As a part of getting things back in alignment for this and other web sites that I own or manage, I have been reviewing all sorts of tools that I have used to get into the search engines and various aggregation tools.
Unifying the entry ping via FeedBurner solved one major issue. Now every time I make an entry, not only does my FeedBurner feed get updated, but all the major players get notified as well. Not that the world-wide blogosphere community gives a hoot about my writings, but it makes sure that just in case someone is looking for something, they can find it.
Vanity is a driving force in anyone who builds a web site (admit it, I do). You want to be in Google and Yahoo and other search engines and, of course, near or at the top of the list.
One major place to find out about what to do is Google Webmaster Tools. You can find out whether or not Google is indexing your web site and to what extent they are. The best way to let Google know what is on your web site is to build a sitemap.
They provide you will an easy to configure and run tool (written in Python) to do just that. It basically walks through your web directory structure and builds the appropriate XML file for submission. Using the configuration file, you can include as well as exclude any directories or file types. That way you can hide directories or files that you do not want available through search. I have mine configured to run via cron every hour, recreating the complete sitemap. If you do not have shell access, they are a variety of other tools that you can install or run from the web to create sitemaps. Some blogging software also have plugins that can be used to generate sitemaps.
From the webmaster's dashboard (all driven as a part of your Google account), you can let Google know where your sitemap is as well as check to insure that it is being properly digested by Google's crawling mechanism.
A quick check to see your site's current status within Google can be gotten on the Site Status Wizard page. Just enter your web site address and you will be notified if any (not which) of your pages are in Google and the last time Googlebot crawled around your site.
Now that you have Google crawling about, you should want to make sure that you have visitors crawling about too. Enter Google Analytics. You may already use log file analysis programs (awstats, for example), but Google Analytics provides not only additional information, tied to search engine entry, but also ways that you can set goals and see if they are being met for particular portions of your web site.
So, get all this stuff in place and watch the readers flock to you? While it helps you get in the mix of search engines, you still have to provide content. Provide good content and they will come!
Unifying the entry ping via FeedBurner solved one major issue. Now every time I make an entry, not only does my FeedBurner feed get updated, but all the major players get notified as well. Not that the world-wide blogosphere community gives a hoot about my writings, but it makes sure that just in case someone is looking for something, they can find it.
Vanity is a driving force in anyone who builds a web site (admit it, I do). You want to be in Google and Yahoo and other search engines and, of course, near or at the top of the list.
One major place to find out about what to do is Google Webmaster Tools. You can find out whether or not Google is indexing your web site and to what extent they are. The best way to let Google know what is on your web site is to build a sitemap.
They provide you will an easy to configure and run tool (written in Python) to do just that. It basically walks through your web directory structure and builds the appropriate XML file for submission. Using the configuration file, you can include as well as exclude any directories or file types. That way you can hide directories or files that you do not want available through search. I have mine configured to run via cron every hour, recreating the complete sitemap. If you do not have shell access, they are a variety of other tools that you can install or run from the web to create sitemaps. Some blogging software also have plugins that can be used to generate sitemaps.
From the webmaster's dashboard (all driven as a part of your Google account), you can let Google know where your sitemap is as well as check to insure that it is being properly digested by Google's crawling mechanism.
A quick check to see your site's current status within Google can be gotten on the Site Status Wizard page. Just enter your web site address and you will be notified if any (not which) of your pages are in Google and the last time Googlebot crawled around your site.
Now that you have Google crawling about, you should want to make sure that you have visitors crawling about too. Enter Google Analytics. You may already use log file analysis programs (awstats, for example), but Google Analytics provides not only additional information, tied to search engine entry, but also ways that you can set goals and see if they are being met for particular portions of your web site.
So, get all this stuff in place and watch the readers flock to you? While it helps you get in the mix of search engines, you still have to provide content. Provide good content and they will come!
Hi. thanks for information. If you need to create XML, HTML sitemap files for your sites or to notify search engines about updated sitemap files use Sitemap Writer Pro. I tried different software for creating the sitemap for my website. This is the most effective one among 5-6 programs I tried.
This powerful webtool generates the sitemap for your website in just seconds. Mayor search engines (Google, Yahoo, Ask, MSN, Moreover) are able to index and read your sitemaps without any problems.