Page Optimization for AdSense

AdSense-like Appearance

FONT - Use the Verdana font on your page, especially near your AdSense ad block. This helps the ads to "blend in", and therefore appear more natural on your page. Use a font size similar to the font sizes used in the Adsense ads.

UPDATE: Google is now experimenting with changing the AdSense fonts. I am seeing the Verdana font replaced with what looks like a Times font. Google is trying other fonts, such as Comic Sans MS (reported to be abandoned due to complaints) and Times New Roman. This throws a monkey-wrench into your SEO optimization. One cannot optimize fonts (blend), when Google is experimenting and changing them. We must all figure out what to do about this. Stay tuned.

Page Maintenance

UPDATING - Update frequently. Google loves fresh content. Fix any errors that are found.

LINK ROT - Periodically run a link checker on all your web pages. Fix all broken links that are found. Either remove or replace every one of them. A webpage with a lot of old, broken links is considered to be of lower quality, because the webmaster has not kept it up. A free online link checker is Dead-Links dot com.

CONSTANT IMPROVEMENT - Try to make each page better and better. Add new information as it becomes available.

Page Quality

QUALITY FACTOR - The Adsense algorithm contains a "quality" factor. In general, the higher the quality of the web page (and CTR), the higher the quality of the ads served.

SPELLING - Run a spelling checker. You can be penalized for poor spelling.

GRAMMAR - Poor grammar can reduce the perceived quality of a web page. Top advertisers prefer to advertise on high quality pages.

MINIMUM LENGTH - In general, I believe that a page with 500 words is judged a better page, than a page with 100 words. What is the ideal length? I don't know. I think it can vary. But the more excellent the text, the better.

My own personal speculation is that 400 words might be a good minimum, and 10,000 words is far too many. My largest page is 6,000 words, and that is too long (an archival tome is an exception). All my other pages are much smaller. Break up very large pages, into smaller, more readable pages. This allows you to place additional, more targeted AdSense ads.

Page SEO

Perform Search Engine Optimization to ensure high placement in the SERPs.

TITLE TAG - Make it brief and accurate. Do not load with keywords.

META TAGS - Provide appropriate meta tags for each page - your Description Meta Tag should be brief and accurate, and your Keyword Meta Tag should only contain words which appear in the body text of your page - limit to 5 or 10.

LINKS - Reduce outgoing links to only the very best. Too many outgoing links can cause a page to lose focus, and distract your visitors from clicking on the Adsense links.

READABILITY - Some blogs use grey text on a grey background, which is the worst case for readability. This actually PHYSICALLY HURTS my eyes. There is no reason to do this, except laziness, because it is an application default. Unbelievably, some very prominent bloggers still do this.

Use black text on a white background, if you aren't sure what to do. OR, as a minimum, at least provide sufficient contrast so that JUST READING the text is not a difficult task.

Page Traffic

TRAFFIC SOURCE - Organic traffic is best. Strive for high SERP position in Google. Do not concern yourself with your MSN or Yahoo position. They provide little traffic.

ALT TEXT - Choose your "Alt Text" for images carefully. I get more traffic from just Google Images, than I get from the total traffic from both MSN and Yahoo combined. Think about THAT!

RSS FEED - Provide an XML RSS feed for your visitors, so that they can easily read your new content. Feedburner is a good way to do this, but I couldn't get it to work, so I just linked to my RSS feed on my index page.

Page Targeting

KEYWORDS - Carefully select the keywords you want to target for each page. Keywords that pay the most are those involving money, such as attorneys, credit, insurance, loans, medicine, mortgages, and real estate. However, these keywords are the most competitive, and therefore the hardest to rank for in the SERPs.

If you have difficulty getting highly-targeted ads, then try the Adsense feature called "Section Targeting." This will cause Adsense to serve you the ads that are relevant to the keywords that you want targeted, and ignore nearby untargeted words.

Google provides an excellent source of keywords at -
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

 

Google Analytics

STATISTICS - Use Google Analytics on every page to get important information about your visitors.

INSURANCE - We frequently hear about sites that have been banned, due to "invalid clicks" and "click-bombing". If YOU get a warning, or get banned, you must jump through hoops, and provide your log files to Google, in order to prove your innocence.
HOWEVER, if you are using Analytics, Google ALREADY HAS this information, and already knows just what is going on. I consider this to be very important, since Google can far more easily determine that YOU are not responsible for any transgressions. Use Analytics for information, AND for added safety!

 

Make money online 

Making money online is the dream of every blogger. I have created a list of best money making programs that all bloggers can use on their blogs. This list will including many paid blogging, pay per click, web hosting, banner advertising and online survey kind of stuff.

Make money online

I will keep on adding new money making programs to this list as they come my way:

1.      Teliad – Another marketplace for selling text links, don’t need a paeg rank to apply
2.     Helium – is a knowledge base where we can submit our articles and can make money according to the page views generated
3.     N1WAY – The Number one way to make mone online guide
4.     Blogads – Learn how to make money selling links on your bogs with blogads
5.     Twwetbucks – Learn how to make money and shorten your URL’s
6.     Flixya – Learn how to make money onliine with Flixya, a social networking website
7.     Bukisa – Make money by sharing your content
8.     cashcrate – Learn how to make money doing surveys
9.     Google Adsense – How to make money online with Google Adsense Publisher program
10.     Yuwie – Learn how to make money with Yuwie a Social Networking website like Myspace and Facebook
11.     Mahalo – How to make money online answering questions on Mahalo
12.     Blogitive – How to make money doing paid posts with Blogitive
13.     Xomba – How to make money online while writing on Xomba
14.     Mylot – Make money online with Mylot discussion forum
15.     eHow – Make money online by writing for eHow online community
16.     Yahoo Answers – Big Traffic & Money Making Machine
17.     Twitter Traffic Machine – Automatic system for making money online & Twitter growth
18.     Aweber – ultimate solution for Email newsletters Autoresponder Campaigns
19.     Craigslist – How to make money online
20.     BuyBlogReviews – How to make money online with Buyblogreviews
21.     Widgetbucks – How to make money online with Widgetbucks
22.     Direct advertisement – How to make money with direct advertising
23.     Blogsvertise – Learn how to make money online with Blogsvertise
24.     Google Trends – How to use Google Trends to make money online
25.     Paypal button – Adding Paypal Donation button to WordPress/Blogger blog
26.     Amazon Astore – How to promote & Make money from an Amazon aStore
27.     Amazon – How to make money online with Amazon Associate Program
28.     T3leads – Get the best PPL affiliate program from T3leads
29.     Knol – Creating Google Knols for making money online
30.     Hubpages – Make money and traffic with Hubpages.com
31.     Squidoo – How to make money and Traffic
32.     Text Link ads – text link advertising company and surely recommend it for making money from a website/blog with Good page rank
33.     Keyword Elite – amazing keyword tool from Brad Callen
34.     Paypal – create an account on Paypal today and catches lots of money making opportunities
35.     Performancing Ads – accepts all bloggers irrespective of their size in all major categories
36.     WordTracker – Best keyword suggestion tool in the industry
37.     StumbleRush – Study course that will help us in getting tons of traffic from StumbleUpon
38.     TNX – selling and buying of links
39.     SponsoredReviews paid blogging option
40.     Linkworth – offers a lot, they have lots of money making programs
41.     Smorty paid blogging program but they pay very less per post
42.     Oxado – Google adsense alternate if willing to make money with PPC programs
43.     Bidvertiser – Another Good alternate to Google Adsense
44.     Payperpost – get paid for every post that you write for advertisers here
45.     ReviewMe – another paid blogging option
46.     HostICan – Get cheap web hosting with HostICan which charges only $6.95 per month
47.     ReviewMe – another paid blogging option
48.     ClickBooth – is a cost per action performance based program like CJ
49.     RevResponse – another cost per action advertising program from NetLine
50.     LinkShowOff – Another text link selling option like TLA and TNX Make money online

Improving Your Visibility in Search Engines

1. Choose the Right Search Phrases
The first step to search engine visibility is finding out what phrases people are using to find businesses, products or services like yours. Don't guess what phrases people are using -- research them. Use a tool like WordTracker (www.wordtracker.com) to find out how your target audience is using the search engines. Compile a list of ten to twenty phrases that are relevant to your business, and develop content around those phrases. This must always be the first step in a search engine visibility campaign.

2. Make your website worth linking to.
Inbound links are a key factor in SEO visibility. Links coming from quality websites to your website will increase your search engine visibility. You can think of links as votes. When a lot of quality websites link to your website, search engines will view this in a favorable way and rank your website higher in their listings.

How do you get inbound links to your website? Well, you can use articles, press releases and directory submissions (as mentioned below). But the most important thing is having a website worth linking to in the first place. If your website only talks about you, few people will link to it. But if you turn your website into a resource of helpful information, you make it much easier to gain links ... and increase your SEO visibility by extension.

3. Add 20 Pages to Your Website
Any website that adds 20 pages of relevant content will enjoy a boost in SEO visibility. That's because you have a much greater chance of ranking for a broad range of search phrases when you have a broad range of content. Better still, creating content is one of the easiest steps in an SEO campaign. Search engines love content because it helps them understand what a website is about (and thus how to categorize it and match it to search queries).

4. Publish Articles Online
When you publish articles online, you can increase the number of websites that link to yours. The more websites that link to your website, the greater your "link popularity." This is a major factor in search engine visibility because websites with good link popularity usually outrank websites with few links coming in.

Here's how it works. First, you write a great article. Then you submit the article through distribution websites like EzineArticles.com. If it's well-written, you article could end up on dozens or hundreds of other websites. Each article would link back to your website thus increasing your "link popularity." Greater link popularity will eventually translate to better SEO visibility.

5. Publish Press Releases Online
Much like the article publishing scenario above, you can also publish press releases online for wide distribution. Using a service like PRWeb.com, you can distribute your message through hundreds of channels, RSS feeds, websites and blogs. And by adding a hyperlink to each release, you're once again increasing the number of inbound links to your website (a big factor in SEO website visibility success).

6. Submit Your Website to Directories
We talked about inbound links (from other websites to your website) and how they increase search engine visibility through link popularity. You can also get high-quality links by submitting your website to web directories. An example would be the Microsoft Small Business Directory, or Best of the Web (www.BOTW.org).

Most of the directories that are worth your time will charge a review fee, but it's usually worth the price because of the additional trust your website will earn. Remember, the more quality links you obtain from other websites, the more you will help your SEO visibility cause.

Conclusion
I hope you've enjoyed this guide to making your site more visible to search engines. Remember, website visibility directly translates into more website traffic and more business. So though it takes time to achieve, it is well worth the effort.

Write Site Discription, Site Title and Site Keywords - All in One SEO Pack Plugin

Automatically optimizes your WordPress blog for Search Engines (Search Engine Optimization).

Some features:

• Support for Custom Post Types
• Advanced Canonical URLs
• Fine tune Page Navigational Links
• Built-in API so other plugins/themes can access and extend functionality
• ONLY plugin to provide SEO Integration for WP e-Commerce sites
• Nonce Security
• Support for CMS-style WordPress installations
• Automatically optimizes your titles for search engines
• Generates META tags automatically
• Avoids the typical duplicate content found on WordPress blogs
• For beginners, you don't even have to look at the options, it works out-of-the-box. Just install.
• For advanced users, you can fine-tune everything
• You can override any title and set any META description and any META keywords you want.
• Backward-Compatibility with many other plugins, like Auto Meta, Ultimate Tag Warrior and others.

click here to download

Add Meta Tags to Blogger for Better SEO

In this Blogger tutorial I will show you the best way to add meta tags to your Blogger blog (Blogspot blog) to improve the SEO of your blog and work around the limitations of the Blogger platform.

I have observed that there are many Blogger help blogs out there telling you to just add meta tags however this will very likely achieve the opposite result from the one you are after. Whether you are yet to add meta tags or you have added meta tags already make sure you read and follow the methods contained in this article to get the best results.

What are Meta Tags?
Meta tags are HTML tags that provide additional information about your blog that is unseen by visitors but available to search engines. The meta description tag, for example, provides a short summary of the page content. The keyword meta tags show the keywords and keyword phrases a visitor might use to find your blog. Because of abuse of meta tags search engines have become smarter and most no longer place emphasis on keywords to establish page ranking however keyword meta tags are still used by some search engines so it is a good idea to include them.

Limitations of Blogger and SEO
One of the disappointing aspects of Blogger is that it is not properly optimized for SEO. Meta descriptions and keywords are not supported by blogger.com by default. Title tags are also not optimized. This means that you will miss valuable opportunities to attract visitors to your blog.

However meta tags and meta descriptions can be inserted into your Blogger template (Blogspot template) to good effect. Fortunately these work arounds will go a long way to improving the placement of your blog in search engine results. Please refer to adjust Blogger title tags for improved SEO for help with title tags.

Simply placing a meta tag description in your Blogger template is problematic because Blogger will use the same meta tags for all pages in your blog. This means that every entry that Google has for your site will show in search results with the same description. This solution would result in reduced traffic rather than increased traffic. However there is a way to add meta tags to the home page of your blog only which will not affect post pages in your blog. In this way visitors will find the home page of your blog in search engines by the use of appropriate keywords and a site description.

How to Add Meta Tags to a Blogger Blogspot Blog Home Page
1. Login to Blogger if not already logged in

2. Navigate to Design > Edit HTML

3. Back up your template as a precaution by downloading full template to your computer.

4. Check the Expand Widget Templates box

5. Find these lines which will be near the top of your template:

<head>
<b:include data='blog' name='all-head-content'/>
<title><data:blog.pageTitle/></title>

6. Paste the following code immediately below <title><data:blog.pageTitle/></title>

<b:if cond='data:blog.url == data:blog.homepageUrl'>
<meta content='Place your blog description here' name='description'/>
<meta content='Place your blog keywords here(separated by commas)'
name='keywords'/>
</b:if>

7. Enter your blog description between the single quote marks under description. Maximum 150 characters

8. Enter the keywords of your blog between the single quote marks under keywords. Ensure you separate each keyword or keyword phrase by a comma. Make sure your keywords do not exceed 200 characters

By way of example here are the meta tags I use for the home page of Blog Know How:

<b:if cond='data:blog.url == data:blog.homepageUrl'>
<meta content='Find tips,tricks,tutorials,walkthroughs to customize your Blogger Blogspot blog.SEO,Banners,Adsense,gadgets,fixes,feeds,rss,help for beginner bloggers' name='description'/>
<meta content='blog,blogger,blogger.com,blogspot.com,blogspot,blogging,tutorials,tips,blogger help,customize blogger,SEO,make money,gadgets,Google Adsense,banners, feeds,analytics,solutions'
name='keywords'/>
</b:if>

9. Click on the Save Template button

10. To see your description in action you can either navigate to your blog's home page and click on view source in your browser. In Internet Explorer you will find this option in the view menu. A text document will appear which you can scroll through. You will see your description near the top of the document. Alternatively you can check your description in a free Meta Tag Analyzer tool such as Submit Express or SEO Centro


How to Add Meta Tags to a Blogger Blogspot Blog Individual Post
1. Follow steps 1 to 4 as for adding meta tags to the Home Page

2. Add the following in the <head> section of your Blogger template. Enter this code below the Home Page code above you have just entered:

<b:if cond='data:blog.url == "http://url of your post"'>
<meta content='keywords pertaining to your post' name='keywords'/>
<meta content='crafted description of your post' name='description'/>
</b:if>

Here is an example of optimized meta tags for this post:


<b:if cond='data:blog.url == "http://blogknowhow.blogspot.com/2009/05/add-meta-tags-to-blogger-for-better-seo.html"'>
<meta content='meta tags,optimize blogger,blogger SEO,search engine optimization, blogspot,blogger,blogspot.com,blogger.com,blogging,blog' name='keywords'/>
<meta content='Improve SEO by adding meta tags to your Blogger Blogspot blog. Step by step tutorial shows you how to add meta tags to the home page and a single post' name='description'/>
</b:if>

3. Add your post URL, keywords and description. To find the URL of your post navigate to the post's page and copy the link showing in the address bar of your browser including the http:// prefix

4. Click on the Save Template button

5. To check your description you can use the view source in your browser once you have navigated to the post page or a meta tag analyzer

Note: This method is suitable if you have a few key posts that you want to ensure you get maximum traffic on. If you have a lot of posts this manual method would be very tedious. I don't know of any automated method or script to add meta tags at this point but I am investigating it and will keep you posted.


Analyze Your Blogspot Blogger Meta Tags
Once you have added meta tags to your blog you can use tools to analyze them to ensure their relevance. Aim for meta tag relevancy to page content of above 90%. To check this you can use a free meta tag analyzer tool such as Submit Express or SEO Centro


Troubleshooting and Tips

• Observe Character Limits
  To avoid problems ensure that you keep within the maximum character limits:
  

  Title Tag - Maximum Characters is 60
  Site Description - Maximum Characters is 150
  Keywords - Maximum Characters is 200

  
  
• Title Tag Tweak
  If you have inserted the title tag tweak and it is highly recommended that you do so then you will need to add the code above after the title tag adjustment in the <head> section of your template. Read more about adjusting title tags
  
• Keywords
  Although some search engines no longer place too much emphasis on keywords some still do so it is worth adding keywords. Avoid using the same keyword more than 3 times. The maximum number of keywords recommended to be robot friendly is around 20.
  
• Problems Reading the Code
  Some readers have reported problems with their browser reading this code. Try this document form of the article if this happens to you

In this Blogger meta tag tutorial I have discussed the best way to add meta tags to a Blogger blog (Blogspot blog) to improve search engine results given the limitations of the Blogger platform. In this article you have learned to add both meta tags for keywords and descriptions to the home page. You have also learned how to add meta tags to an individual post. To optimize your meta tags I have included links to free meta tag analyzer tools.

How to Create a XML and HTML Sitemap for WordPress

If you are a webmaster and know a thing or two about SEO, then you should know that having a Sitemap on a website can be very helpful. There are two types of sitemap that you can make. One is a XML sitemap and then there is a HTML Sitemap. In this article we will share the WordPress plugins you need to create a XML Sitemap and to create a HTML sitemap.

Sitemap helps search engine bots finding each page on your site. This is a page that contains all URLs within your site, so it will have any and all pages that you can imagine. There are pros and cons to having either type of sitemap. The reason why you should have a XML Sitemap is because it puts frequency, and importance to each page, so the bots know exactly what to visit and which page is more important. The reason why HTML Sitemap is important is because it is User Friendly unlike the XML Sitemap.

To have a XML Sitemap like ours, all you have to do is download the plugin called Google XML Sitemaps

Step - 1. Install plugin click here   

Step - 2. Active plugin

Step - 3. Select the priorities and setting you want.

Step - 4. Click on update than click on create sitemap. (if you want xml sitemap check on xml site map / if you want gz format sitemap than click on gz)

your sitemap is ready now. 

Step - 5. Go to Webmaster Tool click here

Step - 6. Submit your sitemap.

Google will verify your website/blog. 

After this google will start index your website/blog

Check your site map 

for example: 

www.yoursite.com/sitemap.xml 

or 

www.fashiontipsforall.com/sitemap.xml

The 3 Most Important SEO Elements

When I review a new client’s site, I look first to see how the current optimization stands. Within 3 seconds I can tell if there was a previous SEO involved, what keywords are being targeted, and how good the overall optimization is. I am able to do this quick analysis because I look for 3 key elements. Most good SEOs will make certain these most important elements contain the target keywords.

The most important site elements that will get you top rankings:

1) Title Meta tag: The title meta tag is the part that appears in the blue navigation bar at top of your browser window. It should contain the main keywords the page wishes to target. If it doesn’t then is very likely the site was never optimized because most SEOs will stuff keywords there. You are working with only a limited amount of text about 60-100 chars so choose your words wisely.

2) H1 heading tag: This is a popular SEO trick. One of the first things that SEOs noticed about Google was its love for the H1 tag and big text. The idea behind it is: H1 tags are very large pieces of text so if keywords appear there, then the site must really be about that topic. With css style sheets you can make the H1 tag look a little better so you can maintain the SEO benefit and aesthetics as well. H1 tags are good design practice as well because they give users headings for the topics covered on a page.

3) Site Navigation: This element is usually over looked by both SEOs and site developers alike. However, a skilled SEO will make sure the site’s navigation is optimized with strong keywords. The formation of the navigational links’ anchor text should be the exact term you are targeting. For example “Toronto real estate” as a link would be good, where as, “Our Toronto real estate services” would not be. Google is very precise about how anchor text is written. So make sure you target the exact term people would type when searching for your particular topic.

How to make a Google sitemap for Blogspot

Blogger users always have some disadvantages over submitting a sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools; we can't publish a real sitemap to the domain we are using. We can only submit partial sitemap using the default site feeds, which sadly only contain the last 25 posts. When Blogger introduced Feed Redirection (to FeedBurner or others), it only made matters worse: you couldn't submit a sitemap just so easily. However, there is a secret trick that will fix the problem in submitting a sitemap when feed redirection is enabled, which will also enable submitting not just the last 25 posts that you have, but all posts.

NO FEED REDIRECTION

 
If you haven't enabled feed redirection, then you won't have hard time submitting a sitemap. What you will need to do is just go to Google Webmaster and click Sitemaps on the left sidebar. This is assuming you already have logged in to Google of course. This is followed by clicking Add Sitemap and then choose Add General Web Sitemap in the Choose Type drop-down option. Once done, you just have to affix atom.xml or rss.xml (or both, but key them one after the other) on the blank space provided so that the whole sitemap URL looks like one of these.

http://yourblog.blogspot.com/atom.xml
http://yourblog.blogspot.com/rss.xml

Of course, the yourblog is already provided in the site.

FOR REDIRECTED FEEDSThe codes to be affixed for Blogger blogs that have their feeds redirected is atom.xml?redirect=false orrss.xml?redirect=false. Well, either will work. This will keep the feed from redirecting and is now usable as a sitemap at GWT.

SUBMIT ALL YOUR POSTS

The root-level Blogger feeds did not accept any query parameters before. However, when Blogger enabled feed redirection, query parameters can now be accepted. With this you can submit more than the standard 25 of your latest posts.

You need to figure out how many published posts there are in your blog. Currently, Blogger limits max-results to 500 entries, although this may sometimes go up and down. There are times in which it would only allow 100. It really varies.

Supposing today if you made another sitemap and Google Webmaster allows only 100 entries, you need to copy the code below. (You can change 100 to your number of posts if Google Webmaster today allows more than that.)

atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=1&max-results=100

If you have added the code above as sitemap, and then your posts are over 100 and GWT only allowed 100 entries per sitemap, then the code below will be of help.

atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=101&max-results=100

If you noticed, the difference lies between the start-index. The first code is =1 and the second is =101. The first sitemap started at 1 and returned 100 results, the second sitemap uses the start-index of 101 (100+1). This will automatically cover your next 100 posts (so 200 now all in all). But if you had more than 200 posts, you should re-create another sitemap with the start-index of 201. You get the drift?

Although adding a sitemap might help your blog, Google will still probably crawl Blogger blogs even without a sitemap of any kind as Blogger blogs are not difficult to crawl. But compared to nothing, having a sitemap will really eventually help. Adding one or two won't hurt you anyway.

Here's a screenshot of Blogger-Aid's sitemap. Just click it to enlarge.

CREATE THE SITEMAP GADGET - FOR BLOGGER

CREATE THE SITEMAP GADGET

To create the sitemap gadget see How to create a Table of Contents with Post Preview for Blogger. Follow the instructions under this heading : "TOC for ONE BLOG".

This will place the Contents table gadget in your blog. Use Click and drag on Page Elements subtab to drag the gadget below the posts column.

The gadget is now seen on ALL blog pages. The next step is to place it only on the Sitemap page. To do this first we need to get the permalink of the sitemap page we created in our blog. Look in the Blog Archives gadget and expand all the arrows to see the "Blog Sitemap" title we gave to the post. Click on the title to open the post page. Copy the permalink from the address bar of the browser.

PUT GADGET ON SITEMAP PAGE

To put the gadget on the sitemap page we use conditional tags. To do this :

1. Login at Blogger.com.

2. Click Layouts link under blog title on Dashboard.

3. Click Edit Html subtab of Layouts tab.

4. Click Expand Widgets Template checkbox on top of the Template Code box.

5. Wait for the page to refresh.

6. Scroll down to locate the code for the Table of Contents gadget.

7. Modify the code as shown below (Put in the red lines of code) :

<b:widget id='HTML1' locked='false' title='' type='HTML'>
<b:includable id='main'><b:if cond='data:blog.url == "BLOG_PAGE_URL"'>


WIDGET CODE
</b:if>
</b:includable>
</b:widget>

Replace the CAPS : BLOG_PAGE_URL with the permalink of your blog sitemap post.

8. Save Template.

About Sitemaps - What is Sitemap

Sitemaps are a way to tell Google about pages on your site we might not otherwise discover. In its simplest terms, a XML Sitemap—usually called Sitemap, with a capital S—is a list of the pages on your website. Creating and submitting a Sitemap helps make sure that Google knows about all the pages on your site, including URLs that may not be discoverable by Google's normal crawling process.

You can create a Sitemap based on the Sitemap protocol, or you can submit a text file or RSS/Atom feed as a Sitemap. How to create a Sitemap.

In addition, you can also use Sitemaps to provide Google with metadata about specific types of content on your site, including video, images, mobile, News, software source code, and geographical (KML). For example, a video Sitemap entry can specify the running time, category, and family-friendly status of a video; an image Sitemap entry can provide information about an image’s subject matter, type, and license. You can also use a Sitemap to provide additional information about your site, such as the date it was last updated, and how often you expect the page to change. We recommend that you use a separate Sitemap to submit News information.

Sitemaps are particularly helpful if:

About Sitemaps - What is Sitemap

• Your site has dynamic content.
• Your site has pages that aren't easily discovered by Googlebot during the crawl process—for example, pages featuring rich AJAX or images.
• Your site is new and has few links to it. (Googlebot crawls the web by following links from one page to another, so if your site isn't well linked, it may be hard for us to discover it.)
• Your site has a large archive of content pages that are not well linked to each other, or are not linked at all.

Google doesn't guarantee that we'll crawl or index all of your URLs. However, we use the data in your Sitemap to learn about your site's structure, which will allow us to improve our crawler schedule and do a better job crawling your site in the future. In most cases, webmasters will benefit from Sitemap submission, and in no case will you be penalized for it.

Google adheres to Sitemap Protocol 0.9 as defined by sitemaps.org. Sitemaps created for Google using Sitemap Protocol 0.9 are therefore compatible with other search engines that adopt the standards of sitemaps.org.

Indexing a site

Before a site appears in search results, a search engine must index it. An indexed site will have been visited and analyzed by a search robot with relevant information saved in the search engine database. If a page is present in the search engine index, it can be displayed in search results otherwise, the search engine cannot know anything about it and it cannot display information from the page..

Indexing a site
   Most average sized sites (with dozens to hundreds of pages) are usually indexed correctly by search engines. However, you should remember the following points when constructing your site. There are two ways to allow a search engine to learn about a new site:

   - Submit the address of the site manually using a form associated with the search engine, if available. In this case, you are the one who informs the search engine about the new site and its address goes into the queue for indexing. Only the main page of the site needs to be added, the search robot will find the rest of pages by following links.

   - Let the search robot find the site on its own. If there is at least one inbound link to your resource from other indexed resources, the search robot will soon visit and index your site. In most cases, this method is recommended. Get some inbound links to your site and just wait until the robot visits it. This may actually be quicker than manually adding it to the submission queue. Indexing a site typically takes from a few days to two weeks depending on the search engine. The Google search engine is the quickest of the bunch.

   Try to make your site friendly to search robots by following these rules:
Indexing a site
   - Try to make any page of your site reachable from the main page in not more than three mouse clicks. If the structure of the site does not allow you to do this, create a so-called site map that will allow this rule to be observed.

   - Do not make common mistakes. Session identifiers make indexing more difficult. If you use script navigation, make sure you duplicate these links with regular ones because search engines cannot read scripts (see more details about these and other mistakes in section 2.3).
Indexing a site
   - Remember that search engines index no more than the first 100-200 KB of text on a page. Hence, the following rule – do not use pages with text larger than 100 KB if you want them to be indexed completely.
Indexing a site
   You can manage the behavior of search robots using the file robots.txt. This file allows you to explicitly permit or forbid them to index particular pages on your site.
Indexing a site
   The databases of search engines are constantly being updated; records in them may change, disappear and reappear. That is why the number of indexed pages on your site may sometimes vary. One of the most common reasons for a page to disappear from indexes is server unavailability. This means that the search robot could not access it at the time it was attempting to index the site. After the server is restarted, the site should eventually reappear in the index.
Indexing a site
   You should note that the more inbound links your site has, the more quickly it gets re-indexed. You can track the process of indexing your site by analyzing server log files where all visits of search robots are logged. We will give details of seo software that allows you to track such visits in a later section. 

Indexing a site

Constructing the Perfect Home Page for SEO

Optimize the main page of your site (domain name, index.html) for word combinations that are most important. This page is most likely to get to the top of search engine lists. My seo observations suggest that the main page may account for up to 30-40% percent of the total search traffic for some sites 

No matter what niche you are in, your home page metrics and optimization will always be, if not the most important factor, one of the top factors for ranking in the search engines. It is important that your homepage is optimized to perfection.

Is there one specific keyword that you would like to go after and go after hard? Out ranking solid competitors is tough to do but can be done if you put the work in. Just make sure that the main keyword you are targeting is not too crazy in terms of competition.

Does HTML, CSS, and JavaScript Matter?

The answer is yes. Just like browsers, search engines are very friendly towards websites that can load up very quickly. If you have bulky coding, or programming that isn’t efficiently coded, your website will take a lot longer to load, and thus will not perform as well in the search engines. Also make sure any videos or photos are formatted as best as possible.

Keyword Placement

Keyword placement is very important. Many people say that placing your keyword phrase in an “H1″ tag at the top of the page (so that it’s the first thing that Google reads when it crawls the page) is getting less and less likeable by the search engines. This may be true, however it is still very obvious that this tactic is working, and performing well all over the Internet. If not the “H1″ tag you will want to include you keyword phrase in 1 or 2 “H2″ tags.

Another good placement of your keyword phrase would be somewhere in the navigation. Whether it be in the main navigation on the top, or navigation on one of the sides, it is best to put it in one of them so the search engines can see your keyword phrase in link form.

“Content is King” “Quality content is King”

Ever since Panda, the quality of your content has never been more important. That is because a big part of search engine rankings nowadays is what your bounce rate and time spent on page looks like.

You want to make sure that your absolute best content is on your homepage. Your goal should be to get the reader that is visiting your site to at least read the whole page before they decide to either jump ship or check out more pages of your website. This also makes link placement very important. Be sure to add in context links that make sense so that you can add to that pages viewed number.

Two Other Important Factors

One thing that is truly undervalued in SEO is the CTR on the SERPs page. The higher your click through rate, the better the chances that your website has to rank well. You can increase these odds by writing a very detailed and interesting meta description – one that also has the keywords placed within it.

Another thing that is popular and search engine friendly since the Panda update is user activity within the page. Does your website offer products or services like perhaps a link building service? If so, think about adding some sort of free quote form. If not it will be wise to find something else that users can interact with on your home page.

No matter what niche you are in, your home page metrics and optimization will always be.

10 Ways to Get Traffic for Free

Getting traffic is one of the most important tasks for any web master. What is more, you can't get traffic once and then just reap the benefits. Getting traffic is an ongoing task and you must be constantly doing it, if you want to get traffic and keep it. Here are some of the ways to get traffic for free: 

10 Ways to Get Traffic for Free

1-Optimize your site for search engines.

Search engines have always been a major way to get traffic for free. That is why you need to do your homework and optimize your site so that it ranks well for the keywords you target. SEO is still the most powerful way to get traffic for free and you really need to invest some time and efforts in the optimization of your site. SEO is not that difficult and if you want to get familiar with it in a nutshell, check our SEO Tutorial. If you are too busy for that, you can start with the 15 Minute SEO article.

2-Frequently update the contents of your site. .

If you expected some shocking secrets revealed, you might be a bit disappointed. One of the first steps in getting traffic for free is trivial but vital – get great content and frequently update it. In terms of SEO, content is king. If your content is good and frequently updated you will not only build a loyal audience of recurring visitors, who will often come to see what is new, but search engines will also love your site.

3-Take advantage of social bookmarking sites.

Social bookmarking sites (especially the most popular among them) are another powerful way to get traffic for free. If you want to learn how to do it, check the How to get Traffic from Social Bookmarking sites article, where we have explained what to do if you want to get free traffic from sites such as Digg, Delicious, etc.

4-Use your Twitter and Facebook accounts.

Social networks are also a way to get traffic for free. If you are popular on networks, such as Twitter or Facebook, the traffic you get from there can easily surpass the traffic from Google and the other search engines. It is true that building a large network of targeted followers on Twitter and supporters on Facebook takes a lot of time and effort but generally the result is worth.

5-Get links with other sites in your niche.

Another way to get traffic for free is from other sites in your niche. Getting links with other sites in your niche is also good for SEO, especially if you manage to get links without the famous nofollow attribute. But even if the links are nofollow (i.e. they are useless for SEO), they still help to get traffic to your site. If you manage to put your link in a visible place on a site with high volumes of traffic, you can get thousands of hits from this link alone. If you need list of sites within your niche where you could get backlinks from, check the Backlink Builder tool. However, be careful if you exchange links because linking to bad neighbors can do you a lot of harm.

6-Use any chance to promote your site for free.

Free promotion is always welcome, so don't neglect it. There are many ways to promote your site for free and some of the most popular ones include free classified ads, submissions to directories, inclusion in various listings, etc. It is true that not all free ways to promote your site work well but if you select the right places to promote your site for free, this can also result in tons of traffic.

7-Create a free product or service.

Content drives most traffic when you offer something useful. There are many types of useful content you can create and they largely depend on the niche of your site. You can have articles with tons of advice, or short tips but one of the most powerful ways to get traffic is to create a free product or service. When this product or service gets popular and people start visiting your site, chances are that they will visit the other sections of the site as well.

8-Use viral content.

Free products and services are great for getting free traffic to your site and one of the best varieties in this aspect is viral content. Viral content is called so because it distributes like a virus – i.e. when users like your content, they send it to their friends, post it on various sites, and promote it for free in many different ways. Viral content distributes on its own and your only task is to create it and submit it to a couple of popular sites. After that users pick it and distribute it for you. Viral content can be a hot video or a presentation but it can also be a good old article or an image.

9-Use offline promotion.

Offline promotion is frequently forgotten but it is also a way to get traffic for free. Yes, computers are everywhere and many people spend more time online than offline but still life hasn't moved completely on the Web. Offline promotion is also very powerful and if you know how to use it, this can also bring you many visitors. Some of the traditional offline ways to promote your site include printing its URL on your company's business cards and souvenirs or sticking it on your company vehicles. You can also start selling T-shirts and other merchandise with your logo and this way make your brand more popular.

10-Include your URL in your signature.

URLs in forum signatures are also a way to get traffic for free. There are forums, which get millions of visitors a day and if you are a popular user on such a forum, you can use this to get traffic to your site. When you post on forums and people like your posts, they tend to click the link to your site on your signature to learn more about you. In rare cases you might be able to post a deep link (i.e. a link to an internal page of the site) rather than a link to your homepage and this is also a way to focus attention to a particular page. Unfortunately, deep links are rarely allowed.

Getting traffic for free is a vast topic and it is not possible to list all the ways to do it. However, if you know the most important ways – i.e. the ways we discussed in this article and you apply them properly, it is guaranteed that you will be able to get lots of traffic for free.

10 Ways to Get Traffic for Free