More value has been given to the ownership and authentication of domains as of late. Just a few years ago and a basic HTML sitemap would have been substantial enough to keep the search engines happy. Times have changed and with it comes the era of XML valid sitemaps. I always create a XML sitemap for clients, doing this helps the search engines identify pages within the website that perhaps have endured indexing issues.

So what do I do with my sitemap once its uploaded?

Once your shiny new sitemap is live and uploaded to your root directory of your website you need to let the big boys know where it is. Google, Yahoo and MSN all have their own form of a “webmaster console”. This console is an area where you submit your sitemap to each search engine, you will also need to add a random HTML file or add a line of Meta data to your index page – this is just a bit of protection against people trying to hack your data – it validates that you own the domain.

Once your sitemap is submitted and you have validated that you are the rightful owner of your domain you are open to a world of knowledge about your domain and its performance. Each console has varying features, undoubtedly Google offers the most (as you would expect) but each is useful in its own way.

The locations to each console can be found here:

Google - http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools
Yahoo - http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com
MSN - http://webmaster.live.com/webmaster

For a more detailed explanation of sitemaps visit Google’s page: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=34654

If you are lazy and want a sitemap created automatically then visit this site: http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/

I was randomly searching the web yesterday when I stumbled across a search box within Google’s search results.

Initially I thought it was a direct search function within the site but after testing it just searches the indexed pages that contain the searched keyword(s).

This function can be performed by any site by typing the following code into Google:

KEYWORD site: yourdomain.com

Other related posts on this topic:

• Search box in search results
• First search box

I have been looking closely at the relation between new blog posts along side my primary targeted keywords, even if they are not directly related. It’s safe to say that if you right about a subject i.e. “Page Rank” then for a week or two you might see some temporary search engine position increase for that keyword.

What I have seen over the last few weeks is that if you write a popular blog piece then non direct related keyword phrases can also achieve a boost. On the 4th of February I wrote a successful piece of link bait – 25 websites all SEO’s should know. I received plenty of additional backlinks and got around 8k unique visitors as a result.

The week that followed I naturally saw an increase of organic traffic as a result of the post, but surprisingly I found myself at position 6 on Google for the phrase “SEM blog”. Since that discovery the position has since moved down a bit (to the second or third page). In that time frame I received around 600 unique visitors for that term alone. That phrase is not mentioned at all in the original post and the backlinks I received did not use the phrase as an anchor – so why an increase in a keyword phrase that has not been targeted?

As well as an increase in backlinks and blog posts the post was heavily visible on social networks, bookmarking sites, which lead to an overall increase in my blog traffic. By writing a post on a related (although not directly associated) topic can lead to your blog/website achieving an overall increase in search positions. My total organic traffic increased by around 30% for a period of 2 weeks.

To me this just adds to my argument that websites in 2008 should use the blog platform more than ever to help with organic listings.

This time last year there was no doubt on every good seo work person that providing high quality content on a website would add great value to a website. Is this still true today?

I believe that providing good quality content on a website should be standard regardless of your seo strategy. A website should have information and content that people want to read and will enjoy reading, no question. Doing this 12 months ago would by all accounts have been a key component in any seo strategy, providing new content would keep the search engines hungry for more, open up new opportunities for long tailed keywords and generally help with your overall SERP positions.

It seems to me that the value of updated content has been reduced as of late. Maybe this has been introduced because of the sheer volume of bloggers out there that update their sites with very low quality updates in the hope to get on the good side of Google? Or perhaps bloggers are re-posting existing articles with very little changed from the original therefore reducing the importance of the content?

So if content is no longer key, what is its value?

As mentioned before you should have good quality content no matter what, this should be for the benefit of your readers or customers, not for Google or other search engines. You will still see an increase of traffic but not as high as once realised, plus your primary keywords will move very little (if any) up the SERPS.

What is key then?

Unfortunately in Google I believe that the websites visibility through backlinks still plays a big part of your overall positions for keywords. Even more so now the majority of people have been slapped on the wrist for “buying links” or paying for blog posts. Developing new and effective ways of generating natural links and maintaining and increase of these links should now be a major part of any seo strategy, this is unfortunately easier said than done.

For you that don’t already know and have spent the last few years in a nuclear fallout shelter, Alexa is a company that measures web traffic. They run www.alexa.com which is becoming more and more visible to web users.

I have always been taught and read many blogs that you should never judge a websites traffic performance based on the data collected by Alexa. Why? Well Alexa only registers traffic that has downloaded and used their very own toolbar. So in theory the data collected should only be a portion of your websites real traffic as the majority of “normal” web users have no need or really understand what it’s used for.

So as I performed my daily task of looking at websites information, looking for possible link opportunities I quickly noticed a trend in the data. It goes without saying that most web savvy people do use Alexa, if for anything an indication of possible traffic.

So what’s your point Matt?

Well my point is that if you are in the SE/SEM/SEO industry and you are specifically looking to target webmasters and like minded people then the Alexa data is spot on. You know if an seo website says they are performing well, then in fact they are listed at 2 million there are some white lies being told.

I still believe that Alexa is not a worthy tool of measuring non-internet related websites, simply because more people don’t have the toolbar installed than people that do. I did a small test to show these results. I looked at well known www.seomoz.org our website, www.seounique.com and a very popular gadget website in the UK www.firebox.com. In terms of traffic, reach and page views I would have said that Firebox would have been top, followed by Seomoz and last but by no means least my website.

The results clearly show Seomoz miles above the rest, and at the beginning of September Seounique was very close to beating Firebox. Now I’m not going to lie about my traffic, it’s regular and ranges from 5000 unique visits per month down to 1000 per month, it really depends how I promote the site in that particular month. However I can guarantee you that Firebox will almost certainly have three or four times more traffic than I have in a good month at their lowest point. Seomoz is so far ahead because the traffic that flows to their site will be almost all webmaster based.

What’s your final thought on this Matt?

Well my feelings on this subject have slightly changed. I still advise people not to look at Alexa data on non-seo/sem/se websites because it’s still not accurate by any means. However if you are looking to reach the webmasters out there then Alexa should be used and the data collected analyzed.