While it has become second nature to webmasters and designers to include sitemaps in their site files, many amateur site builders or site owners who lack a useful webmaster don’t necessarily know how important a sitemap is.

XML Sitemaps are a protocol allowing site owners to inform the search engines about the pages on their website.  In addition to listing the pages that you would like the search engines to know about you can also specify some additional information such as the time a page was last updated, its importance relative to the rest of the site and how often the page is expected to change.

Accessible via the Google Webmaster Tools, you can tell Google that something has changed simply by prompting Google to re-download your sitemap.  Even if you don’t perform the prompt, Google (and other search engines we pretend to care about) will download the sitemap every time they re-index your site.

Why do we care about Google knowing we have updated a page?

Well, one of the most important ranking factors in the Google algorythm is how fresh your content is.   A site that has frequent updates to content is considered a trustworthy site that someone is taking care of.  In a world where content is king, it is crucial to let the search engines see update is changing as soon as possible.

While using a sitemap does not guarantee that the search engines will index all pages of a site, they provide better information for the search engines to make use of when they do come visit.

And now for the best part of all… Making a sitemap is easy thanks to automated sitemap generators like the one here:

Automatic Sitemap Generator

Google today announced the release of their new search index, called Caffeine.

This is not an update to their existing system but rather a completely new system.

The biggest change with Caffeine is that Google no longer separates the indexing of the web from the updating of search engine results. The previous Google index would crawl the entire web (or close to it) and store the results in a massive series of databases. Periodically, this stored index would then be used to update the search engine results. This resulted in a noticeable delay in getting new sites indexed and changes noted.

The new system will crawl the web in chunks and offer near immediate updating of the search engine results. News sites, twitter feeds, blogs etc will all be crawled with more frequency and the results made live very, very quickly. Web sites with rapidly changing content will also be noted and crawled with more frequency.

So the big question is “what does Google Caffeine mean to site owners?”

Essentially this is yet another instance of Google catching up to what they have been telling us for a long time. For the past few years Google has been hammering webmasters with the claim that they value fresh, relevant content over static, irrelevant, or downright neglected sites. While their actual index algorithm sometimes said otherwise, it appears that Caffeine is the proof of their intentions.

In short, this new release by Google means that the focus on well-maintained, constantly updated sites is finally here. While there has been no announcement regarding the level of preference Google will show fresh content in the search engine results, common-sense would dictate that the algorithm behind the system will be more heavily weighted towards the ‘new’. If anyone has noticed the new tools and ‘side wiki’ on Google’s search pages, you’ll see that they are making a real push to be more useful at finding social media updates, twitter updates, etc.

So finally, let’s look at what you can do to harness the power of this new index.

1. Include some content on your page that updates with some regularity.   This can be a blog, a ‘latest news’ feature or a rotating content section.
2. Make sure that your site uses a sitemap, that it is properly formatted and is updated as your content changes.
3. Harness the freshness of other sites.  If your site is listed in Google Business Center, Yelp or other highly rated directories, make sure that your site links directly to your page on these sites.  This will help Google note the most useful updates on multiple sites as quickly as possible.
4. Share your updated content with the world via twitter, LinkedIn or facebook pages.

Today Google announced that they have addded site speed as a part of their ranking algorithm.
This has been expected for quite some time and Google states that they are concerned with site speed as an indicator of improved user experience on the web.

“Speeding up websites is important — not just to site owners, but to all Internet users. Faster sites create happy users and we’ve seen in our internal studies that when a site responds slowly, visitors spend less time there. But faster sites don’t just improve user experience; recent data shows that improving site speed also reduces operating costs” – Google

It is still unknown exactly how much of a factor site speed will be on your site’s rankings, Google has indicated that it will lag far behind site relevance yet it can still have an effect.. .especially for users with bargain-basement hosting plans on crowded, shared servers.

If you are a site owner, webmaster or a web author, here are some free tools Google has suggested to evaluate the speed of your site:

* YSlow, a free tool from Yahoo! that suggests ways to improve website speed.
* WebPagetest shows a waterfall view of your pages’ load performance plus an optimization checklist.
* In Webmaster Tools, Labs > Site Performance shows the speed of your website as experienced by users around the world.

Recently we have received numerous questions concerning link building for new websites.

The word is out that Google likes to see inbound links to web sites when deciding how well you will rank for a particular keyword.  This is certainly true, but client requests that we help them build as many links as possible are wide of the mark.

When trying to keep up on Google’s ranking algorithms, we have to accept that Google doesn’t necessarily give us the whole truth.  Often we hear Google speak of what is, yet they are actually speaking of what they wish was the truth.  Linking is one such issue.

For quite some time Google has told us that they value high-quality, relevant links far more than simply spamming huge numbers of links around the internet.   They tell us that if we build the quality content, the quality links will take care of themselves and all will be right in the Googleverse.   Yet we continue to see sites rewarded by creating massive volumes of low-quality, irrelevant links.

So is it safe to spam away?  well… no

Recent changes have seen Google devalue link farms, low-quality directories and paid links.  Increased value seems to be applied to sites of related content with fewer links of greater page rank.    While a huge number of links will still have a positive effect (the sheer numbers overpower any few negative link penalties), we can see that Google is continuing to try to move towards what they keep telling us.  Eventually, they will get there.. or something close to it.

With all that being said, the important question becomes how should a new site plan a link building campaign?

1. Slow and steady. Regardless of whether you believe the Google sandbox is real (the effect is, if not the intention.  New sites are not easily indexed for important terms) there is ample evidence that Google is steadily moving towards a natural link model.  This means that they expect links to be accumulated gradually, not a boatload all at once.  If you go too crazy with new links tpo quickly, expect to be penalized
2. Do your homework.  You know your industry, and Google is trying its best to know it also.  They will try to determine what subject matter is relevant to your site / product / keyword.  This means you should accumulate websites that relate to your business / product / industry.   These are the sites you want to get links from.  Not only will this help with your future Google ranking, it can also help drive traffic directly from these sites to yours.
3. Think Geographically.  Most businesses need to focus on a particular region to be successful.  It is not enough to sell service x.  You need to focus on being the most visible provider of service x in a particular location.  So look for chambers of commerce, trade associations, local business groups or city directories.  Get your links on these sites.
4. Anchor Text.  Anchor text is the words that make up the physical link to your site.  Pick your most important keyword and have it act as your anchor text about 75% of the time.  Take your next 2 or 3 keywords / phrases and use them as the remainder of your anchor text.
5. Get active.  Participate in in active content production on both your own site as well as relevant forums, discussion groups, etc.  Where allowed, and relevant include your link in your posts on other relevant sites.  When writing content for your own site, make it useful for others in the industry so that they may wish to link to it.  Make it very easy for them by including a link to this article section at the bottom that includes your link with anchor text.
6. Aim to get 2 to 3 links a day, most work days.
7. Do not pay for links.  Google is already devaluing these links and will continue to do so.
8. Try to avoid links from huge link farms or useless directories.
9. Spend while you wait.  In the first few months of your site you may want to consider Google Adwords for advertising.  This can help drive traffic to your site while waiting for Google to show you some natural ranking love.

There are a huge number of additional options for building links and generating traffic but the above list are the basics that should get you a good jump whether you do this yourself or expect your SEO provider to be taking care of links for you in the course of their ongoing work.

A note of warning to close out this post:

If an SEO firm offers to give you a top ten ranking right away via thousands of links, be afraid… they are going to cause you and your site some big problems down the line.  A company that is honest will tell you you need a comprehensive plan that will take some time to do right.  Time is not the same as labour however, a few hours a week over the course of a few months is the right recipe for success for most sites.

Ben Lewis

By now everyone hopefully has noticed that Google is working hard to give geographical relevancy to search results.  This is done through the local search listings that now appear at the top of the search results, along with a map, when a searcher enters a search phrase that includes a geographical descripter, most usually the name of a city or municipality.

These local listings are a tremendous tool for both searcher and website owner.  Here is how to use this feature for your website:

Focus Your Efforts:

• on links and presence on local search engines and directories
• on building geographical data on your website

Step 1: Get Listed

1. Submit your site to Google Local Listings, Yahoo and Bing.  All use a similar approach.
2. Enter all informaton they ask for including images, hours, etc.  Make sure you use the map to plot your business, moving the marker if Google gets it wrong on their map.
3. Submit to any regional directories, yelp.com, superpages.com and yellowpages.com.   There are more directories out there so look around.   This isn’t just for links, Google and the other search engines keep tabs on these sites and it seems they may use it as a geographical relevancy check on their own rankings.

Step 2: Get Help

Once on the local listings, get your friends and customers to provide reviews directly from those results.  More reviews equals greater strength in the local listings when they come up.

Step 3: Optimize Your Site

1. Put your company’s physical address in the footer of your site (address, phone number and postal code)
2. Use your geographical tag in the title of the index page of your site as well as ensure that you mention your location in a few headers and in the content of your pages.
3. Make sure your contact page displays all address and phone information.
4. Use the embed function of Google Maps to embed your location on your contact page.  This is a great tool allowing searchers to find easy directions to your location.

Helpful Links

Google Local Listings: Add your business

Yahoo Local Listings

Bing Local Listings

Recently we helped a client solve a need by developing a featured staff section to his website.  This application allowed an administrator to upload text and an image for multiple staff members and then a randomizing script displays a different staff member every time someone visits the site.

Performing this task got me thinking about other randomizing content for a website.

Often we have a lot of great content that is, unfortunately, repetitive.  One such example would be testimonials on a web site.  Testimonials are an excellent feature of a web site that sells a product or service.  Real testimonials from real customers convey a sense of professionalism to your endeavor and go a long way towards building trust with potential new clients.

So suppose you wish to display some great testimonials in a section of your site but do not want to overdo it by displaying too many at once….  Here’s how:

1. Create a new folder in your root directory and call it something like ‘testimonials’
2. Open notepad and paste a testimonial into it.  If you want to have two or three testimonials appearing at a time, go ahead and use basic html formatting and paste three testimonials into this text file.
3. Save this file as testimonials1.txt in the folder you just created.
4. Repeat step2 and 3 for each text file necessary to get all your testimonials into a file.  Name each text file seperately (test1.txt, test2.txt, etc.)
5. Now we will put the display code into the desired location on one of our site’s pages:
   < ?php
$var = rand(1,3);
switch($var) {
case 1: include('testimonials/testimonial1.txt'); break;
case 2: include('testimonials/testimonial2.txt'); break;
case 3: include('testimonials/testimonial3.txt'); break;
}
?> *note, remove the space between the initial < ? to make it execute as it should. It is shown this way to make it appear on the page rather than execute*

This snippet of code uses php to randomly display the contents of three text files that we have inside our testimonials folder. Each time the page with this code is reloaded, it randomly displays a different file.

Keep in mind that you can use any html code you want, even though it is a text file. Because it gets parsed by the php it will appear on the page as the code itself, not the file.

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/07/14/5-useful-and-creative-ways-to-use-wordpress-widgets/

More and more people are using WordPress both for blogging and handling their entire website.  This article provides some great resources on using widgets.

The article provokes some thought.  While the focus of her article is creating an environment that promotes quality reading for visitors we can extend this idea out to promoting quality conversions of targeted traffic.

When dealing with clients on a web site I find that the visitor is often treated as a random number.  I am frequently asked how to increase traffic, increase contact requests and how to achieve better rankings on the search engines.  I cannot recall ever being asked how to IMPROVE the experience of a visitor.

After reading Mandy’s article and putting some thoughts into my own clients’ websites it seems clear that we need to help our clients focus more on the quality of the visitor experience rather than being fanatically obsessed with the quantity of supposed viewership.

Let’s use a simple example for illustration:

Suppose we have two stores in New York selling hammers.

Store one consists of a large sign that says “new york hammers.”  Inside the store are well organized shelves of all hammer models.  On each shelf is a particular hammer along with a price tag and a description of the hammer, its purpose and features.

Store two consists of 15 signs saying things like ‘new york hammers’ ‘best hammers ever!’ ‘hammers of new york’ ‘cheap tools’ ‘construction tools’ ‘low price construction’ etc.  The signs have flashing lights, giant, neon scrolling arrows pointing the store and they themselves are surrounding by giant, inflatable crazy arms guys. Inside the store are thousands of shelves of hammers in between screwdrivers, saws, and for some reason unpublished manuscripts written about golfing, travel in the Caspian and why he hates soccer.   There are descriptions of the hammers for sale but for every sentence describing the hammer there are three sentences advertising shoes, poker and viagra to be found at other stores.

While this comparison may seem ridiculous, this is exactly what we encounter on the internet.  Thousand of web site owners become enraptured with raw traffic numbers so they start demanding content for the sake of content.  While trying to sell hammers they start advertising related terms thinking they will create more buzz, more traffic and more sales.  Thus we end up with the ‘cheap construction’ advertisements.  Yes, we have more visitors, everyone comes and has a look at this flashy, loud store.  Yet a problem exists, thousands of people come over to look and then leave.  Some simply look in the window, and on seeing that there are actually no construction services… leave.  Others come looking for a cheap hammer and get sidetracked to go purchase viagra.  Perhaps the odd hammer gets sold but customers are constantly coming back and saying it is not the hammer they need, rather than a sledge hammer they discover they actually need a claw hammer.  This is not a well run store.

Looking back at store number one, we see a store that sells hammers to people looking for hammers.  Once those customers arrive they are able to  peacefully, and without distraction, learn about the various models and determine which one is best for them.   There are not thousands of people a day visiting the store, merely a hundred or so.  Yet the majority of visitors buy a hammer and leave happy.

If you wanted to sell hammers, which store would you prefer to run?

The website is no different.  Here are the keys to having a website that meets the needs of your bottom line:

1. What is the point of your site?  If the purpose is to sell a product or service, then sell only your product or service.  All too often I hear questions about Ad Sense or other on-page advertisement in order to create additional revenue streams.  This is a bad idea.  If your site was built to simply create traffic and then send them elsewhere then this is for you.  If you site was built to sell your own products or services, sending the visitor elsewhere is lunacy.  The same rules that apply to someone walking into your store apply to someone visiting your website.
2. Advertise what you sell – Sell what you advertise.  Yes you can drive traffic to your site by optimizing for keywords that get a lot of searches.  According to Google trends, a lot of people today are searching for Michael Jackson Memorial information.  Unfortunately, these people are not a good audience for your hammer site.  Yes you can generate a lot of traffic by offering up information on MJ’s memorial, but why put all that effort and cost towards something that won’t sell a hammer?  Use those resources to strengthen your web presence for hammer related information.
3. Don’t clutter your content with links, oppressive design or advertising.  If someone has visited one of your content pages, the chances are good that they are interested in what you’re selling.  So close the deal.  Use Mandy Brown’s ideas to isolate the reader and let them absorb the important information.  This means content unfettered by unrelated links, advertising or obtrusive design.  Draw the reader into the text and hold them there until the information has been absorbed.  Then provide a noticeable link to buy / contact / order or look for more information.  No salesperson in their right mind would stop their sales pitch on a hammer to tell the buyer about the viagra being sold down the road, or to point out how pretty the crown molding in the store is.  Why do people keep insisting on doing that on the web?
4. Make your contact forms easy to use and appealing to visitors.  Many companies try to use their contact forms for instant qualification of the buyer.  They want names, phone numbers, email address, name of company, date of birth, location, budget, etc etc etc.  Then they can’t figure out why they get so few contact submissions.  They have gone from qualifying a buyer to driving them away.  Your contact form should ask for a contact name, a message and a way of contacting them.  Only the name and perhaps one contact method should be required information, make the rest optional.  If they really want to contact you they will include an email or phone number.  The security of the form is an iffy issue.  Generally, I would say avoid captcha code or anything the visitor has to decode in order to submit their request.  however, if you are overwhelmed with spam, it may become a necessary evil.
5. Track your visitor experience rather than your hits.  Everyone knows to check how many hits and visitors their sites gets, but this is not enough.  Sign up for an Analytics account and start tracking the visitor experience.  How did your visitors get here? How many people simply left after looking at the landing page? (check out bounce rates to learn more) How much time was spent on particular content page?  How many converted into sales or contact requests?   Tracking this type of information will help you refine your site to be both more relevant to your overall purposes as well as improve the experience of visitors that find you.

What’s the reasoning?

Well, we are coming up on the 20th anniversary of the Tianenmen Square massacre.  It is thought that there may be additional demonstrations, remembrances or other gatherings that the Chinese government does not want to see get out of hand.

The official line on 20 years ago….. nothing.  There is no mention of the deaths in any Chinese approved media, including the internet.  To make sure this continues to  be the case the government is blocking access to social networking sites such as Twitter, hotmail, wordpress, blogger, Flickr, etc.

So why does this warrant mentioning in a web design blog?

It speaks to the nature of the new web as represented by sites like Twitter and Facebook.  The internet today is no longer a passive medium where we separate the passive viewer from the active presenter.  The web is now an interactive place where the user creates and shares their own content with other users.  We are all producers of media content as well as consumers.

This shift has happened quickly and the effects have become profound.  More and more users are receiving live content on their laptops, notebooks, blackberrys and Iphones.  They are constantly in touch with and contributing to a continually increasing vault of knowledge, opinion and marketing.

The same thing that makes the new web (please don’t make me say web 2.0) such a powerful force for social networking (and let’s face it, advertising) in our society makes it a scary, scary thing for a tightly controlled country like China.  Strict controls over traditional media are impossible to pull off in an environment where participants in a live event can send out updates instantaneously as to what is happening for the good or the bad.

Imagine yourself as a iron-fisted government that controls what is considered newsworthy and decides for itself what the citizens are allowed to learn about one another. The last thing you need to be dealing with is teeming masses of people with mobile devices telling each other, live, about the huge number of people who are out with you remembering something the goverment refuses to admit even happened. Imagine hundreds of thousands of people updating each other about what is happening on the ground, violence… civic disobedience…

While this banning of new media in China is a sad event, it should remind us of just how powerful sites like Twitter can be to our own media and marketing efforts here. The fact that the Chinese government is so scared of the power on instantaneous social networking may just end up being the best advertisement Twitter has had in months.

Update:  deja vu all over?

After trying three different time tracking and invoicing systems (and finding all three woefully inadequate) I had finally resigned myself to putting in a substantial amount of time to creating my own system.

And then I stumbled onto freshbooks.

This system is an exceptionally well built time tracking and invoicing system.  All provided as a web service, meaning no downloads, no installation, no configuration.  You simply sign up for a monthly fee and create your clients, your projects and your services.

As you work for your clients you simply click a button and the system tracks your time.  At the end of the month you can generate an invoice for each project that imports the time you have put in.

Every feature you can think of is part of the system, multiple job rates, item charges, recurring charges, discounts, taxes, staff, contractors, etc.

The icing on the cake?  Clients can log in to your client site and pay their invoices using the payment processing modules attached to the system.

I highly recommend this system for anyone who needs to quickly and efficiently manage their time and their invoicing.

Check them out here.