Archive for December 2007

How to create a sitemap

A sitemap of a website is similar to the table of contents of a book. Sitemaps are important because it guides web surfers to the particular part of the website they have a point of interest in. With it they would save time following links and get right to the point instead.
Sitemaps are also where search engines look at if somebody is looking for a particular keyword or phrase. If you have a site map, you can most likely be searched.
Creating a sitemap, now with software technology surging in, is relatively easier than before. You need not be a programming guru to be one. All need is a notepad, a program editor, and some patience. Here’s how you do it:
Create the listing on a notepad.It doesn’t necessarily have to be a notepad. Any word processing program will do. First off, make sure to type in all the parts and pieces of your website. Include all pages and all links you have. Create it as if you listing the contents of your book. Make a draft first. You’re sure no to miss something out this way.
Create a new page for your sitemap.You can insert the sitemap on your website on one of its pages or you can create an entirely different page for it. Using your notepad, incorporate all tags necessary to it to make another webpage. Open up your website creator program and tag your sitemap using it. If you have created your website on your own, this will be easy for you.
Create a link for the sitemap.You won’t be able to view the sitemap if you won’t put a link for it, of course. Create the link on the front page of your website so that visitors can view it right away and be directed appropriately.
Check your work. It is important to validate the functionality of the links you created on the sitemap. Test each and every one in there and if you get an error, be sure to fix it accurately. Run through every single page to make sure that all are accounted for.
Upload your work. Place the sitemap now on your live browser and double check it. It should function as smoothly as the dry run. Error should be minimal at this stage since you already have verified it locally.
The steps provided herewith is the manual way of creating a sitemap. These days, if you search hard enough on the web, you will find online programs that will do all these work for you. All you have to do it type in the URL or the link of your website and they will create the sitemap with click of a button.
Of course that method is generic. All of you who have created their sitemap that way will have an end product that is all the same, plus there’s that possibility that something else will be inserted in there too. Then again, the process is less taxing and way, way simpler.
But if you want a more personalized output, and you are pretty good with computers and programming yourself, better make one of your own. And since you made your website anyway, creating sitemap is just like creating any other page on the website. Other than you’ll know for sure the links are accurate, you can organize the links the way you prefer it to be. Major parts of the site are emphasized compared to less significant. This is important especially if you are selling products or offering services online.
Sitemap is vital to a website. People search the web a lot for something. If your website has what that particular person is looking for, and your sitemap reports it, then you have a new customer looking at your items. Not only that, they will see some other things up for sale that they might be interested in as well.
Sitemaps, be it generated by a program automatically or you made it yourself, presents the same purpose. That is to lead your visitors to where they’re likely headed, and for you to be seen on the World Wide Web through search spiders. So with these, make sure your website has a sitemap of its own, lest make one.

SEO Sitemaps Give Websites a Boost

A lot of web pages will find an SEO sitemap useful in improving their performance. SEO stands for “Search Engine Optimization”, the process that aims to create or revise Internet sites so that it can be better found by search engines. The objective of SEO campaigns is to have websites appear in the top listing or first results page of search engines.
Internet search engines, such as Google and A9, maintain a very large database of Web pages and available files. To do this, they devise a program called a web crawler, or spider. This software automatically and continuously surfs and hunts content in the Web. Pages that the spider finds are retrieved and indexed according to text content, giving more weight to titles and paragraph headers. Spiders never stop navigating the web from page to page, to index the relevant content of the Internet. Besides looking at the text of titles and headers, some programs are able to identify default tags and keep a library of these page keywords or key phrases in the index.
When a user connects to the Internet types a query, which is automatically interpreted as keywords, the search engine scans the saved index and creates a list of web pages that is most appropriate to what the user is searching for.
SEO will use all the combined techniques of keyword analysis, smart code, good content literature, link popularity study and website organization to place the subject web page as high as possible in the list of search results in search engines. Web pages displayed on the top of results pages are assumed to get the most attention, and therefore, opportunity for earnings for web businesses and pages with sponsor links.
Search engines usually return a list of results ranking pages according to the number of Internet sites linked to them. Results can be classified as organic, or sponsored links. Sponsored links are shown prominently because their creators or agents paid the search engine. Sponsored links are the main source of income of search engines. “Organic” search results are the lists of actual results from the engines index and are directly related to the keyword typed in the request. One of the more effective techniques of SEO is the creation of a well-organized site map in a website. Since the site’s main page and other content are directly linked to a site map, spiders can more easily move through the website, identify the key words of the content, and index these for a search engine. This is where the SEO sitemap helps the website creator or administrator.
Site maps are usually pages filled with links. These are shown as tables or lists, although lists are generally more effective. Writing code for SEO sitemaps is very easy and simple to format and maintain. These are ideally basic HTML pages with default tags, logical titles and keywords scattered in the Meta description. Introduction areas can contain more of the keywords. The site should have a main heading for every directory.
A simple list layout helps reduce unnecessary tags that might “hide” your keywords. Some spiders give more weight to the following, than text in the normal body of the webpage: heading text, content within link elements, text nearer the top of the page and the text written for a link. Therefore, writing the keywords and links in these areas could somehow move up the web page’s ranking. This goes for SEO sitemaps as well.
Web sites should be designed consistently, so navigation models should follow the flow of the site map. Therefore, the first section in the site map should be the first link in the navigation bar.
In an SEO Sitemap, and most pages, the headings contain title attributes where more key phrases in the site map can be added. Keywords are generally well chosen and written in the body of a webpage. However, in an SEO site map with little text, key words should be added as much as possible. As much as possible, web links should follow web page titles, and must undergo SEO during coding. Care must be exercised not to cram the page with keywords and links, or the page will be interpreted as blatant spamming and not receive any traffic at all.
There is no way to guarantee that a website will be shown in the topmost ranking of “organic” search results for an extended period of time. However, smart and responsible SEO sitemap techniques can be used to place the website high up in the search position. Regular monitoring and adjustment of the SEO Sitemap and search results would ensure that a website is kept near the top ranking and receiving lots of web user traffic.

Twisting The Cube – Site Promotion Tools

If you are old enough, think back two or three decades. Everyone owns one of these and you wanted one even if you deny that today. You could just feel yourself tossing and turning the message trying to unravel its secrets. It was both mind numbing and time consuming, but always you with the urge to come back and try again.

Some would get frustrated with the square shape of toys and simply removing the stickers and place them where they wanted. The Rubik’s Cube is a phenomenon that captured the world’s attention. Children and adults spent hours on this low-cost entertainment. It became a part of a pop culture phenomenon.

I would wager that many of you have a Rubik’s cube somewhere in your possessions, maybe in a box in storage or perhaps sitting on the desk in your office. Maybe even your cube sports stickers that curls at the end of too many “replacements” .

Site promotion tools can be described as the Rubik’s Cube of online marketing. Most of the tools that you can use to promote your site may not cost much, but like the Rubik’s Cube may take some time to learn.

Site promotion instruments may appear as a six-sided dice multiplied by thousands of possible combinations that could lead to a successful conclusion of your promotional activities.

Site promotion may seem a bit intimidating because it seems complicated. Sometimes you have to settle for small victories like three greens in a row or better still a side of the cube, which is all the same color.

However, once this is achieved victory you want to continue working groups looking for an even greater degree of success in your business. Even the Rubik’s Cube had manuals available that could help the serious Cube students learn how to find the right combination for success.

As a cyber-shop owner your online visitors will not see your proverbial website promotion cube, they are just made for the success you can achieve if you twist, turn and think about what website promotion tools will help you achieve the best your goals.

Perhaps that is why when it comes to web site promotion, there are so many success stories, and none of them take the same path to success. They just twisted the site cube until they promote a combination that worked for their company.

I suppose that the owner of the site promotion cube can be fully intact without tossing and turning, but the game does not actually begin until that first turn is taken, then there is no looking back.

As the owner of a company you would like your site, you can not succeed and that if you can not generate more traffic to your site. To this point in the success you have to work towards marketing and promotion strategies site.

So if that site promotion cube is sitting on your desk to collect dust perhaps it is time to do the twist.

Topping Search Engine Results

In case you do not know, actually means SEO Search Engine Optimization, and it is almost science obtain sites at the beginning of search engine results.

Although there are many other search engines, Google, Yahoo! MSN, and the first three are the most used search engine today. In fact, they are virtually the only search engine that question today, much of the traffic enters websites transfer these search engines. So if you want your site to sell, you better get to the top-the top search engines on page one. Studies have shown that, in general, Internet users just click on the top two search engine results.

Different search engines have different algorithms actually in generating results, but in actual practice, GO, it was found that you increase your ranking on the search engine results of the three major search engines to GO framework in mind, and implementation of policies related to them.

Keyword Density

Search results places a premium on the site related to the keyword being searched. This has not been possible to raise a porn search results “best hotels. “

Search engines determine relevancy of a site partly by keyword density, which is the percentage of keywords in the general content of the web page from page meta-information (title, description, and keywords) to the actual website copy visible to visitors. The increase in the density of the keyword in writing respectively, but keep the density of between 3% and 7%, or you risk of being flagged for spam.

Website copy

Websites done to human users, not for search engines and spiders. If your site copy is bad, visitors click on the “BACK almost as soon as they land.

The bad news, as a visitor stay is the question. That is a decrease of visitors when you click the “Back” button within five seconds of landing on your site.

Link Building
Link building all of the receipt of other sites link to your own. For most references construction, put keywords in the anchor text of the information you are going to send to another site. Anchor text is the text of other links on the site, and that points to your site. If you sell coffee, and you have a link to the seller of coffee, put key words (such as “beans”) to anchor text on the other website.

Frames and Flash
SEO specialists always opposed to the use of frames in the blink and website design. Why? Since the text they can not be scanned by the spiders search engines.

Visitor Traffic
To improve its ranking in the search engines is to make active efforts to attract visitors to your site. You can do this launch Google AdWords campaigns or by e-mail. You can also make the message forums, launch a campaign press release on the Internet, or write blogs. Make sure you put in active http:// your website.

Hady Mirza wins first Asian Idol contest

JAKARTA, Indonesia : Singapore’s Hady Mirza has been crowned the region’s first singing champion at the inaugural Asian Idol competition in Jakarta on Sunday.

Hady defeated five other Idol winners from India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam.

The show was hosted by RCTI – Indonesia’s largest TV network.

Voting via text messaging began when it was televised simultaneously to all six participating countries, with an unprecedented millions of viewers.

Hady Mirza, Singapore Idol Season 2 winner, earlier said: “The pressure I think is that it’s going to be shown across six countries. I started off being quite nervous. But then, as we went along, it was fine and I did pretty well. I think I did pretty well and I’m happy with my performance.”

To ensure fairness, judges were drawn from the six countries taking part in the competition.

Even a voting system to neutralise the numerical supremacy of big countries such as Indonesia and India was instituted.

Votes were not considered valid unless the sender picks two singers.

But above all, organisers said Asian Idol was more than just a competition.

Indriena Basarah, General Manager of Fremantle Asia, said: “What we would like to do is actually to showcase that Asia has incredible talent.”

For the contestants, the Asian Idol competition gave them the exposure beyond their own national boundaries.

This may lead to better prospects to develop and promote their musical talents across the region. – CNA/de