Multiple XML Sitemaps: Get Your Deepest Pages Indexed

One of the biggest mistakes I see when visitng certain web sites online is the lack of deep page rank. I've also had many people ask me how to get their pages that are past the spider page crawl limit how to get those pages more traffic and better page rank. I must say when people first started asking me this about three years ago, I waas a little stumped myself. As time passed, it stayed int he back of my head as to how to accomplish this awesome task. I mean, you can create back links to the page and even interlink the pages to other pages on the web site that recieve crawls by the search engine spiders. Bit it wasn't enough for me personally. Then, just this year, that answer was given to me and was sitting right in fron to my face!

XML SITEMAPS!!!!!!

Yes, XML Sitemaps. i know many of you are familiar with these, but for those who aren't, I'll explain what they are.

XML Sitemaps are XML files that are created to feed the url's to your web site(s) to the major search engines. Google, YaHoo, and Bing provide your with Webmaster areas to submit your sitemaps to.

The great part about XML sitemaps is that they allow you to bring immediate attention to your web site(s) url's from the major search engines. This is a new way of submitting your web site to the search engines unlike the earlier days when you could just submit the home page of your web site. Now you can submit as many url's tot he search engines as your web site(s) has.

While working at an Internet Service provider here in Las Vegas, a fellow SEO leaned over and asked me, "Hey, Alex, can a web site have multiple xml sitemaps"? I told him of course. That's how people have both regualr XML Sitemaps and XML Sitemaps for the images on their web site. Then he answers, "No, I mean for the different sections of the directory that doesn't seem to get traffic". I replied "HELL YES"!! It clicked in my head right then and their! I explained to him by creating the different XML Sitemaps for the different categories in the company's online city directory, it would give much better attention to the url's located in those categories that were not crawled because the spiders did not search that deep. This will help to give the categories url's and the url's under those categories more attention by the search engines and help to increase traffic to those parts of the directory and at the same time increasing the directories search engines presence. We got the project approved and done. About two weeks after we submitted the different XML Sitemaps to the major search engines, the directories traffic increased by over 1,500+ visitors and continued to rise from their! By the time I resigned from the company, the online directory recieved an average of 2,500+ visitors a day!

It was awesome! It was the answer that I was looking for to couple with backlinking and interlinking. We broke the XML Sitemaps down into the different categories we wanted to increase traffic to. For example, their is a section on the directory called "Weddings". Under this category, you will find other sub categories that are related to wedding days and ceramonies. What we did first was optimized the main category page. We would then include the main catergory and included the url's in the page, minus the profile page url's, in an XML Sitemap. Then we took the url's under the sub-categories and created XML Sitemaps for those as well. By doing this, we've increased the priority of the pages so the search engines spiders would give them top attention aside from the overall directory. We then submitted them to the major search engines and waited for the magic to happen.

I used That company's online directory as an example to show you proff of the success of this technique, but this can be applied to web sites that just have different pages under different categories as well. This is a great way to increase your sites SERP presence by including many more of your pages in the search engines with page rank. try it out and watch the traffic to your web site increase!

One Article, Five Different Ways

Social media has become a huge part of the SEO and Internet Marketing game. When I first started my SEO journey almost ten years ago, all you had to do is optimize your META tags and place a few of your keywords on your web site. Now the game has changed and depending soley on SEO makes as much since as depending on your feet to walk themselves!

This secret is known by few and missed by many. But it is effective to not only build quality backlinks to your web site, it also places your content infront of interested readers. So here we go!

1. Write a blog about anything that you desire. Make sure that the post is at least 300 to 500 words. Once you've optimized the post, you are now ready to submit it to the different blog directories found online. This is a great list of blog directories to choose from.

BlogCatalog
BlogHub
BlogTopList
Blogorama

2. Take that same blog post and format it into an article. You'll want to also change at least 40% of the content so you won't run into any duplicate content issues and get flagged by the major search engines. Using a free article spinner software will help you to achieve this. once you've created different articles with the article spinner, you can submit them to the different article web sites online. Here are some great ones to choose from.

Knol
EzineArticles
ArticleBase
GoArticles
SubmitYourArticle

3. Press releases are some of the most read forms of informative content on the Internet. Not only do web users pay close attention to them, the search engines favor them highly. What you want to do is take that same blog post you turned into an article and re write it in a press release format. As I said before, you want to change at least 40% of the content in the body of the write up. Prepare at least two different forms of your press release and submit it. These are great places to place your press release.

1888PressRelease
PrLog
I-NewsWire
24-7PressRelease
FreePressRelease

4. This is a twist to the social media marketing game but a great one to use. Video web sites like YouTube have gained massive attention in the past decade. If Internet surfers can find inforamtion in the form of a video, they will choose it over written content almost 80% of the time. One of the best ways is to put the writing in the form of a news report. You can even create your own make shift news cast! Here are a few places to you can submit your news video to.

YouTube
DailyMotion
MetaCafe

5. If you've never heard of Suidoo, then you have now!Squidoo is a web site that allows you to create free pages filled with text, image and video content about whatever you want to talk or write about. When you create a page on Squidoo, you will creating what they call a Squidoo lens. Once you create an account, you'll be able to make as many as you want, when you want. This is great place to create quality content that's favored by the search engines and many online users.

This is a great way to get your content in front of many online users using different avenues with one article. It's not only a great way to expose your content, but it helps to build quality backlinks to your web site as well. it may take some time, but the effort will be well worth it! HAPPY WRITING!!

Building Backlinks 10 vs. 100

Building backlinks to your web site is not as cookie cutter as it sounds. There are certain rules that have to be followed in order for the link to qualify as a quality backlink. I've been asked several times, "Why does it matter where I put my link?" To me, it's a simple answer. But to those who are not SEO's or Online marketers, it's something that most of them would never think about. All they know is that backlinks are supposed to be a good thing for your web site and don't understand that there's a technique to the whole process. What is it you say? It's simple. Here it is.

Let Me Guess, 100 Backlinks and No Page Rank

The biggest mistake  that most make when link building is choosing web sites that have no page rank. If the web site or page has no page rank, it's more than likely that it also lacks a strong position in the search engines, and the links on that web page won't get any help and may even slide further down the pole.

Having ten links leading back to your web site from other web sites that have page rank will help to boost your web site better than 100 links with no page rank at all. If these links are on pages that have no page rank, then assume that the page doesn't get many visits and your link may not get seen at all.

Do Your Backlinks Make Sense?

Yes, backlinks are a good thing for your web site. Placing a link back to your web site from another web site with at least a page rank of two helps to boost your web sites presence in the search engines as well boost your sites page rank as well. The issue is that you can't just pick any web site to place a link on.

EX: If you have a web site that sales car mufflers, it is not a good idea to place a link back to your web site on a web site that sales cakes. You can however place it on a web site that sales car tires.

The more relevant the web site you're placing a backlink on is to your web site, the better chance the link has in assisting your web sites page rank and search engine presence.

What Does your Backlink Say About Your Web Site ?

Backlinks come in  three forms, text links, images, and graphics. Since your backlink should say a lot about your web site, you want to make sure that your link represents your web site correctly.

-Text link: Your text link should literally say something good about your web site. It's not only used to navigate surfers to your web site from where the link was found, it's also followed by search engine spiders. If search engine spiders continue to find your text link on different web sites with strong page rank and the two web sites are relevant to each other, the spiders will begin to favor your web site more and more thus boosting your page rank overtime and your site will begin gaining strong positions in the search engines. The most important thing to remember is the anchor text that your use (the words that make up the link). Using the proper name of the web site or using your web sites chosen keywords in the text link helps to place your web site in better search engine positions under the keywords you've chosen to represent your web site.

-Images and Graphics: Images and graphics with links in them have two advantages. Not only can you add an "ALT" and "TITLE" tag in your link, but you can also place them in the image as well. But it's recommended that you use a "TITLE" tag in your link and use the "ALT" in the in your image. The search engine spiders will read both tags.

EX:<a href="yourwebsite.com" title="black bears in Alaska"><img src="yourwebsite.com/black-bear.jpg" alt="black bear by the stream"></a>

NoFollow? What do you Mean NoFollow?

Just because a web site has strong search engine positions and its web pages have good page rank does not mean it's worth placing a link. Some web sites have excellent traffic and allows for great exposure to your text, image, or graphic link driving quality traffic to your web site. But they also don't allow the spiders to follow your link to your web site from theirs. This is done by placing a "NoFollow" tag in each link created on their web site.

EX: <a href="yourwebsite.com" rel="nofollow">Your Web Site</a>

Unless your link gets a lot of exposure and click throughs from the page it's paced on, your backlink will make no sense because the search engine spiders will ignore it. Web sites like Craigslist.org place "NoFollow" tags in the links placed on their web site, but your link has a great chance of being seen and clicked.

Make sure you recognize all that was mentioned in this post when building backlinks to your web site. This will save you from establishing hundreds of dead links and will help you create backlinks from web sites and web pages with strong page rank and strong search engine positions. If they have a great combination of both, that means that the site or page your link is on receives a lot of traffic and your link will be found by the many daily visitors and crawled successfully by the search engine spiders.