SiteMaps - What are they, and do you need them?

Wikipedia Description

A site map (or SiteMap) is a list of pages of a web site accessible to crawlers or users. It can be either a document in any form used as a planning tool for web design, or a web page that lists the pages on a web site, typically organized in hierarchical fashion. This helps visitors and search engine bots find pages on the site.

While some developers argue that site index is a more appropriately used term to relay page function, web visitors are used to seeing each term and generally associate both as one and the same. However, a site index is often used to mean an A-Z index that provides access to particular content, while a site map provides a general top-down view of the overall site contents.

Part 4 of my collection of SEO Tips is SiteMaps – What are they? Why do you need them? and What type of SiteMaps should you use?

What is a SiteMap?

Well, the wikipedia description above really does nail it on the head to be honest, but if that isn’t quite clear enough, here is my spin on it.

Traditionally speaking, a SiteMap is a map of you site, which is located in 1 area of your site – it’s in the name really. The best way to envisage a SiteMap is to think of a spiders web – the centre of the web is your homepage, and each stand coming off the homepage are all your websites pages.

To be honest, thats pretty much that!

Why do I need to use a SiteMap?

The main purpose of a sitemap is give a search engine crawler a central location of every single page of your website. Lets use Google as your typical example; Google have spent literally billions of dollars creating thousands of servers to host what we know as Google Bots. These bots crawl the web in search of content, and when they come to your site they want to see your content.

As we all know, your ranking in Google comes down to your content, which is why you have to give Google the best possible chance of indexing all your content. Many years ago, lets say 6-7 from memory, SiteMaps weren’t your standard rule of practice, which left the Google crawlers to do a lot of the work for you. However, if your site had broken links which you missed to fix, or each page took a long time to load so the bots couldn’t find all your pages, then the depth of the crawl would be minimal.

So….. Some clever little so and so thought to himself “hey, wouldn’t it make sense if i provided all of my pages to Google for them to index?” – this not only saved Google bots a shed load of time and effort on your site, but it also allowed websites to be indexed more often and quicker.

Why do you need a SiteMap? Its simple….. To ensure that the search engines get to your content quickly, efficiently and frequently.

What type of SiteMaps should I use?

The answer to that question is fairly simple….. Which ever you find easier to understand and use.

There are two main types of SiteMap formats: -

1. HTML SiteMapA HTML SiteMap is basically a physical HTML page with the links to your web-pages displayed as text links. Depending on the size of your site will depend on whether you manually create this page, of whether you let your CMS dynamically export it - either way a HTML SiteMap is a HTML page.
2. XML SiteMapNow this is the daddy! An XML SiteMap is the industry standard format to use and is, in my opinion, the better version to use. However, XML is a different language to HTML, so not everyone will be able to write the code. However, XML is actually very easy read and write with a little effort in learning it.

   XML SiteMaps are, more often than not, dynamically generated by a CMS or by a SiteMap generating program, if you don’t have a CMS.

   XML SiteMaps are a lot quicker for crawlers to read and follow, and require less server processing (all be it extremely minimal in comparison - but it is less).

Where do I place the SiteMap?

I’ve saved the easier answer untill last. The SiteMap should be located in 2 places -

1. In the root of your FTP serverExample – www.danielwheeler.co.uk/sitemap.xml
2. AND it should be a link in the header of all your web-pages.The SiteMap should be the first link visible on your pages, from top to bottom. This ensures that the crawlers will definitely find the SiteMap and index all your pages.

That’s pretty much all you need to know about SiteMaps. A SiteMap wont really increase your rankings directly, however it does ensure that your content is indexed quicker and more often, which does increase your rankings!

The other day we discussed the issue regarding <H1> tags – today’s subject is Internal Links and the common issues I stumble across when reviewing company sites.

Internal Links

WikiPedia Description
An internal link is a hyperlink that is a reference or navigation element in a document to another section of the same document or to another document that may be on or part of the same website or domain of the Internet.

Links are considered either “external” or “internal” depending on perspective. Generally, a link to a page outside the same domain is considered external, whereas one in the same domain is considered internal.

However, these definitions become clouded when the same organization operates multiple domains functioning as a single web experience, e.g. when a secure commerce website is used for purchasing things displayed on a non-secure website.

Similarly, a blogging website might have thousands of different blogs, in which context one might view a link as “internal” only if it linked within the same blog, not to other blogs within the same domain.

Unlike the part 1 – TITLE tags, and part 2 – H1 tags, which were quite lengthy articles, thankfully Internal Links is a relatively easy concept to master and understand – however, like the simplest of concepts, people and companies still get things wrong.

Before i explain why you should have internal links, let me explain what they are in a more layman’s term approach. With no disrespect to my more experianced readers, there are some users who are new to SEO, so its always good to have a nice analogy to explain things. Like all websites, you need a navigation, otherwise known as a menu and this is the main route in which your users can navigate though your site. Now a navigation system is a form of internal links, but they are by no means the essence of the term “Internal links”. The true definition of an internal link, if you like, is the way in which pages link to other pages – like a spiders web – hence the term ‘web’site

Image a spiders web, and the center of the web is the homepage of your site. Now each thread off from the homepage/web is another page within your site. This means that each cross thread of the web, connecting each main thread together are the internal links. The main threads of the web, branching off from the centre of the web is your site navigation, however not all pages warrant a place in the navigation, and that is where Internal Links play in incredibly important role in SEO. Here is a more visual view here…..

Each water-drop = a web page, and each thread to each water drop is an internal link

So why do sites need Internal Links?
Simple really, for the search engines to crawl all your pages quickly and easily. Imagine if you had a website that had 100 pages, but the navigation only linked to 10 of those pages. This means that Google and the other search engines would only know about 10 of the 100 pages on your site. By adding in Internal Links and linking pages together, it means that the search engines then become aware of all 100 pages, thus increasing your rankings on all other pages on your site.

So, what are the on site optimisation issues that i have come across when reviewing sites?

1. Not including Internal Links
   As explained above, without these links, you are limiting the access to all of the other pages on your sites – its as simple as that. If you have a site, especially a blog site, you have to use internal links. But not only for the search engines, but to also allow your users to navigate to other pages too. If you noticed, at the top of this article, where i mentioned the previous articles i have written about PAGE TITLE tags and H1 tags, i linked them back to the relevant pages. This helps both you and the search engines reach those pages as this site doesnt have a main site navigation.
2. Link Spamming
   Like all links, external or internal, people think that the more links the better – this is not the case. The last thing sites should be doing is linking every single word in their article to other pages on their site, it simply doesn’t help. Linking, both internal and external (which we’ll discuss in part 11), is all about quality, and not quantity. Each internal page within your site, shouldn’t have anymore than 50 internal links, and this includes your site navigation.
3. Choosing the correct keywords to link
   Let me very  briefly touch on external links for a moment – in its simplest form, if you want your website to rank for the keyword “car” you need to build links from other sites with the anchor text (the keywords being linked) of the word “car”. The same principle applies for internal links, but in a slightly different way. When the search engines crawl your sites, you want to give them a clear indication of what pages are relevant to what content topics. As previously mentioned in the PAGE TITLE tag and H1 tag article, those elements are the key features to giving a page its content identification. However, buy giving those pages links from other internal pages with the keywords of the content type linked, that also increases the pages relevancy. That was a bit of a mouthful, so let me try and explain: -Lets take the PAGE TITLE tag page as an example.. - http://www.danielwheeler.co.uk/index.php/part-1-of-15-seo-tips-page-title-tags/
   1 – The page TITLE tag is about “Page TITLE tags”
   2 – The H1 tag is about “Page TITLE tags”
   3 – There are 4 other pages on this site now linking to that page, using the linked keyword “Page TITLE tag”.This is telling the search engines that i want them to rank this page for keywords around the term “Page TITLE tag”. Not only that, but there is also a number of other websites that have kindly linked to that page with the anchor text of “Page TITLE tag”, resulting in that page now ranking at position 4 for the term “SEO tips for page title tags” (as of 5th November 2009). Position 4 may not seem great, but the page has only been live for 3 days, and is talking about subject matter that is incredibly competitive in the search engine world – so it is a good starting point.

Well, once again, i hope that was a good in-site into the world of Internal Links, and do let me know if you have any questions regarding any of the above.

Yesterday we discussed the issue regarding Page TITLE tags – today’s subject is <H1> tags and the common issues I stumble across when reviewing company sites.

<H1> Tags

WikiPedia Description:
<H1>…</H1>
Section headings at different levels.

<H1>delimits the highest-level heading,</H1>

<H2>the next level down (sub-section),</H2>

<H3>for a level below that, and so on to</H3>

Most visual browsers show headings as large bold text by default, though this can be overridden with CSS. Heading elements are not intended merely for creating large or bold text — they describe the document’s structure and organization. Some programs use them to generate outlines and tables of contents.

Right, well that was the wikipedia description, which may well make perfect sense to a HTML experienced person, however if your reading this and new to SEO/HTML let me try and explain this in layman’s terms. Firstly, imagine a row of 10 houses down a street – these 10 houses represent 10 websites on the Internet. Now on their own, as plain houses (plain websites) you haven’t a clue who lives in which house (what content is in which website). Now, using yesterdays example, the Page TITLE tag would represent, in this analogy, the color of the front door of the house – the more attractive the front door/TITLE tag the more attention you’ll get from your users. Now bear with me, this will eventually make sense…. The H1 tag, in this analogy, would be the door number. Like most people, the number on the front door should be attractive (for the postman or in this case the end user) and in-keeping with the door design – so to conclude the front door and the door number should be either identical, or extremely similar – thus meaning the page TITLE tag and the H1 tag should be of the same nature.

That either made sense or it didn’t, hopefully it did, but in essence a site, and in-turn every single page within the site, should have both a relevant and targeted TITLE tag and H1 tag – these are the two single most important aspects of on-site optimisation.

So, what are the mistake that websites make regarding the H1 tag?

1. Not including a H1 tag at all!
   Cardinal sin number 1! NO H1 tag = no ranking for serious keywords! If your serious about SEO, you have to have a H1 tag and it needs to be relevant to the page content and in synergy with the page TITLE tag. This brings me onto my next point.
   
2. Relevant keywords
   Cardinal sin number 2! Irrelevant keywords in your H1 tag will mean you will rank for the wrong terms. For example – Toshiba’s home thin, light and mobile laptops page. Below is a screenshot of the page itself; the points that you need to note are the following: -1 – The page TITLE tag at the top of the screenshot – Home Thin, Light & Mobile Laptops | Laptop – Toshiba
   2 – The page H1 tag in big bold font nelow the menu -  Home Thin, Light & Mobile Laptops
   3 – The page friendly URL (which we’ll discuss in part 6) – /home-thin-light-mobile-laptops/
   

   Click to enlarge

   Now, given those 3 key elements of the page (as well as the page’s content), and in particular the page TITLE and H1 tag, the page couldn’t be more optimised for those keywords if it tried.

   Now i can tell you that for the following terms, Toshiba rank position 1 for this page: -
   - home thin laptops
   - thin mobile laptops
   - thin mobile laptop

   The list for this page’s rank 1 position goes on, and given that I manage the SEO project for Toshiba, I can tell you that we aren’t doing any external link building for this page, so these rankings are purely down to good on-site optimisation – that would be down to me

3. Keyword Spamming
   This is an old school mistake, and something I see very often with websites. If a website is trying to rank for the term “Secondhand cars” and the website has a page TITLE tag  that looks like this – “Secondhand Cars, Secondhand Cars, Secondhand Cars, Secondhand Cars” and a page H1 tag that looks like this – “Secondhand Cars, Secondhand Cars, Secondhand Cars, Secondhand Cars” – It wont rank for the term “Secondhand Cars”.This is keyword spamming and the search engines will see what you are trying to do and possibly ban your site and definitely penalise you. Besides that, the search engines only take note of one repetition of a keyword anyway.TIP: – You can however do this, if you wanted to focus on a slight variation of a word – “Secondhand Cars | Car”
4. Styling of the H1 tag
   Now this can be tricky. As we’ve discussed, every page needs a H1 tag, without exception, however not all site/page designs would look as affective with some large H1 tag slapped in the top of the page. Now the common mistake/myth here is to, if you have a white background, have the H1 tag font in white. This would therefore keep the H1 content on the page but it would be invisible to the end user.Google and other search engines are clever here and read what colors the backgrounds are and what color your text is – this is mainly for accessibility, but its also to check whether you are trying to trick the search engines.
   
   So…..if you want to have the H1 tag SEO value, but not display the H1 tag, what do you do?
   Well, CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is your answer. As of yet, the search engines just crawl and read the HTML on the page, and don’t take note of the styling in an external style sheet. Therefore, all you need to do is add some positioning around your H1 tag and make it disappear behind an image of even off the page. So in the eyes of the search engine, the H1 tag is there and visible, but to your end user its hidden – easy.As of yet, this is a “legal” technique and something worth doing if you have styling issues regarding the H1 tag – its a safe option.
5. Having and image in the H1 tag
   This is a very common error, especially with company logo’s. The search engines cant crawl and index images – FACT! Therefore, by having an image wrapped in your H1 tag is pointless and meaningless.Text people…. text, text, text and more text! That’s all search engines like and that’s all they will index!

Once again, i hope this was of some help to all those budding SEO’s out there!

I do an awful lot of SEO consulting for many sites, some for free (as previous posts have proven), but most I charge for, as a geniuses information is worth paying for However, the same topics prop up time and time again, and its surprising how a little bit a education can help so many sites.

I’ve decided to a series of articles focusing on the 15 most common SEO mistakes including <H1> tags, Internal Links, Site Maps, Image ALT & TITLE tags, Friendly URLS, 301 Redirects, Duplicate Content, Canonical tags, META Description, META Keywords, External Links – Back Links, Targeting Keywords and Google Masters Tools.

However, the most common gripe I have is with page TITLE tags, so here are the 4 most common issues below – I hope it comes in help for your sites!

Page TITLE tags

WikiPedia Description:
Define a document title. Required in every HTML and XHTML document. User agents may use the title in different ways. For example:

* Web browsers usually display it in a window’s title bar when the window is open, and (where applicable) in the task bar when the window is minimized.
* It may become the default file name when saving the page.
* Search engines’ web crawlers may pay particular attention to the words used in the title.

The title element must not contain other elements, only text. Only one title element is permitted in a document.
TITLE existed in HTML Tags, and was standardised in HTML 2.0; still current.

So what’s the most common errors for websites when creating a page TITLE?

1. Adding their brand name at the beginning
   This is probably the most common! If you have a website called www.supperduper.com and it sells car toys, the last TITLE tag that you need is something like “SuperDuper.com: Car Toys”. Yes Yes, there needs to be some site branding, and a TITLE tag is a good way to do that, but never have the brand name or URL at the front of the TITLE tag. The thing is, Google (and I use Google as the superior example in all my posts, as…..well….. their awesome) give weight to the keywords in your TITLE tag in the order that they are prioritised. In this case, the site is telling Google that their most important keyword the page is going to talk about is “SuperDuper.com” which clearly isn’t the case. The site sells Car Toys, so there for the first keywords in the TITLE tag should be Car Toys!
   In an ideal world, you wouldn’t have the brand/URL in the TITLE tag at all, as this just waters down the relevancy of the keywords – which brings me onto my next point. The more keywords you have in your TITLE tag, the less weight they carry in the search engines – Example – A TITLE tag like this “Car Toys | Toy” is going to have so much more strength in ranking than a TITLE tag like this “Car Toys | Toy | www.SuperDuper.com Car Toy Experts” – see my point?NO? Well think of it like this – in human terms, if a friend of yours told you 3 words to remember, you’re more than likely to remember them and then bring them up in conversation at some point. If a friend then told you 11 words to remember, the chances are you’d forget them and wouldn’t even try and remember them. This principle applies to the search engines – Give them a handful of keywords per page to focus on, and they will give your page more priority, give them shed loads of words and your site will be dropping somewhere on page 5 in terms of rankings.
2. Using capital letters in your TITLE tag
   Not only does it make your site look tacky up against all the other results, it also make it looks like your shouting at your users – which may well be the point in using capital letters, however it looks rubbish and will do more harm than good.Again, using the human example, and I do this a lot as Google’s aim is to make results as natural and user friendly as possible and therefore humanis If i were to shout out some words to someone in the pub, they would probably punch me. However, if i told them in a normal calm voice, with correct grammar/punctuation they are more likely to listen and take in my information. Also, although i have no actual proof of this, I’m pretty sure Google doesn’t like capital letters in TITLE tags, and I wouldn’t be surprised if 2 identical sites, except for the capitalisation of the TITLE tag; the one without the capital letters would rank above it.
3. Leaving out a CTA (Call to Action)
   This is one of my pet hates! This only really applies to sites that sell products, so therefore a vast majority of the sites out there, however, why not advertise the price of the product in the TITLE tag? It gives the user that little bit more information that your other competitors don’t have!Lets take a Toshiba example that I have done recently – as part of the recent site refresh, I added in the starting price of our Gaming laptops into the TITLE tag…..Now, currently Toshiba are ranked position 3 for the term “Gaming Laptop” and we have been ranked here for about the last 6 weeks. Google recently re-crawled this page and in turn indexed the new TITLE tag, including the price, and I can tell you that, over the past week, our increase in traffic from that term has gone up, on average, 7%. Now its not a huge percentage, however is an extra 7% isn’t it……. its extra sales that we wouldn’t have got if I hadn’t made the change.
4. Using HTML code in the TITLE tag
   This one is probably the most annoying, as it just shows how naive some people are…..Adding this <title><b>hello this is my website</b></title> WILL NOT make your TITLE appear bolder in Google….. its actually laughable sometimes. The only way you will see your TITLE tag appear as bold is if the user has typed in your exact TITLE tag phrase into the search engine, and even then its only bold as that’s how they display the keywords you have typed in.TITLE tags are for text and text only…………. TEXT!

Well it seems that the piece i wrote about FireBox.com’s SEO has bought some attention my way – that was the aim of course

Part of that attention came from a very nice company called PrezzyBox.com, to which they asked if i would do a critique on their site…… of course i said yes, and below is the result.

Issue #1 – Page TITLE tag
Similar to that of the FireBox.com website, PrezzyBox seem to be making the same mistake here. There is no need to have your brand term at the beginning of the TITLE tag, it simply waters down the authority of your main targeted keywords. By all means add PrezzyBox.com at the end of the TITLE tag for brand awareness, but leave it out of the front.

The homepage in this example should have the title tag of “Gifts, Gift Ideas and Gadgets in the UK | PrezzyBox.com”. After a quick Google search PrezzyBox seem to be rank 3 for the term “Gifts”, and if you’ll notice that the top ranked website has “gifts” at the beginning of their TITLE tag. Now, clearly, I’m not insinuating that the only reason there positioned 1 is because their main keyword is at the beginning, however it certainly is helping them in their position.

The TITLE tag issue is a global issue across their site actually. No exactly the same problem, but similar. You see, if you go to one of their products, for example the “Aroma Home Hot Sox Feet Warmers – Pink” you’ll notice that the page TITLE tag is very long – “Aroma Home Hot Sox Feet Warmers – Pink available to buy from prezzybox.com”. There’s 2 issues here that they could fix to ensure they get the best possible positioning on the keywords within the TITLE tag.

1 – Get rid of the “available to buy from prezzybox.com” part of the tag – it is simple watering down the weight of the other key terms “Aroma Home Hot Sox Feet Warmer” – to which PrezzyBox are ranking 3rd for – Change this guys and you will see some results.

2 – Add a call to action to the TITLE tag, but ensure it doesn’t make the TITLE tag too long. I would recommend something like this – “Aroma Home Hot Sox Feet Warmer – from £19.95″ – This not only gives the user that little bit more information when seeing the results, but it will also attract your results from the other brand listings. Also, it will increase your click through rate – If you’re an end user looking at 10 results in a listing, and 1 of them has a price advertised in the listing, your likely to go a see them first!

Issue #2 – Page URLS
Now this is an issue i would strongly recommend fixing, but its an issue that can be very hard to do, so i appreciate perhaps why they haven’t done so far…… Friendly URLS!

At the moment, PrezzyBox seem to be using the database results as part of their URLS. Using the “Aroma Home Hot Sox Feet Warmer” page as an example, the URL is – http://www.prezzybox.com/products/index.aspx?pid=4025 – which, if this link was pasted in a forum or blog then the user reading the link would have no idea what the landing page is about. However, if they converted there page URLS to friendly URLS which resulted in something like this -http://www.prezzybox.com/products/aroma-home-hot-sox-feet-warmer/- then anyone reading that would know INSTANTLY what the page is going to be about. Not only that, but it adds weight and relevancy to the link in which the URL is placed. IMPORTANT NOTE – Use hyphens and not underscores when seperating out keywords in a URL!

Lets analyse the two issues above quickly. The screenshot below is the top 3 ranked website for the term “Aroma Home Hot Sox Feet Warmer”.

You’ll notice that the two issues above have been taken into account for the two site ranking above PrezzyBox -

1. ShopWiki.co.uk has got a shorter TITLE tag than the other 2, and it has a friendly URL (although an incorrect format friendly URL, it does have one – you should use hyphens instead of plus symbols)
2. Sockshop.co.uk has got a shorter TITLE tag than the PrezzyBox, and it has a friendly URL (although an incorrect format friendly URL, it does have one – you should us hyphens instead of underscore symbols)

As mentioned before, these two elements wont guarantee being placed above the top 2, however as Tesco state – Every little helps!

Issue #3 – Internal Links – TITLE tags
Google treats your own site like its the only site in the world, in terms of internal links. With external links, you need to make sure you have the keyword you are tageting in the TITLE tag of the external link. The same principle applies for internal links.

For example, this page – http://www.prezzybox.com/cat/index.aspx?cat=4 – is where the link to the “Aroma Home Hot Sox Feet Warmer” sits.

There are 3 links to the product page here, the image, the title and the button. Now the image and the button both have ALT tags, which is a start, however by giving the links a TITLE tag, it just makes the landing page even more relevant. Most SEO companies forget that the on site relevancy of pages is just as important as the off site relevancy.

This is a snippet of code from the SockShop.co.uk page where they advertise the Aroma Home Hot Soxs – I’ve highlighted the difference between them and PrezzyBox.

<a class=”view” title=”Ladies 1 Pair Aroma Hot Sox Blue With Rosemary, Lime & Lavender Essential Oil” href=”/products/ladies_1_pair_aroma_hot_sox_blue_with_rosemary_ess/index” >< img src=”/images/view_details.gif” alt=”View Ladies 1 Pair Aroma Hot Sox Blue With Rosemary, Lime & Lavender Essential Oil” width=”83″ height=”21></a>

With a little on-site work here, I honestly think PrezzyBox could get this product to rank number 1 without doing any off-site link work – and if that wasn’t the case, then only a few links would be needed as your on site would be far better than your competitors!

PrezzyBox, there’s 3 issues to get you going with for now. I’d love to see if, when you make the changes, the page fly up the rankings!

I hope you enjoyed the article.