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 no longer is available for inclusion.
    4. Microsoft (Bing) at http://www.bing.com/docs/submit.aspx
  3. Submit to Directories
    1. Hot Frog at http://www.hotfrog.com/AddYourBusiness.aspx
    2. Manta at http://www.manta.com/member/register/?rl=learnmore
    3. Better Business Bureau at http://www.bbb.org/us/bbb-accreditation-application/
    4. Spoke at http://spoke.com/some long url ...
    5. Super Pages at http://www.superpages.com/some long url ...
    6. Fave at https://www.getfave.com/session/new
    7. Jigsaw at https://www.jigsaw.com/Register.xhtml
    8. best of the Web at http://botw.org/helpcenter/submitcommercial.aspx
    9. Yahoo Local at http://listings.local.yahoo.com/csubmit/index.php
    10. Yelp at http://www.yelp.com/business
    11. Judy's Book at http://www.judysbook.com/merchant
    12. CitySearch at https://myaccount.citysearch.com/login
  4. 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.
  5. Sitemaps. Use Google Webmaster Tools to submit a sitemap. Here is a useful one. See site map section.
    1. The first type of sitemap is a HTML page listing the pages of your site—often by section—and is meant to help users find the information they need.
    2. XML Sitemaps—usually called Sitemaps, with a capital S—are a way for you to give Google information about your site.
  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".
  7. 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. The cost is free
    2. Submitting: You can submit information about all types of online and offline content to Google Base, by either the standard web form or, if you have more than 10 items to submit, via a data feed. When you submit information via the web form, you can attach up to 15 digital files in the following formats: PDF (.pdf), Microsoft Excel (.xls), Text (.txt), HTML (.html), Rich Text Format (.rtf), Word Perfect (.wpd), ASCII, Unicode and XML. Please note: the files you upload may not exceed 20 megabytes total in size, and we reserve the right to review all items in order to ensure they comply with the Google Base Terms and Conditions.
      1. One at a time : Have 10 or fewer items? Fill out our web form for each item you would like to post.
      2. Data feed : Upload a spreadsheet or XML file describing lots of items. Learn about how to do this!
      3. API : Code your way from your system to ours. Documentation!
    3. Sign In / Or Set Up
  8. Yahoo Product Submit submits your products for inclusion in Yahoo! Shopping. Have your products appear in Yahoo! Product Search and on Buyer's Guide comparison pages. The price-per-click is based on the category of your products.
  9. Google AdWords advertising allows you to create your own targeted ads. With cost-per-click pricing you decide how much to spend and you only pay when people click on your ad.
  10. Google Product Search is Google's shopping search engine. Learn more about Google Product Search, and how you can take advantage of free product listings.

(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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