When you want to ping your newly created XML sitemap to the various search engines, you don't always want to log-in to Google, Yahoo, Bing or Ask to do so, you may just want to let them know of your updated sitemap.xml at your easiest convenience.
Therefore, here are 4 simple URL commands that will do the job for you, copy and paste the URLs into your 'notepad' or whatever editing device you use and change the 'EXAMPLE' for your own website's sitemap address, not forgetting to alter the '.com.' if you've a 'co.uk' site &c.
BING
http://rpc.weblogs.com/pingSiteForm?name=InfraBlog&url=http://www.EXAMPLE.com/sitemap.xml
ASK
http://submissions.ask.com/ping?sitemap=http://www.EXAMPLE.com/sitemap.xml
YAHOO!
http://search.yahooapis.com/SiteExplorerService/V1/updateNotification?appid=YahooDemo&url=http://www.EXAMPLE.com/sitemap.xml
GOOGLE
http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ping?sitemap=http://www.EXAMPLE.com/sitemap.xml
Keeping a copy of the saved sheet means, every time you update your website's sitemap you only have to revisit and copy and paste 4 times or if you're really brave paste it into a Word document and launch them from there - it works!
Thursday, 25 November 2010
Wednesday, 8 September 2010
I Can't Create Similar AdWords Reports
I signed into AdWords to use the create similar reports for my clients PPC campaigns, now these usually take a couple of minutes to generate - not last week, thanks to more tinkering from Google.
I'm not against change, and I know that anything on the web will be continually updated, but hey, Google have my email and they're happy enough to send me other useful AdWords stuff, so why couldn't they have forewarned me of this change?
Instead, my campaign and account level reports took-up unnecessary time as I trawled the web and read nonsensical forums, before I was totally clear on where to create similar reports. Only they won't be similar, because now, every month, it seems I'm going to have to reproduce them from scratch.
Yes the AdWords link to this page:
Where Can I Find My Reports
Does help, but it's the inconvenience of changing something that worked really well, for something you've got to dig through AdWords for each month to generate.
But on a better note for Google - have you seen the new Bing Webmaster Tools.
It's not that Google can do no wrong, it's the stupidity of their competition that let's them do almost what they want, which is awful for us users because they can make annoying changes to AdWords reports and the like and we basically have to tow -the-line because there is no better alternative.
I'm not against change, and I know that anything on the web will be continually updated, but hey, Google have my email and they're happy enough to send me other useful AdWords stuff, so why couldn't they have forewarned me of this change?
Instead, my campaign and account level reports took-up unnecessary time as I trawled the web and read nonsensical forums, before I was totally clear on where to create similar reports. Only they won't be similar, because now, every month, it seems I'm going to have to reproduce them from scratch.
Yes the AdWords link to this page:
Where Can I Find My Reports
Does help, but it's the inconvenience of changing something that worked really well, for something you've got to dig through AdWords for each month to generate.
But on a better note for Google - have you seen the new Bing Webmaster Tools.
It's not that Google can do no wrong, it's the stupidity of their competition that let's them do almost what they want, which is awful for us users because they can make annoying changes to AdWords reports and the like and we basically have to tow -the-line because there is no better alternative.
Wednesday, 11 August 2010
Gmail Breaks Blank Canvas Add-on Again
Sign in to your Gmail account this morning and find that none of your email signature profiles work.
The great work carried out by the Blank Canvas add-on, is stopped in one sweep by Gmail's update this morning with its 'create mail' now being a button and not a link. Really why can't we chose which release of Gmail we use. I've been really happy with the set-up as it was and then this comes in causing a monstrous amount of work for many people.
Hopefully the clever guys at Blank Canvas can solve the problem and let us get back to emailing without having to jump through loops.
And maybe in the future, before new releases are brought in, there could be a little consultation with clients as to what they want.
The great work carried out by the Blank Canvas add-on, is stopped in one sweep by Gmail's update this morning with its 'create mail' now being a button and not a link. Really why can't we chose which release of Gmail we use. I've been really happy with the set-up as it was and then this comes in causing a monstrous amount of work for many people.
Hopefully the clever guys at Blank Canvas can solve the problem and let us get back to emailing without having to jump through loops.
And maybe in the future, before new releases are brought in, there could be a little consultation with clients as to what they want.
Wednesday, 7 July 2010
Registrars 301 Redirect
You own two website domains and they’re both registered with the same registrar, for example:
mywebsite.co.uk
mywebsite.com
But you only want one of the domains to render, for example:
mywebsite.com
Simple you think, I'll use the web forwarding that my registrar provides; you carry this out, and hey presto it works - you type in 'mywebsite.co.uk' press return and you're redirected instantaneously to 'mywebsite.com'.
But it's not as simple as all that, because you see, most registrars don't use a search engine friendly 301 permanent redirect, no they use the not so friendly 302 temporary redirect; you can easily check yours by carrying out a 'server header check' at:
SEO Consultants
What’s you're options to implement a search engine friendly 301 redirect?
Go to the 'root folder' of your website, open up the .htaccess file and add a little 301 rewrite, for example:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(www\.)?mywebsite\.co.uk [NC]
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^(.*)$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.mywebsite.com/$1?%1 [R=301]
You can read a little more about redirects here: redirects using search engine friendly 301.
But, before carrying out any changes to your root folder, make precautions and save the original file first and remember this is for 'php' sites – things are different with 'asp' and naturally I can't accept any liability ;-)
A better way of course, would be for the domain registrars to change their web forwarding from a 302 temporary to a Google friendly 301 permanent.
mywebsite.co.uk
mywebsite.com
But you only want one of the domains to render, for example:
mywebsite.com
Simple you think, I'll use the web forwarding that my registrar provides; you carry this out, and hey presto it works - you type in 'mywebsite.co.uk' press return and you're redirected instantaneously to 'mywebsite.com'.
But it's not as simple as all that, because you see, most registrars don't use a search engine friendly 301 permanent redirect, no they use the not so friendly 302 temporary redirect; you can easily check yours by carrying out a 'server header check' at:
SEO Consultants
What’s you're options to implement a search engine friendly 301 redirect?
Go to the 'root folder' of your website, open up the .htaccess file and add a little 301 rewrite, for example:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(www\.)?mywebsite\.co.uk [NC]
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^(.*)$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.mywebsite.com/$1?%1 [R=301]
You can read a little more about redirects here: redirects using search engine friendly 301.
But, before carrying out any changes to your root folder, make precautions and save the original file first and remember this is for 'php' sites – things are different with 'asp' and naturally I can't accept any liability ;-)
A better way of course, would be for the domain registrars to change their web forwarding from a 302 temporary to a Google friendly 301 permanent.
Wednesday, 23 June 2010
Link-building & Websites
Google published on 21st June 2010:
Quality links to your site
So who has the time to link to a website, and why would you want to link to a website?
I'm pretty altruistic when it comes to linking and I don't slot in a no-follow attribute either, but, the site I'm linking to has to have quality content - so far this is exactly what Google say in their article about quality content, but I'm not sure if the nature of the web is altruistic on the whole. Yes between friends sharing stuff on Facebook and Twitter, but what if you've a pretty mundane business, it's going to be mighty difficult to get links from other sites no matter how much humour you try to conjure up on your site.
Every day as a SEO/ SEM you get requests for reciprocal links, but we know they're rubbish. Google tells us some Directories are good others bad - yes you've got to be a little naive to believe that by spending £20 on 350 links you'll suddenly reach the dizzy heights of a #1 spot in Google search, but carrying out the link building manually - is it any better, probably not as the Google bot never goes past the 1st page of most directory categories.
So is it also a little of naive Google to believe we live in this ideal world where people will literally rate sites (by adding a link), positively if they've had a good experience or with 'page speed' coming in, won't they just realise if a visitor hasn't the patience to wait 10 seconds (Website Response Times - Jacob Nielsen, there goes my altruism again) surely they haven't the time to (in most cases) go back to their site and add a link!
Quality links to your site
So who has the time to link to a website, and why would you want to link to a website?
I'm pretty altruistic when it comes to linking and I don't slot in a no-follow attribute either, but, the site I'm linking to has to have quality content - so far this is exactly what Google say in their article about quality content, but I'm not sure if the nature of the web is altruistic on the whole. Yes between friends sharing stuff on Facebook and Twitter, but what if you've a pretty mundane business, it's going to be mighty difficult to get links from other sites no matter how much humour you try to conjure up on your site.
Every day as a SEO/ SEM you get requests for reciprocal links, but we know they're rubbish. Google tells us some Directories are good others bad - yes you've got to be a little naive to believe that by spending £20 on 350 links you'll suddenly reach the dizzy heights of a #1 spot in Google search, but carrying out the link building manually - is it any better, probably not as the Google bot never goes past the 1st page of most directory categories.
So is it also a little of naive Google to believe we live in this ideal world where people will literally rate sites (by adding a link), positively if they've had a good experience or with 'page speed' coming in, won't they just realise if a visitor hasn't the patience to wait 10 seconds (Website Response Times - Jacob Nielsen, there goes my altruism again) surely they haven't the time to (in most cases) go back to their site and add a link!
Tuesday, 22 June 2010
Total Visits via 'How Many' Keywords
The regular metric for monitoring a website's indexability progress on the web is:
site:www.yourwebsite.com
This tells you how many pages of your website Google has indexed, which is a pretty useful figure, because if your site has 500 pages and Google has only indexed 10 - well, you know you need to do something.
But that is what the figure is; it's more of a check on your site's on-line status than how well your site is performing.
So how can we tell how well a site is performing - naturally before sales figures and the like, this is performance via pure web metrics?
Well, by knowing how many different keywords are used to access your site through 'search', is a clear indicator of how accessible your site is to the search engines, meaning, how good the semantics within your content is to a search engine spider. If your content is rich, that is, it makes sense and isn't only jam packed full of keywords, it will be easily indexed and everything written will have a chance of being accessible to a potential customer when carrying out a search in their chosen search engine.
So how's it measured?
Easy.
Google Analytics makes it so.
When in Analytics go to: 'Traffic Sources', then drill down through 'Search Engines', then 'Google' (Bing and Yahoo! are still miles behind and hardly worth monitoring), the metric for 'keywords' is the default, see Below:
Then it's crystal clear; columns with the keywords listed in order of usage (you naturally get an overall figure at the top & bottom of the page), with the usage for each individual keyword in the first column, then the usual Analytic metrics.
By monitoring this data on a monthly basis you are going to be offering your clients a much more worthwhile piece of data than the site index could ever achieve, and if it increases incrementally month on month, then you're going in the right direction and your clients should be pleased.
Then all you have to do is encourage these new found visitors to purchase, sign-up or whatever your website's goal is...
site:www.yourwebsite.com
This tells you how many pages of your website Google has indexed, which is a pretty useful figure, because if your site has 500 pages and Google has only indexed 10 - well, you know you need to do something.
But that is what the figure is; it's more of a check on your site's on-line status than how well your site is performing.
So how can we tell how well a site is performing - naturally before sales figures and the like, this is performance via pure web metrics?
Well, by knowing how many different keywords are used to access your site through 'search', is a clear indicator of how accessible your site is to the search engines, meaning, how good the semantics within your content is to a search engine spider. If your content is rich, that is, it makes sense and isn't only jam packed full of keywords, it will be easily indexed and everything written will have a chance of being accessible to a potential customer when carrying out a search in their chosen search engine.
So how's it measured?
Easy.
Google Analytics makes it so.
When in Analytics go to: 'Traffic Sources', then drill down through 'Search Engines', then 'Google' (Bing and Yahoo! are still miles behind and hardly worth monitoring), the metric for 'keywords' is the default, see Below:
Then it's crystal clear; columns with the keywords listed in order of usage (you naturally get an overall figure at the top & bottom of the page), with the usage for each individual keyword in the first column, then the usual Analytic metrics.
By monitoring this data on a monthly basis you are going to be offering your clients a much more worthwhile piece of data than the site index could ever achieve, and if it increases incrementally month on month, then you're going in the right direction and your clients should be pleased.
Then all you have to do is encourage these new found visitors to purchase, sign-up or whatever your website's goal is...
Thursday, 15 April 2010
Top Search Queries - Google Webmaster
The new look 'top search queries' in Google's Webmaster Tools seems fresh off the press and it's a treat.
It not only gives you the previous information of how many times your site generated impressions and clicks in Google SERPs, it also gives you a good dissection of these details.
Before when you thought, well my site has generated 6,600 impressions (please see above), you'd have believed at least a few of these would have generated a click - but no. For some keywords it's pretty painful, but for others an impressive 44% (also see above).
That's naturally not all, you now get to see where a particular keyword is ranking in SERPs, and this is the surprising bit, because in the previous layout you got the information that someone had clicked through to your site and you wondered how, because you weren't on the 1st page of Google; now you find out that people do actually find you on the 3rd page of Google and click through to your site.
The graph is also a boon, even if I originally thought I'd mistakenly logged in to Analytics.
The countries option and date option will help when you want to test any campaigns or try out some new keywords on the site. Once more the job of SEO is becoming more transparent, nothing to hide behind; that is of course of you show your clients the report!
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