Keystone Click - The Key to Your Web Foundation

This post may be a bit overwhelming… I’ll do my best to simplify.

Who is this post written for?

Anyone who is interested in ranking well within the search engines and has a basic understanding of how the internet works.

What is a sitemap?

A sitemap is a listing of the pages on your website.  It is used by crawlers (search engine spiders) and site users to easily navigate through your site.  Not only does the sitemap list the pages on your site, it informs search engine spiders how often the content on those pages changes and also identifies which pages you feel are more important.

When should I add the sitemap to my website?

Your sitemap should be added to your site and then submitted to the search engines when the website is complete.  No point in submitting pages that are not complete or will drive to a “Page Under Construction” notification.

Where should the sitemap be located?

According to Sitemap Protocol, it is strongly recommended that you place your Sitemap at the root directory of your HTML server; that is, place it at http://example.com/sitemap.xml.

Why do I need a sitemap?

Webcrawlers find more pages and websites to crawl through links.  Posting your links in one central location that is universally known as your “sitemap” will simplify the “crawling” process for the search engine spiders.

How do I submit my sitemaps to the major search engines?

Before submitting your Sitemap to the major search engines, make sure that your Sitemap is created per Sitemap Protocol as found at sitemaps.org.

Once your sitemap is created, focus initially on the three major search engines and then move onto the many other searching tools available on the web.

GOOGLE.com – Google offers a handful of tools and resources to assist with your site rankings.  First step is to set-up a Google account and sign-up your website with Webmaster Tools.  These tools will crawl your site and confirm the status of your links.  You can also submit your Sitemap here.  A quick overview on submitting to Google.

YAHOO.com – Yahoo! offers a quick overview on how they support sitemaps. Read the overview, and then submit your Sitemap to Yahoo!

BING.com – Bing, MSN’s new search engine, also has a resource area specific for Webmaster Tools.  The instructions to submit your Sitemap to Bing are fairly simple.

To submit an XML-based Sitemap to Bing:

1. Copy and paste the entire URL below as a single URL into the address bar of your browser: http://www.bing.com/webmaster/ping.aspx?sitemap=www.YourWebAddress.com/sitemap.xml
2. Change “www.YourWebAddress.com” to your domain name
3. Press ENTER

Any other search engines you use that we should mention how to submit to them?  Let us know or comment on it and we will add it to this post.

Regardless of the product or service you offer, the clientele you promote to, or the amount of hours put in weekly to sustain your business it is crucial that every business have a web presence.

Validation. Clients expect a website. It is a way to justify the validity of your services and expertise. When a client is searching online for your company, they expect to find your website. Think for a moment about this: if you don’t have a website, you may be losing a client. Why? Say you own a business called Joe’s Handmade Clocks. Sue starts searching for your website to see your weekend hours. While searching for “Joe’s Handmade Clocks”, she does not find your website (because you don’t have one), but she does find your competitors website “Mike’s Handmade Clocks” and notices they have a special going on through the weekend. Her initial intentions were to go to your store, but after searching for your stores website and finding your competitors, you have lost Sue’s business.

Credibility is attached to a website. New clients often will use your website as a means to validate the legitimacy of your business.

Phone book extinction. Is a portion of your budget going towards advertisements in the phone book instead of online? Nowadays when anyone needs a product, service, information, or anything they go online to Google.com or Yahoo.com or any search engine. The phone book is a tool of the past.

Level playing field. Even though you have a small shop, it is still very hard to compete with the advertising dollars the big guys have. A website allows you to compete on that same level at least within this medium. A good looking, well functioning website does not have to cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars (although the big guys might spend that much). Ease of use and simplicity to find the answer is all the customer is looking for when on a website.

Works for you 24/7/365. When you turn off the lights and lock the doors to go home for the evening, your website is still up and running. Website statistics can show you what hours of the day/night your site is receiving visitors. In the example with the handmade clocks, Sue works full-time and is not able to peruse the web during work hours, so she was probably at home in the evening surfing the web for handmade clocks. If you were selling product online, the site would be collecting orders for you to fulfill upon your return to your store the next morning.

Your competitor already has one. Chances are this is a true statement. Whether your competitor is the big guys or another small shop up the street, it is more than likely you will find your competition is already on the Internet.

Without your presence on the web, you are only hurting your businesses opportunity for growth and are also at risk for losing many opportunities to your competition.