Internet Marketing - Matt Bailey [178]
This XML site map can be submitted at the website Sitemaps.org (which is supported by Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft) or uploaded through the webmaster tools at each search engine, or you could even add the URL of the XML site map to the robots.txt file. Maintenance on this file is necessary, because it is not a one-time activity. Periodic uploads of the XML site map are recommended in order to provide for new pages that have been added or older pages that have been removed. If the owner of a site does not update the XML site map, they could be reporting that pages exist when they really don’t.
Search engines will index your website naturally, and they generally index websites frequently and consistently. In addition, pages that are found and indexed naturally by the search engines tend to rank better than those that have been “discovered” from the XML site map feed. Logically, it follows that the same idea of the natural indexing patterns of the search engine would be preferred over a webmaster submitting content directly into the index. It comes down to a trust factor. Search engines trust their own assessment of pages, rather than the site owner’s assessment.
Another factor that plays into the value of naturally found pages is that the search engines can apply their linking values to pages that are indexed, both the page with the source of a link and the page with the destination of that link. Both are necessary in computing page quality and relevance, so sites that are only found from a site map submission are not able to provide this information “naturally.” The search engines trust their own assessment when they have all the information. A user-submitted site map does not always provide all the information, especially the contextual information of interlinking, which is a major part of the algorithm.
As such, the submission of a site map is always a last-case scenario, in my opinion. Some webmasters claim that their rankings decreased after submitting a site map. I haven’t been able to verify such results, but I find that I don’t lose much by not submitting a search engine site map. I’m sure that there are others who would disagree. But from my experience and the experiences of people I admire in the business, success is plentiful and not contingent upon submitting this file.
Friday: Use Local and Mobile Marketing
As mobile devices increase in usage, more and more visitors will be accessing your website via them. Europe and Japan both have had nearly a decade of prolific mobile marketing experience, and the United States seems to be finally catching up. While I was attending a conference in Europe last year, a colleague from Slovakia mentioned that more than half of the ecommerce transactions in Eastern Europe were performed on mobile devices! The United States certainly has a long way to go, but the new versions of smartphones have made it easier for the U.S. audience.
Local Opportunities, with an Eye on Mobile
Retailers, merchants, stores, and businesses can now make themselves competitive with the global search results by making their businesses appear when people most need them. Placing a local listing in the search engines is free. (However, there are some unscrupulous businesses out there that will charge you for this free service.) It can be difficult in some cases, but it is an easy process to get your business listed in the local and maps portion of the search results (Figures 15-21 and 15-22 show the local options on Google and Bing).
Figure 15-21: Google Places