What to Include in Your WordPress XML Sitemap?

November 16th, 2010 · SEO

A while ago I was frustrated that out of 160+ blog posts here on Permanently Uncached, only some 104 were apparently in the Google index, according to their Webmaster Tools. Actual searches were proving inconclusive and me being me, I decided I needed to take some action to resolve the matter!

XML Sitemap

So what was the actual problem? In an attempt to try and focus content down on my core areas of SEO and Web Design, I decided in my infinite wisdom to limit the number of pages being listed in the XML sitemap to merely posts and the homepage, and to block out any of the tags or category pages to try and avoid any over-duplication of content. This blocking, it seems, was having a negative impact on the access and indexing by the bots of the overriding blog content.

Tags and Categories

Not only had I been blocking the content from the actual XML sitemap, but I also had blocks for the root of the URLs in the robots.txt file as well. It pretty much seemed a no brainer, therefore, to simply reverse these two states, leaving all content on the site fully indexable by the search engine spiders, and that that was going to be the answer I needed. To this end I did exactly that!

Results

As of 1 month or more since making the changes, the number of indexed pages has grown to about 75% of the available content, and the relevance for specific terms has also changed, for better or for worse. Landing pages for search terms continue to be predominantly the home page for the blog or actual post pages, so my fear that category and tag navigation pages would pollute the index and push posts further down were obviously unfounded. More importantly, the traffic for the site has been climbing and is up month-on-month 10-20%. Win!

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Why You Need More Than Flash

November 12th, 2010 · SEO, Web Design

A while back I wrote a scaving piece on FWA and why their site was just another typical and poorly built web site. Unfortunately, the piece got stuck in Rob Ford’s throat as he ate breakfast and the net result became that I was censored by my then employer. Perhaps understandably so, who can blame him or them, I was just bummed out that he didn’t invite me to his latest book launch and signing … oh well …

Anyhow the piece I wrote yesterday about the changes going in Google since “Instant” rolled out the door continues to prove exactly the same points I made some 6+ months ago, that you can’t go building flash sites on less than stellar foundations. I think the appended screenshot rather makes that point:

I won’t start on the whole Adobe versus Apple rant because this isn’t even about Flash being dead or the rise of HTML5. Nor do I care to rant on about The FWA, because I wouldn’t want to make Mister Ford choke twice on his breakfast, but it’s ironic to say the least. This is purely about visual marketing and how you sell your site to the masses with the available means

Having worked on a bunch of Flash “ad sites” where the client bought into the concept but considered less the HTML under-pinnings or the SEO impact of any of the work in Flash, it’s nice to see that the issues surrounding HTML and SEO on Flash-only sites are being brought to the fore again through these new instant previews in Google, and that clients at least might begin to actually kill off useless flash intros or Flash-only sites and enhance their content for all audiences.

Frankly speaking, if I saw a preview and it has a massive “X” in the middle of the page with nothing else, I wouldn’t bother clicking through. Your site’s click-through search traffic is clearly going to suffer as a result, and no on likes that idea. Google’s new instant preview brings eye candy to the fore, and large visuals with enticing images are going to be part of SEO going forward, there’s no doubt about that.

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Big Time Google Changes

November 11th, 2010 · SEO

When Google rolled out their new “Instant” product, they made a massive fanfare about it, and whilst the world collectively held their breath, the company showed us their new-fangled technology. Little did we know this was just the beginning of much bigger things to come.

Instant, if nothing else shows us the power and the thought that Google has backing its technologies and powerbase, and we shouldn’t be surprised if much bigger things are forthcoming. To that end, they have been surreptitiously rolling out MASSIVE changes to the search engine results pages and no one seems to have blinked.

I for one am “concerned”, I suppose this comes with the territory, resistance to change when there is no real visible value, 50% of people tend to always complain when change occurs, but my very real concerns centre on how these changes are going to affect the experience of their users, and ultimately how much traffic they are going to drive, or not drive, traffic to any of my sites.

We often think that bigger is better, more is better and high volume numbers are better, which to some extent they are, but how about conversion. Do you forsake high conversion for high traffic numbers? But whatever way you look at it these alterations to the way Google displays results spell big changes to traffic driving processes and will affect those conversion rates.

I have been noticing more and more lately the propensity of Google to “mix in” page content into results, whether it be gig dates on links to Last.fm artist pages, or otherwise, but personally I feel these latest mix ins, which are more like re-designs of the standard result look and feel, mixing in local business center data with links to web sites, just look odd and confusing.

Besides looking odd and confusing, I find that the use of the business name, as what effectively looks like a web site page title, is less effective and less enticing to Google users searching for whatever terms. In addition, the injection of simple words such as “in” or “the” to the search phrase completely throw you off the scent and produce results that look completely different, something hat I don’t like in trying to help refine searches.

Other changes introduced in the last few days include site previews. Useful I suppose, though I tend to focus more on the results content, read it and then make a decision based on that. A small preview, with highlights, I suppose the visual cue of the BOLD wordings in the result item, may or may not be useful to you as a user, but if anything they keep users on Google just that little bit longer, and what does that mean? Well to Google it almost certainly means more money making opportunities, why else? To you and me, does it provide substantive benefit? Maybe so, but given that connection speeds are fast, and as a power user, there’s no dis-benefit in clicking a link, having a swift peruse taking a decision on the content and either bookmarking it or closing the new tab.

I can’t imagine any of these changes are providing substantially better quality of access to information, or help us find anything we need more easily, or in a more refined fashion from the get go. Clearly they irk me, and they just prove that you constantly have to keep yourself on your toes in the SEO space. People harp on about social media optimisation, but search engine optimisation is equally important, or still important, and they are not mutually exclusive processes. Identifying changes in any space and reacting to them is always important, if you want to stay on top of your game and not lose that lead to your competitors.

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7 Things Learned From 7 Days

October 21st, 2010 · Personal

This past week has showed me that I can be the luckiest bastard on the planet. Love me or loathe me, you can’t take it away from me. True to form, and not one to rest on my laurels, I have decided to do a write up and a “take away” from the 7 things I learned about life in the preceding 168 hours.

Shock changes

If you are ever going to change, you need to be hit hard. That sounds like a bad thing, but the reality is that a tidal wave of change can come in both positive and negative forms. Most people encounter negative experience and they learn they really need to change from it, but the same can be said from positive experiences. Why stay static when you realise there is something much better out there for you?

Follow your heart

To this end, you need to look out for yourself all the time, and you need to “follow your heart”. As cliched as that sounds, it is true. My philosophy, that ‘life is one big holiday’ is proof of my self-evident interest in ensuring that I am doing the things I love at all times. Of course, it is easy to fall into the routine, the mundane, the inane and what ever, but at every turn opportunities exist for you to grab hold and do things you love.

Chance encounters rock

I am a firm believer in chance. This is the reverse of fate. I think you can make your own destiny and fate by your actions, but chance implies a little more of the chaos theory. You can’t predestine chance, and you can always be surprised by it, and of course when it surprises you for the better you have a lot of positive energy to gain from it. The best things in my life have been completely random. You can’t hang around for them though, enjoy them while they last and live life whilst you “wait”.

Je ne regrette rien!

I regret only 2 things in life … ok so I don’t buy my own bullshit, HAH! but still. Regret nothing. Life is for living, if you constantly live in the past it is slowly going to eat your soul. Regrets are mistakes and you must learn from them, and again they improve your life. As you can tell, each step and take away from this week is designed to improve, and luckily for me, that has been the over-riding theme of an incredible week.

Be authentic

Ok so, you regret nothing, you learn from your experiences and you are humbled. To this end, the reality is that you need to be genuine, authentic, honest and just be. Again, super cliched, but oh so true. People respond positively to genuine articles. No one likes the fake asshole that prances around like an arrogant so-and-so. Those people might be able to boss everyone around and get their way, but they wont win out 100% of the time. Be true to form, every time!

No apology for who you are

Backing up on the authentic side of the 7 day equation, you needn’t regret who you are. If you are authentic, you don’t need to give a damn if people judge you, because ultimately you know that you are a decent person. You have great values, you practice honesty, and you look out for others. In England we all love class, and it makes me laugh most of the time, because you can wear a jacket and people will judge you one way, and you take it off and they will judge you another! Don’t be a chameleon, just be yourself and don’t say sorry for it.

Life has many paths

Even if you want life to work out exactly as planned every time, it won’t. Don’t ever bet on it, I can tell you that now. But that being said, that doesn’t mean it can’t work out as planned, and there is always more than one path to reach your destination. I am a huge subscriber to the thought that there is no “right” answer to life. This rolls over to the notion that there is no 1 path through life, and if you want something badly, whether you get it now, or you can get it later, you will still be just as happy, even if it doesn’t feel that way in the moment. Sometimes you just need to give life some space and things works out in the end.

And there you have it. No doubt there is more, but these will do for now!

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Does A Blog Help With SEO?

October 9th, 2010 · SEO

So, I can imagine you can’t be bothered to read a long, verbose blog post about blogging and SEO. Well, for those with a short attention span, the answer is YES!

Okay, I know what your thinking: “There’s a catch.” And yes, you’d be right. The caveat to blogging to your heart’s content is that you need to exploit a niche and you need to retain focus at all times on the topic you are aiming to dominate. Why? Well you need to remain focused to help bolster the keyword density for the various terms you want to improve the average position for.

So I just setup a blog and get going with it right? Well sure, you can do that and no doubt it generates benefit, but there’s more to just installing a blog that you can do to help optimize for the sake of a good SEO strategy. I have written before about tips for optimising a wordpress blog, so won’t go into any detail here – Sorry!

I’ve seen sites with a relatively stable level of traffic on the site improve vastly with the help of a focused blog. Of course the downside to having a blog is that you have to keep it up-to-date and there-in lies the problem. Unless you have a capable person tasked with the responsibility to ensure the blog is relevant and kept up-to-date it usually falls by the way-side and doesn’t necessarily achieve the goals set.

Of course some topics will always remain relevant, and will always generate traffic, but how does that help you? Well unless you can convert the traffic from the blog into paying customers all it means is that you are improving findability, raising visibility, and perhaps if lucky driving some additional sales. I have a blog, that sees 00,000′s of hits a month, do I get anything from that? Not at all? Did I in the past when I kept it up-to-date? Sometimes, though of those requests for help only about 10% of them came through and were decent.

Okay, so to recap. You want a blog, you need to keep it focused, and you need to make sure that it is optimised through the nose. Will this bring increased traffic? Yes, but not necessarily the conversions. The blog has to be just one part of a much wider “conversational” marketing strategy to draw in potential “customers” and ultimately, you need to make sure your blog contains helpful and interesting content, is easy to read & navigate and fits in nicely with your wider material online, i.e. on brand.

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