Web Marketing Tip #2: Use XML Sitemap Generator to Get All Your Website's Pages Indexed by Google

May 12, 2007

This post answers the question of what to do if you discover that not all of the pages in your website (or blog) are listed in Google. See Web Marketing Tip #1 to figure out if this is the case.

The quickest way to fix this problem is to create an xml sitemap of your website and submit it to Google. There are a lot of web services that will make an xml sitemap for you. Many of them are free.

I have had success with xml-sitemaps.com and their free online XML Sitemap Generator.

Follow the directions on their site to create a sitemap. If you have more than 500 pages in your site, you can purchase a standalone version of the XML Sitemap Generator for a nominal fee.

Another nice feature of the sitemap tool is that it will find any broken links in your site. Web crawlers like Google’s need all the links in your site to work properly so that they can follow them and then let the Google PageRank software figure out how important or authoritative your site is based on those relationships. If you have a bunch of links that point to pages that no longer exist, that suggests you don’t maintain your site very well and, that your site must not be one that many people use. So find those broken links and fix them!

Now that you have your xml sitemap, you will need a Google account to perform the next step in the process. Go here to create a Google account.

Once you have a Google account, you can go here to see how to add a website to your account. And, when you have added a site, you can then submit the xml sitemap for that site to Google. You will need FTP access to your website for this.

Next, I will go through the process of adding a website to your Google account and submitting an xml sitemap for that site in greater detail.

If any of this does not make sense, just send me a comment using the handy dandy comment form and I will answer ASAP!

Web Marketing Tip #1: Use "site:url" to Find Out If Your Website Is Indexed by Google

May 9, 2007

Here’s a quick way to find out how many pages in your website are in the Google index. In the Google search window, type “site:” followed by your domain. For this site, I would type in “site:mcbuzz.com” and hit return.

The list that results is all the pages in your site that Google has spidered (read through using web page-reading software) and added to its index. If you don’t see all your site’s pages, that’s not good — unless you don’t want people to find those pages!

Next I will talk about what to do if your pages aren’t listed.

MORE WEB MARKETING TIPS
Web Marketing Tip #2: Use XML Sitemap Generator to Get All Your Website’s Pages Indexed by Google

Web Marketing Tip #3: Submit an XML Sitemap to Google

Web Marketing Tip #4: Use Keywords in Web Page Titles

Web-Directed Marketing and WordPress Websites for Small Business

May 7, 2007

This morning a client asked me if I wouldn’t mind sending him an e-mail with instructions on how to create and edit pages on his website using WordPress. Aha!

This was a great opportunity to do what I’m calling “Web-Directed Marketing”: taking material that you create to promote your business, answer customers’ questions, etc. and – rather than use it for that one purpose only – put it immediately onto your website, as well.

The result is a new WordPress Tutorials page on the mcbuzz.com website: How to Insert Images Using WordPress

Instructions on how to edit a website using WordPress are a good example of Web-Directed Marketing because, obviously, my client is not the only person who can benefit from the material. Other clients of mine can benefit, and – big key here – so can people who don’t even know about my business yet.

It takes roughly the same amount of time to answer a question in an e-mail to a single customer as it does to put the answer into a format that other people can access on the Web. Obviously, getting your answer out to a ton of people on the Web is going to give your business more visibility than sending a single e-mail. And you can always do both.

The great thing about this approach is, even if you have already taken time to send an e-mail other people might learn from, it doesn’t mean that time was spent inefficiently. On the contrary, it means you already have the content you need for a good website or blog post! All you need to do is take a few minutes to put it up on your site.

Certainly, there are some e-mails you are not going to want to share with a broader audience, but why not consider retooling the contents so that they don’t contain any private information? If another client or prospective client asks you a similar question without referring to any specifics, that’s exactly what you would do to give them an answer, right? You can do that on your website or blog.

I will talk more about all the positive benefits this kind of “Web-Directed Marketing” approach can have. I said something about it here: Google’s Success Can Mean Web Marketing Success for Your Website and Your Business – on the old Making Communications Buzz blog.

The other point I want to make is this: A WordPress website makes Web-Directed Marketing possible for small businesses – because it is so easy to put new material on your website. You don’t need a webmaster. You don’t need a marketing department.

You do need to know how to use a computer well enough to use a web browswer and program like Microsoft Word. And you do need to know your business – meaning that you need to know your product or service inside and out, and you need to know what your customers and prospective customers are looking for.

With a WordPress website, you can put all the right kinds of information onto your site quickly and easily. By doing so in the next 6-12 months, you can set yourself apart from much, if not most, of your competition in a very significant way. And when your competitors wake up to the reality of web-directed marketing for small business, you will have been there, done that. Sound good? It is.