced campaigns.
With call extensions, advertisers are charged regular click fees when users click on the “Call” button in their ads. The “Call” button is only displayed on smartphones and can be seen on Google.com search, Voice search, Google Mobile App or Google Maps for Mobile. On desktops, laptops and tablets, ads appear with a phone number that is not clickable.
Here’s a look at how call extensions are handled differently on desktop and smartphone:
There are obvious consequences here. Advertisers, particularly small businesses, will need to consider call extensions when setting their PPC budgets. In addition, in order for call extensions to show “your ad group will have to receive a minimum number of clicks … and a minimum number of calls to show a Google forwarding number”.
One subtly to note is if you have location extensions and call extensions enabled for the same ad, customers near your business will see the address of your business as listed in the location extension, and the clickable phone number as listed in the call extension. The implication seems to be that just one extension will show.
Curiously, as a tip, Google says, “Call extensions are best for you if you have a national service center, or if your business isn’t tied to a specific physical location.” We’re awaiting clarification on what these statements mean for local businesses. In the meantime, prepare to remove phone numbers from your text ads by April Fools Day.

Here are All The Releases So Far For Panda:

• Panda Update 1, Feb. 24, 2011 (11.8% of queries; announced; English in US only)
• Panda Update 2, April 11, 2011 (2% of queries; announced; rolled out in English internationally)
• Panda Update 3, May 10, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
• Panda Update 4, June 16, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
• Panda Update 5, July 23, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
• Panda Update 6, Aug. 12, 2011 (6-9% of queries in many non-English languages; announced)
• Panda Update 7, Sept. 28, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
• Panda Update 8, Oct. 19, 2011 (about 2% of queries; belatedly confirmed)
• Panda Update 9, Nov. 18, 2011: (less than 1% of queries; announced)
• Panda Update 10, Jan. 18, 2012 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
• Panda Update 11, Feb. 27, 2012 (no change given; announced)
• Panda Update 12, March 23, 2012 (about 1.6% of queries impacted; announced)
• Panda Update 13, April 19, 2012 (no change given; belatedly revealed)
• Panda Update 14, April 27, 2012: (no change given; confirmed; first update within days of another)
• Panda Update 15, June 9, 2012: (1% of queries; belatedly announced)
• Panda Update 16, June 25, 2012: (about 1% of queries; announced)
• Panda Update 17, July 24, 2012:(about 1% of queries; announced)
• Panda Update 18, Aug. 20, 2012: (about 1% of queries; belatedly announced)
• Panda Update 19, Sept. 18, 2012: (less than 0.7% of queries; announced)
• Panda Update 20 , Sept. 27, 2012 (2.4% English queries, impacted, belatedly announced
• Panda Update 21, Nov. 5, 2012 (1.1% of English-language queries in US; 0.4% worldwide; confirmed, not announced)
• Panda Update 22, Nov. 21, 2012 (0.8% of English queries were affected; confirmed, not announced)
• Panda Update 23, Dec. 21, 2012 (1.3% of English queries were affected; confirmed, announced)
• Panda Update 24, Jan. 22, 2013 (1.2% of English queries were affected; confirmed, announced)
• Panda Update 25, March 15, 2013 (confirmed as coming; not confirmed as having happened)

Matt Cutts Confirms Panda Update Coming This Friday

Late last night Matt Cutts was on stage at SMX talking about Penguin and Panda updates. When asked about Panda updates and when will be the next one, Matt Cutts confirms a Panda update will be coming this Friday or Monday at the latest.

Cutts also said that they are in a heated battle with spam, trying to take down spammers and people trying to abuse the system. In an effort to decrease web spam Google said there would be one VERY large Penguin update before the end of the year. This isn’t that helpful but is interesting that there are additional large updates out there that we all can be waiting for.

Let’s be honest though, if you’re doing everything right and not spamming the world… you should be good!

Matt cutts walk with google

Cutts also confirms that they’ll be taking down 1-2 very large link networks in the coming weeks. they’ve been tracking them and studying them over the past couple months and they are about to take action.

Link Networks Beware

Additionally Cutts joked around about the increase of spammers and some of the tricky ways they are going after large organizations, exposing vulnerabilities and security flaws in sites. Make sure your site is secure.

Matt Cutts recommended using the “Fetch as Googlebot” tool to make sure that you’re seeing your site as Google is seeing it. There are many sites with spam on there sites that can’t see the links that they are showing (referenced a University on their main page in live example of spam) where you couldn’t see unless you went into the code. Google bot shows that a Top 50 University has “cheap viagra pills” on their main page. All Google is doing currently is emailing them through Google Webmaster Tools about this situation.

Make sure you’re checking GWT for emails from Google, it could be a lifesaver and be expecting a Google Panda update this Friday the 15 of March.

http://www.facebook.com/searchengineupdate

Backup Facebook Photos, Videos, and Text

Facebook offers all its users the ability to backup their photos, videos, and text.

1. Click Account and go to Account Settings.
2. Click the Learn more option next to Download Your Information.
3. Click the Download button.
4. You will then be prompted with a message indicating that it will take some time to collect all your information. Once that information is ready for download you'll be sent an e-mail with a link to a compressed .zip file containing all your personal information.