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This one should come straight from a book titled “S.E-Uh Oh’s & Advice for Beginners”
Search engine optimization can be a daunting task involving many variables that can make or break your rankings after hours upon hours of work. If it were all about building it and letting the masses come, then everyone would be as successful as which ever popular website comes to your mind. Stop over thinking and get to the fundamentals of what SEO really involves; web presence.
Wouldn’t it be convenient to take the same way you always do to work, see that the road is closed, but detour signs are happy to show you the quickest way back enrout? Most definitely; so you follow each sign turn for turn, seeing parts of a neighborhood you normally breeze through, and all of a sudden the detour signs stop. Now you’re in for a load of fun finding your way out of the boondocks and getting to work on time. The point is you would’ve liked to know the detour signs were reliable. Your website’s ranking depends on the same premise. The bots that search your site would like to know if your pages are relevant to a user’s search query, where your pages are, and how to reach them.
Give search engines better satisfaction than the past detour example I mentioned. Start with making sure your website at least has a sitemap. Now keep in mind there are two types of maps… an html-sitemap which is a user-friendly outline of your site and an xml-sitemap that outlines the pages you prefer the bots have indexed, outlines your page(s) update frequency, and the priority of particular pages.
The choice is actually yours though. Bots can index your site via either method. You can do a little research on the pro’s and con’s of either sitemap-type depending on how they relate to your website, but be sure to include one if you haven’t up to now. This is your site so be friendly to visitors whether human or bot. You wouldn’t have guests in your home without letting them know where they can be seated or where the restroom is. Be just as hospitable to your online guests in your overall web presence.
Written by: Glen Burton – SEO/PPC Coordinator
