Classroom | Site Checklist | Site Maps | Google Base

Search Engine Optimization

Site Checklist

  1. Link to other relevant sites and have them link to site. Depending on size of site can range from 1 to 3 hours work.
  2. Submit to search engines:
    1. Google at http://www.google.com/addurl.html
    2. Yahoo at https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/submit
    3. Ask at http://about.ask.com/en/docs/about/add_search_to_site.shtm
    4. Microsoft at http://search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx
    5. Infospace at https://client.enhance.com/ols/index.do?network=webc
  3. Use Google Webmaster Tools to analyze, diagnose, and take action. Google tools can be very detailed so a quick analysis is recommended at around 1 to 2 hours work.
  4. Use Google Webmaster Tools to submit a sitemap. Here is a useful one. See site map section.
  5. Create a site map page for your site. (online for viewers)
  6. Guidelines should be taken into consideration during the site build process. A existing site could require a half day to a day and a half to optimize. Recommended guidelines:
    1. Use text instead of images.
    2. For all images and links provide ALT and TITLE tags.
    3. View in Lynx (crawlers see the site this way). If fancy features such as JavaScript, cookies, session IDs, frames, DHTML, or Flash keep you from seeing all of your site in a text browser, then search engine spiders may have trouble crawling your site.
    4. Make use of the robots.txt file on your web server. This file tells crawlers which directories can or cannot be crawled.
    5. Remove duplicate content.
    6. Change generic content to relevant content. For example "Bitterroot River" instead of just "river".

(new site w/ guidelines followed: 3 to 5 hours)
(existing site : 5 hrs to 3 days)

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XML Sitemaps

  1. Scripts : Scripts are best way to create these. Find them at http://code.google.com/sm_thirdparty.html
  3. Format Example :
  4. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
    <urlset xmlns="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap/0.84">
       <url>
          <loc>http://www.example.com/</loc>
          <lastmod>2005-01-01</lastmod>
          <changefreq>monthly</changefreq>
          <priority>0.8</priority>
       </url>
    </urlset>
  6. Tags Definitions:
  7. URLSET : Root tag ... leave as in example
    URL : Parent tag for each URL
    LOC : URL of the page
    LASTMOD : This is optional and should be in W3C Date format
    CHANGEFREQ : Frequency of change, values are (always, hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, never)
    PRIORITY : Valid rage is from 0.0 to 1.0 and is the importance of the pages in relation to your overall site purpose.

(1 hour)

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Additionally

  1. Google Base : can be used to list items for customers which will increase their item availability in Froogle, Google Earth, and even the Google search engine. This service would require us to do custom input or xml feeds to Google Base and thus require from 1 to 4 hours time.

(1 to 4 hours)

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