How to Create a Google Site Map

Officially announced on June 6th, 2005 at Google'e Blog, Google Site Map allows you to submit a listing of all your urls for Google to crawl.

There have been many questions concerning the procedure of creating a Google Site Map. Below is the non-Python way of creating one. (Note: Google has further documentation at their site)

First, create a file named sitemap.xml

Use the following code in any HTML editor:





http://www.seoforgoogle.com/
2005-06-30T14:12:14+00:00
daily
1.0


http://www.seoforgoogle.com/glossary.cfm
2005-06-30T14:12:14+00:00
weekly
1.0




Here's a breakdown of those properties:

lastmod -
This is the date the document was last modified and uses the following formats:

dd.mm.yyyy
dd.mm.yyyy hh:mm
dd/mm/yyyy
dd/mm/yyyy hh:mm

changefreq -
Tells Google Sitemaps the frequently that content of a particular URL will change.

Your options are "always", "hourly", "daily", "weekly", "monthly", "yearly" or "never".

The value "always" should be used to describe documents that change each time they are accessed. The value "never" should be used to describe archived URLs.

priority -
The priority of a particular URL relative to other pages on your site.
You may select between 0.0 and 1.0, where 0.0 identifies the lowest priority page(s) on your website and 1.0 identifies the highest priority page(s) on your website.

Add as many pages as there are in your website.

Google Sitemap supports up to 50,000 pages per XML file.

Once you've completed all of those steps, you'll need to submit your site map page.

Submit to: (requires gmail account)

https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login

[If you don't have a gmail account send an email requesting a gmail account and I'll give them out until I run out of invites. (ts@seoforgoogle.com)]

-To your online success!

Paul Bliss
www.SEOforGoogle.com

PDF Optimization: Death to SEO?

On April 18th 2005, Adobe announced that it was going to acquire Macromedia.

Besides delivering a critical blow to competitive balance of two highly recognized and respected companies, it has inadvertently created a new form of optimization.

That's right. PDF optimization.

The main technology that Adobe wanted from Macromedia was Flash. Now that they have it, they will be able to incorporate all the power of Flash into a PDF. With one fell swoop, they have changed the face of search engine optimization.

As a site owner, I can now potentially have my entire site reside within the content of a PDF. Sure, it was textually available before, but now I can even have compressed video, dynamically generated content and visually appealing content conveniently wrapped up into the web's only cross-compatible portable platform.

No more worries about having a Flash player installed - that will be incorporated into the PDF reading software. No more worrying about needing Quicktime and Media Player versions of video clips. They'll all be in Flash.

Not only is the PDF web friendly, but it is also PDA and Kiosk ready. Now content can be delivered anywhere to any device that can read a pdf. It can also be included on CD's, DVD's and even your cell phone.

From a user perspective, this is awesome. From a search engine perspective, it is great to push boundaries, but we may also see the end of optimizing for client sites, instead a client will pay a one-time fee to optimize a pdf.

Anyone who makes a living optimizing sites can see the potential loss of revenue as companies move forward and place their marketing efforts into promoting a pdf instead of a web site.

Why would a company not embrace this? While it's a true a site like Amazon would not be able to take full advantage of this, they could embed pdf optimization for dvd's and cd's sent to your cell phone, based on previous selections you've made.

It's a marketer's dream, and it makes a buzz agent's job even easier. Word of mouth marketing will be coupled with a portable demonstration of the product or service being sold.

While the general public may not become aware of this technology for a few years, those who reside on the cutting edge will find great ways to use this in promotion.

Now instead of just watching a movie trailer, you could also have the script, actor bios and studio contact information. Maybe even after the movie gets released, you could get your pdf updated with box office results.

The benefits of storing information in a pdf are huge. Instead of storing all of that information in a database, you have everything you need as a portable document. No worries about server stability, access to the database or even an internet connection.

By embracing this new development, it will be another service you can add to your seo repertoire and allow for your business to adapt to this emerging technology.

-To your online success!

Paul Bliss
www.SEOforGoogle.com