Getting Your WordPress Blog Found With a Sitemap
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When you build your blog, you just expect Google and other search engines to just find it. Well, it doesn’t actually work that way and if you just wait for Google to just “find” your blog, you’ll be waiting a long time.
Here’s the thing: in order for a search engine to find your site, it’s got to find a way to it. A few ways to do this is linking to your blog from an established site, going into Webmaster tools and submitting the site for crawling or having a sitemap with notification to the search engines.
In this post, I want to briefly go through how to install a sitemap on your blog and get search engines to know about it. For this, I’m assuming you’re using WordPress for your blog.
Installing a XML Sitemap in WordPress
- From your dashboard, go to the left menu and select Add New under Plugins.
- Then, do a search for Google Sitemap Generator.
- Search the results and find Google XML Sitemaps and install it.
- Now that it’s installed, go the left menu and select XML-Sitemap under the Settings menu.
- Just keep the options default for now, unless you know what you’re doing and then click on the link to “rebuild sitemap.” This will automatically generate your xml sitemap and notify Google, Bing and Ask about your site.
There you have it – a simple how-to on getting a XML sitemap on your WordPress blog and letting search engines know about it. Now Google and other search engines know about your blog and will index your pages based on the information in your new sitemap.
For even more information and in-depth instruction on how search engines work and how your site can benefit from search engine optimization, check into my EBook, Search Engine Optimization, at my website store.
Facebook Changes Raise the Bar on Social Networks
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In the world of social media, things change all the time. What once was hot is now yesterday’s news. This is even truer now with the recently broadcast news from Facebook. With their new revamped social experience, they try to not only secure more users, but also gain the top position over other networks, such as Google+.
What types of new and exciting things did Facebook talk about in their recent announcement? Let’s go through them now:
- Real-time Ticket – Now on the upper right-hand corner of your Facebook page, you will see a real-time, scrolling list of all your friends’ updates. Useful for those who need to know what everyone is and what they’re doing – all the time.
- Top Stories – Surprise! Your Facebook feed is now even more dedicated to news and certain stories may find their way at the top of your feed. Those stories will have a blue corner on the top left-hand corner – this is Facebook’s way of giving you something it thinks you like. If you don’t like it, simply click on it.
- Subscribe button – For those who don’t want to friend someone and share everything with them, there’s now a subscribe button. So if I wanted to see your public updates, I would simply subscribe to them and you don’t even need to be my friend on Facebook.
- New lists – Just when you thought you had your list setup, there’s a new improved list. They help you better organize areas such as friends, family and such. They can even automatically create and grow without your assistance.
- Shares – Now if someone shares out your link or content, you can see who shared it out. Pretty nifty to know who is helping you promote your updates.
- Facebook page activity – If you have a Facebook business page, there’s a new friend’s activity option. This will tell you what your friends are saying about your page. Now you can get more data on what people think of it and how to improve it.
- Timeline and Opengraph– This is the biggest of the announcements from Facebook, by far. Think of this as a completely redesigned profile and dashboard for you. From what Facebook says, you can tell the story of your life on Facebook through Timeline and share everything about yourself via the opengraph that integrates with Timeline. This includes things like music, movies, where you go, what you do and more. Privacy is a concern on this and I’m sure we will hear about this as time goes on.
There’s a lot to take in now from Facebook – all new ways to share and communicate, no matter where you are. Look to see these changes happen in the next few weeks into your profile.
As I hear on these changes, I will keep you informed with updates. Also, stay tuned for more posts topics surrounding Facebook discussing things like rumors of paying and how the new changes can help your business.
Go ahead and like me on Facebook at: www.facebook.com/vbsod
Bloggers Need Legal Savvy Too
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Blogging is no longer just a hobby – it’s a powerful tool for both individuals and businesses. As we all know, with great power comes great responsibility and this is evident, as bloggers must consider legal ramifications in what they publish online.
Before you start blogging personally or for your business, it’s important to know some of the key legal considerations for bloggers. Over at Mashable, they cover three of these considerations with further detail.
Why You Should Choose Your Link Anchor Text Carefully
By · CommentsDo you know what anchor text is and how it impacts your SEO efforts? Basically, anchor text is the words that show up in a link. For instance, click here or contact us are some of the most common types of links you see on a web page. Now, why would it matter what words you use in a link?
Lots, actually.
Why Anchor Text Matters
For one, the right anchor text heavily impacts your SEO efforts. When you’re trying to attract inbound links, you would want someone to link to your site with the keywords that describe your business. The reason being is this: search engines rank keywords in search based on the relevancy of the words in links to sites.
So, if you wanted to rank higher for “business consulting, “ make sure inbound links use those words as the anchor text for the link to your site. This also goes for links inside of your site as well. Search engines take into account internal links as well as outgoing and incoming links.
Anchor Text Helps Conversions Too
Now, there’s another reason you would want to use better words for anchor links: conversions. Think about it, if you want someone to visit your sales page, would you want a link like click here? Nahhh…make sure it’s something compelling, like get your free business consulting report now.
So, remember, when you’re looking at linking anything in or out of your site, choose the right anchor text for each link – the words matter more than you think!
Top Search Engine Rankings: Look Off-Site and On-Site
By · CommentsEver notice how some sites rank higher than others? The problem is the higher ranking sites sometimes don’t show any type of SEO optimization or even any thought to quality content on-site.
Now, you might think why is that? You go through all the planning, building optimized site structures and quality content only to get outranked by a site with no seen optimization. Not fair, right?
Well, Matt Cutts, Google’s main man explains this in a video on the Google Webmaster Help YouTube channel. Basically, according to Matt, good rankings don’t just come from on-site optimization; they also come from relevant incoming links and resource content.
So, for instance, a school with good information on study habits may attract quality inbound links and would possibly rank higher than a site that only looks at on-site optimization.
The whole point is this: don’t only look at on-site optimization; off-site optimization is just as important or even more than on-site optimization. This includes attracting incoming links from sites that Google sees as highly respected resources and then gives that “juice” down to your site.
This doesn’t mean you should resort to “black hat” techniques like buying incoming links, but it does mean you need to put emphasis on off-site techniques that get you incoming links. A few ways to do this include:
- Posting quality and consistent content to your blog and site
- Writing quality articles and submit them to relevant directories
- Reaching out to your targeted audience through social media
- Writing relevant press releases and submitting to PR services
No matter how you look at it, search engine optimization isn’t just about on-site work; you need to concentrate efforts on off-site optimization as well.
See video below to view the original video of Matt Cutts on this subject.
What’s your take on this? Do you focus on both on and off-site optimization?
