Duplicate Content – A Big No-No

Yesterday a client of ours asked if we could search for particular terms on the Internet that relate to their business, copy any pertinent information that we could find and paste it into the new site we are designing and developing for them.

"Hold on!" I said.  First of all, my business would never copy content from another website unless we had permission to do so; as this would be a violation of copyright infringement - plus it's just wrong.  Second of all, if we did this, it is very likely that his website would be recognized by the search engines and determined to be "Duplicate Content". 

Duplicating content on a website for your own benefit is not positively perceived by the search engines and will most likely get your site penalized or even banned from the search results completely.

In terms of SEO, writing unique content for your website is the most effective way to drive traffic.  Copying and replicating other's content for your own benefit is not ethical and will never get you the exposure you're looking for.

If you do not have the time to effectively write your own unique content then you should not be spending the time or the money to build a website and run that business... Just my .02.

Sitemaps and Robots.txt files

Want to make your site more visible?

Want to create a way to let search engines know about all of your pages?

Want to let Google, Yahoo!, MSN, Ask and other know about your content?

Well now you can by implementing two easy tasks:

1. Create an XML sitemap
2. Create a robots.txt file

What is an XML sitemap?

An XML sitemap is a listing of all of your websites pages in a simple xml format. The file contains xml markup to define the URL of the page as well as other features. The main point in creating an XML sitemap is to capture all of your websites pages. If you have a dynamic website that is constantly growing with new products: member registration, products or blogging; then you need to constantly update the XML sitemap to let the search engines know of your new pages. If you need help creating an xml sitemap check out this automated xml sitemap submission service. After you have created your xml sitemap then you only have one more step adding a robots.txt file.

What is a Robots.txt file?

Every search engine has robots also known as bots, crawlers, spiders, etc. These applications are constantly communicating with websites in the hope to find new content to index. However, some webmasters do not want all there content indexed. This was the first reason for a robots.txt file, to limit robots from crawling various directories. Recently the robots.txt was upgraded to include the sitemap location. Basically informing the robots of a list of your pages.

If you do not have a robots.txt file, simply open notepad and type the following:

Sitemap: [Sitemap_Location]

Where [Sitemap_Location] = http://www.youdomain.com/sitemap.xml

When you are all done, upload these two files to your root folder so you can get to it in a web browser by going to:

• http://www.yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml
• http://www.yourdomain.com/robots.txt

If you have any questions about increasing your page visibility let us know.

 

Defining Your SEO Objectives

Last week I did an overview of different aspects to consider while developing your SEO goals, and how these goals can help you decide what SEO tactics, techniques and strategies would be most appropriate for your e-Business. This article will focus more on e-Business SEO objectives and the importance of clearly defining them.

Alexa
It’s tricky to define a stellar Alexa rank as your top SEO priority because the only way to achieve it is through supplementary methods; link building, content distribution, generating awareness, developing online alliances, partnerships, affiliates and friends are great ways to yield traffic, and yielding traffic is the only way to improve your Alexa rank. Like I’m doing with the Bento Yum site, you can use your Alexa rank to track your SEO success. Check back at the Hudson Horizons blog for my post on how to use different elements as benchmarks for your company progress.

Google Page Rank
This aspect of SEO can be useful, but usually does not lay the best groundwork for an SEO campaign. As the Internet advances, PR is becoming less and less of an influential element in algorithms. Consider instead an objective that would offer a more substantial, solid foundation while providing continuous benefits. Still, like Alexa, you can use your PR as a gauge to determine how successful your other SEO strategies are.

Product Sales
Is an increase in product sales your main incentive for SEO? If so, an important first step would be to optimize your on-page content to make your customers’ experience easy, informative and fun. Then, consider submitting your products to sites such as Shopzilla or Google Product Search. Keep in mind that product listings often require resubmission to ensure fresh results. At Hudson Horizons, our HH Froogle Manager provides automated product submission to Google Product Search for only $15 per month. We will submit your products three times a week to ensure that they are constantly included in the shopping search results.

Member Registration
If you’re an online community, perhaps your top goal is increasing the number of registered users or participants. The best way to spark interest in the online world is successful content distribution. Post articles pertaining to your cause or service using resources like free blog sites (WordPress or Blogger are great) or article archives (I like Ezines). Implement target keywords in your blog URL and insert your link when relevant (without spamming!!). These are easy ways to get your word out there and lead people back to your website. At Hudson Horizons, our HH Blog Manager provides unique blogs that can be implemented directly in your website, offering you a chance to design, customize, post and manage comments and links without any external blog sites.

As Stoney deGeyter put it, “There may be over 100,000,000 ways to invest in SEO, but you only need to find one that works for you.” What a gem of knowledge! Keep in mind that however appealing they may seem, fad SEO tactics may result in a waste of time and money for your company. Instead, work on clearly defining your e-Business SEO objectives so when the time comes, the SEO investments you make wholly benefit you and your site.

Using your SEO goals as a map through the wilderness

In this jungle known as the Internet, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an essential tool for survival; as such, it is not to be taken lightly. Before you invest time and money in a trendy SEO technique, you should seriously examine your own website and what you want to achieve. Setting SEO goals creates an organized blueprint of ideas and objectives you can rely on throughout your SEO efforts.

There are numerous factors to keep in mind while you develop realistic SEO goals. Most of these things revolve around the fundamentals of your business. Here is a list you should consider while setting SEO goals for your website.

Time --> If you choose to perform SEO yourself, how much time can you devote to research and implement SEO in your website? If you choose to outsource, how much time can you devote to oversee his/her work? Do you have time to teach them about your business and your objectives?

Budget --> What does your SEO budget look like? If you choose to do the work yourself, how much money would you be willing to put towards SEO? Have you considered the monthly fees of buying links or submitting to directories? If you outsource, are you financially capable of hiring an SEO consultant to guide and motivate your team? Are you financially capable of hiring an SEO firm to do all of the SEO work for you? Don’t make final decisions solely based on your budget, but use it as a framework for setting realistic goals.

Size --> This factor is most closely linked with time and budget. It’s important to consider how large your company is and the amount of SEO work that needs to be done— though these may not be directly proportional. The smaller the company, the more difficult it may be to fund SEO and the more time it may take to gain visibility in search engine algorithms.

Objectives --> What do you hope to accomplish from your SEO efforts? Are you more interested in gaining a top PR, becoming #1 in SERPs or obtaining a solid marketing foundation? Keep in mind that the former is less expensive but not entirely beneficial in the long run. If you decide to outsource, use your objectives as a guide in choosing what kind of SEO company is best for you.

Whether you’re creating a new website or enhancing an existing one, keep in mind that SEO is a constant, demanding endeavor that requires a tight focus and dedicated attention. Assess your situation and set your expectations before you head out into the jungle. You’ll be glad that you did.

Target keyword phrases are a vehicle to the top

Jessica Bowman posted an intriguing article on SearchEngineLand.com pertaining to SEO via repeating target keyword phrases (she calls them brand phrases). As Jessica advises, “If your company has everything sitting on a single domain, unfortunately, it's unlikely that you will dominate page one because search engines do not like to display more than one or two pages from a given domain.” Her approach to “dominating page one” of major search engines focuses heavily upon website domain and sub-domain text.

A great way for smaller e-Businesses to work their way up to page one of search engine results is to generate distinct sites for varying aspects of their company, and incorporate target keyword phrases into each domain and sub-domain of their pages.

In order for this to be significantly effective, typical SEO strategies also need to be considered. Naturally, on-page optimizations are essential. Jessica suggests “[getting] your company name on the homepage of each website” near the copyright information. Also, implementing your e-Business target keyword phrases in on-page content is beneficial, but be sure to do so appropriately so as not to spam.

Link building is another SEO-must; “…obtain links that pass on relevancy for the brand terms you are targeting. To do this,” Jessica writes, “find sites that talk about the parent company, and see if they will also link to the websites you are targeting.”

Another tip is to research directories that specialize in your niche (small business, etc) and establish a link relationship. For an illustration of the effect repeating target keyword phrases has on page rank, check out this search for Hewlett Packard in a Yahoo Business directory. Take note of how many sub-domains include “hp.”

Good luck!

Google, Yahoo, MSN and Now Ask.com Offer Auto-Discovery for Sitemaps

There is some great news in the SEO world that will change the way webmaster process and submit Sitemaps to Google, Yahoo!, MSN and the newest member Ask. The four search players announced on April 11, 2007, that there is a new way to let the search engines know about your Sitemap file. The new process is being referred to as the Auto-Discovery of Sitemaps.

How to specify the Sitemap location in your robots.txt file

You can specify the location of the Sitemap using a robots.txt file. To do this, simply add the following line:Sitemap:

The should be the complete URL to the Sitemap, such as: http://www.example.com/sitemap.xml

Click the following links to view their full announcements: Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Ask. The following is a short snippet from their statements:

Google states, Second, it's now easier for you to tell us where your Sitemaps live. We wondered if we could make it so easy that you wouldn't even have to tell us and every other search engine that supports Sitemaps. But how? Well, every website can have a robots.txt file in a standard location, so we decided to let you tell us about your Sitemap in the robots.txt file.

Yahoo states, Please provide the complete URL for your Sitemap on this line. We will pick it up wherever you put it in your robots.txt file. This directive is not specific to user-agent. If you have multiple Sitemaps, you can point to your Sitemap index file on this line. Details about the Sitemaps protocol including this addition are available on the protocol website -- http://www.sitemaps.org.

MSN states, Although we aren't ready to start consuming sitemaps quite yet, I encourage you to build a sitemap and add the "sitemap" directive to your robots.txt. As soon as we roll out support (before the end of the year), we will be able to start crawling your sitemap files immediately. If you want more detail on the sitemaps protocol, including auto-discovery, check out www.sitemaps.org.

Ask.com states, In addition, Ask.com is now supporting submission of Sitemaps via http://submissions.ask.com/ping?sitemap=SitemapUrl.

Of course, neither auto-discovery nor manual submission guarantee pages will be added to the index. The pages must meet our quality criteria for inclusion in the index. And use of these submission methods does not influence ranking.

Even though this new auto-discovery process can make a webmasters job easier, I still think it's extremely useful to submit your Sitemap through Google Webmaster tools and Yahoo Site Explorer so you can make sure that the Sitemap was processed without any issues and you can get additional statistics about your site.

Will MSN and Ask.com be creating a similar type of Sitemap submission section so webmasters can track and view more detailed statistics about their websites? Only time will tell!

Its Sales Conversions that Matter Most

Do you have or utilize the services of an SEO specialist? What is their primary focus? If its to get you to the top of the search engines then let me forewarn you " in todays online world, search engine ranking is not and should not be the primary focus of any SEO specialist. If it is, then let me say one thing they are not a specialist, find a new SEO!

A true SEO does not just focus on search engine ranking. This is the game of the past. Todays top SEO specialists know and understand the search engines, how they work, their algorithms and how to increase sales in a number of ways.

So if search engine ranking is NOT the most important factor, then what is?

It IS the conversion of sales from the amount of website traffic!

In the end, sales are what drive our businesses forward - so without new sales, there will be no growth and without growth your business will not be on a path to success.

So in terms of SEO, why should this be any different?

It shouldnt. As an example, lets say your website is listed on the first page of Google for a certain search term but NOT receiving many sales, then I would say that your SEO is NOT producing the results you should be looking for. However, if youre not even on the top 5 pages in Google, but you HAVE increased sales over the past X months, then I would say your SEO IS showing signs of success.

Now lets compare your sales to your website traffic and determine your conversion rate. If your SEO has doubled your traffic over the past X months but your sales have not doubled since then, then I would say you need to re-focus on whats most important. First, focus on getting more sales with less traffic. After youve accomplished this, then you and your SEO can work on increasing your website traffic because at that point, you should be able to double your sales by doubling your traffic. Yet, without this foundation in place, you will just be wasting your time, money and energy since youre not focusing on the conversion of sales from your website traffic.

In terms of sales conversions, receiving 100 sales on 1000 website visitors is better than 200 sales on 5000 visitors because the conversion of sales with 1000 visitors is much higher than the conversion of sales with 5000 visitors - its actually four times higher. If you focus to increase your sales from the 1000 visitors first and after youve increased that to say 200 sales, thats when it should be time to focus to increase your traffic - because with 5000 visitors, you will now receive 1000 sales instead of the previous example of 200.

I dont mean to be throwing all these numbers at you to confuse you,my whole point is the fact that sales conversions should be you and your SEO specialists main focus. If you can learn to apply this idea of increasing sales conversions, Im 100% confident you will see tremendous improvements for your business.

As you can see, there is more to SEO then just search engine ranking. The top SEO specialists of today will know this and focus on increasing your sales, rather than focusing to increase your ranking in the search engines. If your SEO specialist does not think this way, then like I said before, get away fast and find a new one who believes this is the path to success. Sales are the bread and butter of any business. Do you want more sales or do you want better search engine ranking? The choice is yours! Do whats best for your business.

Optimize your Google Base Data Feeds for Success

For all you Google Base fanatics out there, I have one very important question for you? Are you optimizing your Google Base data feeds for success? If not, I would like to explain a few basic things for why and how you should optimize your feeds before submitting them to Google Base.

The following items will explain some important things to consider prior to submitting your data feeds. If you apply these, you will be sure to bring more success from your Google Base data feed submissions.

What is Google Base?

Google Base is a place where you can easily submit all types of online and offline content. The items you submit can include labels and attributes that help describe what youre uploading so people can easily locate your items.

Attributes are words or phrases that help describe the characteristics and qualities of your items. For any given attribute you may enter multiple values separated by commas. Labels are any keywords or phrases " such as recipe, event, or product " that can be used to classify or describe your item.

Google Base Data Becomes other Google Data

The items you submit to Google Base will be included in the Base directory and depending on your items relevance, can automatically be posted in such places like the Google search engine, Froogle, Google Maps and more. This is an important thing to understand because the quality of the data you submit will not only affect your results in Google Base, but in these other areas of Google as well.

For example, if you submit a real estate property listing to Google Base, the property listing information will eventually be added into the Google search index.

Utilize Google Base Custom Attributes to Optimize your Feeds

The Google Base data feed allows you to specify your own custom attributes. Custom attributes allow you to include additional information about your items. You can include an unlimited number of custom attributes in your tab-delimited bulk upload file.

Why is this important? Well like I said before, depending on your items relevance they will automatically be included in such places like the Google search engine, Froogle, Google Maps and more.

By defining custom attributes for your items, you will be in fact optimizing your feeds for success because you will be providing more detailed information about your data. By providing more detailed information to Google, they will have more information about your items and when someone searches in Google Base, Google or Froogle, your items will have a greater opportunity of being discovered.

More relative content will equal more quality trafficits that simple.

Also, considering many people who upload their data feeds to Google Base do not use the custom attributes feature, you will gain a significant competitive advantage over your competition because your feeds will be more optimized for success than the rest of your competition.

Automate your Google Base Data Feeds

Another way to gain a substantial competitive advantage over your competition is to completely automate your Google Base data feeds. By automating your feeds, you will be sure that the information uploaded to Google Base is 100% up-to-date and completely accurate.

The best way to automate your Google Base data feed is to connect it directly with your database and have a process pull the most recent data once a day and submit a new bulk upload to Google Base on a frequent basis. Many companies claim to automate your data feeds but the only company Ive found that completely automates the process is Hudson Horizons. They will setup a process to connect to your database on a daily basis, compile the most recent data, create your new bulk upload, and submit the data feed to Google Base three times a week.

The process takes about 1 day to setup but after that its 100% seamless and automated. All you have to do is sit back, relax and watch your sales come in. There is a small $15 per month fee for them to automate your Google Base data feed submissions.

I hope you will find the above information to be beneficial to the success of your business. Google Base is a great resource to help distribute and share information with others that you would not otherwise know how to reach. With Google Base, your information is almost instantly added and viewable by people searching for your items. Remember to follow the above information and you will be sure to increase the success of your Google Base data feeds.

Googles Personalized Search Debate

Danny Sullivan does it again, with his in-depth look at Googles new personalized search feature " Google Ramps up Personalized Search great article. The topic of personalized search results is stirring up the SEO world - some say its a positive change, while others are suggesting it could potentially put a stop to SEO all together. Whos right, whos wrong, and what is personalized search anyway? Well heres some basic information and my initial view on this topic.

What if you had your own personalized search engine, that provided results based on your own past search behavior? What if one of your favorite websites has moved up in ranking because you visit it often? Well this is what Google is now offering - Google has just announced the launch of their new Personalized Search feature that will provide personalized results to you based on your past search history, which sites you click on most often and what topics you seem to search for on a consistent basis. Based on these behaviors, the personalized search feature will rank and provide specific results that relate to your trends as a user.

This personalized search is a feature that will come with every new Google Account and you must be logged into your Google Account in order to use this feature. If you are not logged in, you will see the standard organic search results. For users who already have a Google account, you must enable this feature by going here.

So that was a basic explanation of the process. For more information I highly suggest reading Danny Sullivans article from above as he dives into great detail or going through the Google Help Center for personalized search topics.

Ok, so immediately this raises a few thoughts and theories in my head. It seems like were all going to be getting some sort of batting average based on our trends as a user while using the Google search engine. So if we do a search multiple times for a specific topic and click on site A five times but only click on site B one time, in theory, site A should rank higher than site B well for me anyway, not for anyone else, unless their behavior was identical to mine.

Now this makes sense but the ultimate question that comes to mind is " Does our "batting average" as an independent user, have any affect to other users personalized searching experience? If ten users all click on site A more often, does this mean that site A will begin to slowly increase for other users the first time they search and prior to them having any personalization on that topic?

If this is the case, then will Google be morphing into some type of social community tagging system like Digg or Delicious? Will the ranking, trends and behaviors of other user's personalized search also affect my results, for the first time I search on a topic? If so, I think this is great news for the SEO world. Firstly, because this means that optimization of a website will be more strategic and analytical than it is today. Secondly, I believe it will greatly reduce spam, something that is a huge concern with the search engines today.

So far so good " Im definitely digging the idea of personalized search and believe, in theory, it could definitely change the SEO world for the better. However, there is one concern I have with this whole idea of personalized search. In an article from Out of My Gord " The Future of SEO in a Personalized Search Interface, the author Gord Hotchkiss states, In Canada, we're already dealing with this as Google experiments with re-ordering organic search results based on Geo-targeting of user IP's. The same is true in the UK and other markets. This idea concerns me. So this suggests that our results could potentially be based on our locality? Im not sure I agree with the locality issue so much. Does this mean that if I type in best wines, Im going to get results based on wine stores in New Jersey, since I reside in NJ and I have an IP address thats geographically a NJ IP address?

Im not sure I like this. Perhaps Im looking for a site with the best wines and I dont care where the company resides? Perhaps Im just looking to buy a nice bottle of wine and not going down the street to pickup a bottle from a local wine store? Am I now supposed to log out of my Google Account so I can use the standard organic search results? Isnt this what Google Local is for anyway? I mean where do we draw the line here? Yes, in many cases, providing locality driven results will be a good thing but for the purposes of my argument I wanted to provide a what if example.

Im curious to see where this personalized search takes us. As an SEO expert, I welcome any new changes to the SEO world as I always believe changes will continually bring exciting and new opportunities to take advantage of. As time moves on, how does Googles idea of personalized search relate to Wikipedias new idea of a socially community-driven search engine? You can read my thoughts on this topic from my article " Wikiasari " The Future Search Engine to Rival Google.

Do Alt and Title Attributes help with SEO?

A highly talked about topic is the SEO world is, Do Alt and Title Attributes Help with SEO? Well to help shed a little light on this topic, I did some research and came up with a few good conclusions. Im not suggesting these are 100% accurate but from my initial research they seem to be right on target. I welcome all other SEO experts to share their opinions on this topic by posting their comments " because as we all know, every little bit of information can help us all.

Well to start, I want to provide a brief introduction of each attribute to help you understand their intended purpose.

The alt attribute is, popularly and incorrectly referred to as an alt tag and is commonly misunderstood to provide a tool-tip for an image. Both of these are incorrect. First of all, the alt attribute is an attribute and not a tag. The alt attribute was always intended to provide alternative information about an element and is generally required for image and image maps and is not meant to be used to display a tool-tip. The alt attribute, can be used for the img, area, and input elements to help provide alternative information to users who cannot display that element in their browser. As an example, here is how you would define an alt attribute for an image: < img src = "imagepath.gif" alt="this" />. If the image is not displayed the text, this is our company logo will be displayed in the place of the image.

The title attribute, on the other hand, is meant to provide additional information about an element, which is displayed as a tool-tip by most graphical browsers. The title attribute can be used to describe any HTML element except for base, basefont, head, html, meta, param, script, and title.

An excellent use for the title attribute is to provide descriptive text within an anchor tag to let the users know where the link will direct them if they click on it. When the user places their mouse over the link, it will display a small tool-tip displaying the title text that youve provided. An example would be < a href= "linkpath.html" title="more">.

So as you can see the alt and title attributes have different purposes but how do they affect SEO? This is the true question we all want to know and understand. Do they help with SEO or are they simply ignored by the search engines? I tested several different scenarios, all in Google, and after my research Ive come to the following conclusions.

Alt attributes seem to be picked up by Google, whether or not there was a link within that element. Some SEO experts have mentioned that if there is no link, then the alt attribute would not be indexed from my research Ive found this to be false.

Going further, I noticed in one testing scenario, if there was an image with an alt attribute and a link to a completely other site, that other site was also indexed by Google when searching for the text within the alt attribute. It was difficult for me to verify this multiple times but I definitely verified it in one testing scenario.

I also took this one step further and analyzed my results with what Google Images was displaying. I immediately noticed that Google sometimes takes the alt attribute text and provides this text as the description for the image in Google Images, something that is very valuable to know and understand when doing SEO for your website.

In all of my testing scenarios, the title attribute do not seem to be picked up by Google and adding a link to that element did not seem to affect this result at all. If you really think about it, this makes complete sense. Since you can place title attributes in almost every element of a website, it would be very easy for a user to affect the search engines by keyword stuffing throughout their web pages, something that Google and the other major players do not want, hence why title attributes do not help with SEO.

In my opinion, you should use the title attribute to help with your users experience and not with SEO. Since tool-tips provide more useful information to the user about images, links, fields and much more, you will help your users to understand what is happening around the web page.

So from my testing Ive determined that a title attribute is meant to provide tool-tips to the user for user experience, whereas the alt attribute is helpful in terms of providing alternative information to the user when their browser cannot display an image or input element and helping to increase the SEO of a website. My recommendation is to pay close attention to when, where and how you are using your alt attributes. If they help with SEO, then you should pay close attention to what you are adding.

When adding images always be sure to add an alt attribute to the code of each image. If you do not have one, then just specify a blank one, such as alt=. Also, be sure to add alternative text that is relevant to that image, the content on that page and be sure not to specify an alt attribute greater than 100 characters in length, as this may be perceived as spamming.

I hope you find my brief overview on the topic of, Do Alt and Title Attributes Help with SEO? to be beneficial for you and your business. Im sure one could dive deep into this topic, spending weeks determining the differences between how Google, Yahoo! and the other major search engines handle title and alt attributes with regards to SEO for a website.

I welcome all comments and/or feedback.

Google Sitemaps - Questions Answered by Vanessa Fox

With Googles recent joint venture to collaborate with Yahoo and MSN to create a Sitemap submission protocol standard, there has been a lot of buzz generating lately for Google Sitemaps in the SEO world. This has caused many webmasters and business owners to regain focus on the true implications and question the validity of the Google Sitemaps program. Because of all the noise, Rand Fishkin, SEO expert from SEOmoz.org interviews and questions Vanessa Fox of Google to help clear some of the smoke.

Some questions that are discussed in this video are: Does a duplicate content filter induce duplicate content penalties? What about format preference? Is an XML sitemap superior or can a simple text file suffice? What is OAI-PMH?

Given some recent dialog on sitemaps versus other SEO methods, Vanessa reiterates the intent of a sitemap: it should be merely one part of the strategy.


Hudson Horizons HH Sitemap Manager - Automated Sitemap Submission to Google and Yahoo!



Also in the interview, Vanessa clarifies the difference between Google Toolbar's Page Rank and Google Webmaster Tools. Vanessa states, "Webmaster Tools- is a little more accurate and a little more up-to-date. The Toolbar page ranking does not get updated quite as often, of course it's only one factor. I feel like people get really hung-up on the Toolbar Page Rank. People probably spend a little more energy on it than they need to."

I think this interview was a good decision for Google and the rest of the SEO community. I agree with Vanessa and believe that submitting a Google Sitemap for your website is highly recommended. Is it the cure all? No, but is it an important piece to the SEO puzzle? Yes, most definitely. Ive seen the positive results with my own eyes. I submit Sitemaps for each one of client andhave noticed their content getting indexed in days, rather than months. Our business will continue to setup and submit Google Sitemaps for our clients, now following the new Sitemaps.org XML protocol standard.

You can watch the interview on WebProNews.com.

What is Organic SEO? How to effectively maximize your Websites Visibility

An organic search is a process by which Internet users find websites in the SERPs, (Search Engine Result Pages), as opposed to using pay-per-click advertisement listings, such as Google AdWords, displayed alongside the organic search results.

The field of search engine optimization, (SEO), is focused on maximizing the visibility of a website by making its listings appear more frequently and more prominently in organic search results. Most businesses are more interested in basing their SEO strategies on the successful inclusion of their website listing(s) into organic search results for various popular keywords relating to their business. This process is recognized as organic SEO, (Search Engine Optimization).

How to successfully perform organic SEO is one of the most commonly asked questions by website owners and for the right reasons. Unfortunately, there is no overnight solution to successfully perform organic SEO so that your website is listed on the top of SERPs. The goal should be to increase your websites visibility in the search engines over time. This process generally takes time, money, patience and consistency. If you can learn how to manage and leverage your efforts, it will be possible to effectively get your website positioned more frequently and more prominently in the major search engines.

The following are a few organic SEO techniques that will increase the visibility of your website in the organic search results. Again, there is no overnight solution but if you are determined and consistently make and effort to apply these organic SEO strategies to your website, you will see dramatic results I promise!

Add Relevant Meta Tags to each Page of your Website

META Tags are an element of HTML coding on a website that is used by search engines to index a website in the organic search results. META tags are generally included within the 'header' code of a website and the most important tags are the title, description and keyword tags. Rules used by different search engines govern how such tags are used, how many characters they should contain, and how they should be formatted. Below our some general ideas on how to setup the META tags for your website to help with your organic search engine optimization, (SEO).

A META tag title is the heading of your page that you will see on the top left portion of the Internet browser. This is a caption that will be used by the search engines and displayed for viewers of your website. A title should be relative to your business and should include some main keywords relating to the content of that page. It is important to keep the title under 80 characters in length. In my opinion, a relevant title tag is one of the most important aspects for successful organic search engine optimization (SEO).

META tag keywords should list important words that you suspect your target audience will search for when looking for your type of business on the Internet. The list of keywords will be used by the search engine crawlers to index your pages in the organic SERPs. A common mistake people make is to list too many keywords or list the same words over and over. If either of these mistakes is made, many search engine crawlers could consider this spamming and potentially decrease your page ranking. Be sure to keep the number of words to 20 and make sure to list keywords only once.

A META tag description is a short explanation of your business. The search engine crawlers will take the description and will list it with your listing in the organic search results. It is important to carefully write 200 character max sentences and phrases, targeting the most important words contained on your web pages. When you are writing the META tag descriptions, try to eliminate as many filler words as you can to make room for your most important keywords.

Setup a Sitemap for your Business and submit it to Google and Yahoo!

The new Sitemap Protocol standard, now followed by Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft, allows a webmaster to inform search engines about URLs on a website that are available for crawling. A Sitemap is an XML file that lists the URLs for a site. It enables webmasters to include additional information about each URL: when it was last updated, how often it changes, and how important it is in relation to other URLs in the site. This allows search engines to crawl the site more intelligently.


Hudson Horizons HH Sitemap Manager - Automated Sitemap Submission to Google and Yahoo!



Submitting a Sitemap file to Google Sitemaps and Yahoo! Site Explorer will dramatically increase the visibility of your website in the organic search results. There are even tools out there that will automate the Sitemap submission process and have your Sitemap file submitted and processed to Google and Yahoo! three times a week.

Submit important Information, such as Products, to Google Base

Google Base is a place where you can easily submit all types of online and offline content that will dramatically help with your organic SEO. The items you submit to Google Base will be included in the Google Base directory and depending on your items relevance, can be posted in such places like Google, Froogle and Google Maps, which could greatly increase your websites visibility in the organic search results. The items you submit can include labels and attributes that help describe what youre uploading so people can easily locate your items. Attributes are words or phrases that help describe the characteristics and qualities of your items. For any given attribute you may enter multiple values separated by commas. Labels are any keywords or phrases " such as recipe, event, or product " that can be used to classify or describe your item.

Google Base is a great resource to help distribute and share information with others that you would not otherwise know how to reach. With Google Base, your information is almost instantly added and viewable by people searching for your items. Froogle has even been integrated with Google Base. Now products that need to be submitted to Froogle, are submitted through Google Base and is no longer a separate program like it was in the past.

You can submit all types of content to Google Base. Examples include the following: Articles, Events and Activities, Hotels, Jobs, People Profiles, Products, Real Estate, Reviews, Recipes, Services, Vehicles, and much more.

Setup a Blog to add more Content to your Website

As most of us know, content is the key to success on the Internet. With good, quality and relevant content, you will certainly to increase the visibility of your website in the organic search results.

Adding a blog to your website will enable you to increase the amount of content on your website that is relevant to your business. With a blog in place, you can post articles about your industry, feature new products, share specific ideas that may benefit your audience and simply demonstrate that youre a company who is specialized in your business field.

I recommend setting up a blog on a sub-domain of your website. By doing this, when your articles or blog entries are located in the organic search results and a user clicks on the result, your website will appear; hence, directing them to the source of where you need them to be.

The above ideas are some great ways to begin to effectively perform organic SEO to help increase the visibility and frequency of your website in the organic search results. If you are dedicated and consistently perform these techniques, Im confident you will dramatically increase your organic SEO results.

Writing for the Web - Increase your Ranking in the Search Engines

Writing and preparing content for the Web requires a different approach from writing and preparing content for print documents and publications. When writing for the Web, not only do you have to make it appealing and grammatically sound, you also need to focus on developing your content in a way that provides search engine optimization (SEO).
This added step, referred to as Content Development, is oftentimes forgotten when people write content for the Web and is a primary factor why their website or article does not appear as high as they would like in the search results. However, once this step is understood and mastered, you will be able to increase you ranking in the search engines guaranteed!

Step 1:Understanding your Target Audience to think like one of your CustomersIn order to help you master the Content Development process, youll first need to understand your target audience. When writing content for the Web, you need to be in the mind of one of your customers at all times and attempt to think like they do. If they were to be searching the Internet for a business like yours or information on a specific topic, what would they be typing into that search box? This question is crucial and needs to be answered upfront before you begin to write and develop any content for your website or article.

Step 2:Define Several Primary Keyword PhrasesOnce you learn to think like your customer, then you will be one step ahead of the game. Begin to write down several keyword phrases that you believe your customer will type into the search engine. These phrases are extremely important and must be used within the content of your article or website a number of times. If you do not use these phrases in your content, then there will be absolutely no way for your content to be discovered in the search engines.Content Development is the key to success on the Internet and with good-quality content, you will be sure to increase your ranking in the search engines. So before you write any content write down these phrases on the top of your document. When youre writing, refer back to this list and make sure youre using these keyword phrases throughout the development of your content. The more you list these keyword phrases in your content, the greater change you have to be discovered in the search results for those particular keywords. The Internet is a numbers game - the more relevant content you have, the greater change you have to be discovered.

Step 3:Be Creative with your Article or Web Page TitlesWhen coming up with titles for your articles or Web pages, make sure you use a few of the keyword phrases that youve defined above. In many cases titles are often written in larger font and sometimes bolder than the rest of the content on that page. Some search engines will even give a higher weight to the words that are in larger font or are bolded because in many cases the title of a page usually defines the content of the article. So be creative but at the same time make sure to add a few keywords to your titles.

Step 4:Utilize Image Alt Tags and Link TitlesAdding alt tags and titles to the images and links within the content of your website or article is a great way to help increase your search engine optimization (SEO). This is a key step in the Content Development process and will help increase your page rank because many search engines will provide a higher weight for the information provided in an image alt tag or a link title. However, its vital that when adding image alt tags and link titles to your content, you must be sure to use the keyword phrases that youve defined above " this is extremely important. If you do not use the same keywords, then it will be completely worthless and will provide no added value to your content.

Step 5:Setup a Sitemap File and submit it to Google, Yahoo! and soon MSN LiveSitemaps are an easy way for website owners to inform search engines about pages on their sites that are available for crawling. In its simplest form, a Sitemap is an XML file that lists URLs for a site along with additional metadata about each URL (when it was last updated, how often it usually changes, and how important it is, relative to other URLs in the site) so that search engines can more intelligently crawl the site.I highly recommend setting up a Sitemap for your website using the new Sitemap Protocol 0.9 as defined at www.sitemaps.org and submitting to Google Sitemaps and Yahoo! Site Explorer. If youre thinking of taking your SEO to the next level, then you should absolutely start here. If you can force your pages and content to be indexed in days, rather than months, then you will be sure to increase your websites visibility, generate more website traffic and ultimately increase your sales.
Hudson Horizons HH Sitemap Manager - Automated Sitemap Submission to Google and Yahoo!

If youre looking to manage both of these manually, then I recommend visiting Google Webmaster Tools and Yahoo! Site Explorer online sections, which will provide you with all the details of how to create and submit your feeds to their search index.If youre looking to setup an automated submission of Google Sitemaps and Yahoo! Site Explorer, then you should visit Hudson Horizons HH Sitemap Manager for more information. Their system will automatically crawl your website, create a site feed of your URLs and submit the file to both Google and Yahoo! every three days.Content Development is extremely important to the success of your business on the Internet. If you can think like your customer, come up with several primary keyword phrases and effectively implement them into the content of your website or article, then you will be sure to increase your ranking in the search engines I guarantee it!

Google and Yahoo! Join Forces to Support Common Sitemap Protocol

There is some great news in the SEO world that will change the way webmaster process and submit Sitemaps to Google, Yahoo! and soon others.

Last night, November 15, 2006 at 9:00 pm, Google and Yahoo! announced that they have joined forces to support a unified system of submitting Web pages to their crawlers. While Google launched their Google Sitemaps protocol in June 2005 and Yahoo! recently with their Yahoo! Site Explorer, they both offered different protocols for submitting Sitemap files in the past. But because of this new supported Sitemap Protocol 0.9 Standard, this move marks the day when the 'big two' have agreed that they will all now support the Google XML protocol method via the new www.sitemaps.org destination.

Not only are Google and Yahoo! collaborating on this project, theyve also issued an open invitation to all the other search engines willing to join. Microsoft accepted that invitation and will jointly support Sitemaps.org and its efforts.


Hudson Horizons HH Sitemap Manager - Automated Sitemap Submission to Google and Yahoo!



Sitemap Protocol 0.9 is offered under the terms of the Attribution-ShareAlike Creative Commons License and has wide adoption, including support from Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft.

Google Stated, "Last year we published the Sitemap 0.84 XML protocol as a free and easy way for webmasters to inform search engines about URLs on their web sites so that search engines can more effectively crawl them. We released it under the Attribution/Share Alike Creative Commons license in the hopes that other search engines would adopt the protocol too. And today, we're excited to announce that Yahoo! and Microsoft are joining us in officially supporting the Sitemap protocol."

What does this mean for webmasters?

Well first, this means that webmasters must work to adapt and implement this new Sitemaps Protocol 0.9 Standard. They must follow and abide by the unified protocol, as defined at sitemaps.org and learn to accept this new standard of processing and submitting Sitemaps to Google and Yahoo! and soon MSN.

Because of this supported effort and open initiation, this means that other search engines, especially MSN, will most likely develop some type of Sitemap submission service that abides by the Sitemaps Protocol 0.9 Standard.

This is great news for the search industry and means that all search engines will be able to support and accept the same Sitemap Protocol, making it easier for webmasters to abide by one standard to manage their sitemap submissions in the future.

For more information and to watch an interview with Google and Yahoo! on the announcement, click to watch the Exclusive Video: Google and Yahoo! Launch Sitemaps.org.

Index your Content in Days rather than Months

Hudson Horizons HH Sitemap Manager - Google Sitemap Protocol - Google Sitemaps - Yahoo! Site Explorer - Index your content in days rathern than months - search engine optimizationAs many of us know, the most common way our content becomes indexed in a search engine is through the process of search engine crawling. How it works is simple - a search engines crawler comes and visits our website every so often, captures some data and updates their search index with this newly captured information.

Well thats all fine and dandy but the problem is, sometimes it takes anywhere from 30-90 days for any new content and pages to be indexed, depending on the search engine. For us website owners, this is not a feasible solution considering we need to have our content indexed in days, not months. If we want to successfully run our business and focus to increase our SEO (Search Engine Optimization) then we need to figure out another way to get our content indexed much more rapidly.

Today Im going to explain a simple way to get your new content and pages indexed in Google and Yahoo! in a matter of days, rather than months, and depending on your needs this can be a manual process or you can have it fully automated for your business. Now since both of these search engines are from different companies, there are two processes that you need to focus on and they are the Google Sitemap Protocol and Yahoo! Site Explorer.





Both of these tools offer you a way to create a file of all the pages in your website and submit that list to Google and Yahoo! directly. Whatever pages are listed in that file, their search index will populate those pages and tell their crawlers to go get the content. By doing this, you are simply telling the search engines where your pages and content are, rather than relying on their crawlers to come visit and find your pages on their next crawling process.

To help explain the tools, heres an overview on each:

Google Sitemaps - The Google Sitemap Protocol allows a webmaster to inform search engines about URLs on a website that are available for crawling. A Sitemap is an XML file that lists the URLs for a site. It enables webmasters to include additional information about each URL: when it was last updated, how often it changes, and how important it is in relation to other URLs in the site. This allows search engines to crawl the site more intelligently.

Sitemaps are particularly beneficial in situations when it is difficult for users to access all areas of a website through the browse-able interface. For example, sites with a large "archive" or "database" of resources that aren't well-linked to each other (if at all) only accessible via a search form. The webmaster can generate a sitemap containing all accessible URLs on the site and submit it to search engines.

Note that the Sitemap Protocol is only a supplement and does not in any way replace the existing crawl-based mechanisms that search engines already use to discover URLs. By submitting a sitemap (or Sitemaps) to a search engine a webmaster is only helping that engine's crawlers to do a better job of crawling their site(s).

Yahoo! Site Explorer - The Yahoo! search database contains detailed information about links between web pages and uses that information (as well as additional algorithms) to gauge the popularity of a given page.

Site Explorer is a tool that lets you access the information we have about a site's online presence. You can see which sites and sub-pages are indexed by Yahoo! Search, track sites that link into webpage, and view the most popular pages from any site. Use Site Explorer to:


* Find which sub-pages within a URL are indexed by Yahoo!.

* Find pages that link to that site or any page. (in-links)

* Submit and track feeds for your sites.


You can get even more detailed information about a site or its URLs when you authenticate the site. Exploring a site is as easy as doing a web search but instead of entering a "query term" you will enter a site's URL. A Site Explorer search will not return the same results that a web search would. Instead, Site Explorer uses the URL you submit to return particular information related to the structure of that URL in the Yahoo! Search database and on the Web.


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For further analysis, you can export Site Explorer data in a tab-separated (TSV) form. Also check out Site Explorer's Web Services APIs for ways to help you understand your site traffic and usage better. Note: You can submit missing URLs to the Yahoo! Index for free. If you own a site, register it with us to see even more information and simplify managing any site feeds you have.

How do I implement a Google Sitemap and a Yahoo! Site Explorer feed?

I highly recommend setting up a Google Sitemap using the Google Sitemap Protocol and submitting a site feed to Yahoo! using their Yahoo! Site Explorer.

If youre thinking of taking your SEO to the next level, then you should absolutely start here. If you can force your pages and content to be indexed in days, rather than months, then you will be sure to increase your websites visibility, generate more website traffic and ultimately increase your sales.

If youre looking to manage both of these manually, then I recommend visiting Google Webmaster Tools and Yahoo! Site Explorer online sections, which will provide you with all the details of how to create and submit your feeds to their search index.

If youre looking to setup an automated submission of Google Sitemaps and Yahoo! Site Explorer, then you should visit Hudson Horizons HH Sitemap Manager for more information. Their system will automatically crawl your website, create a site feed of your URLs and submit the file to both Google and Yahoo! every three days.

Relevant Content is the Key to Generating Successful Website Traffic

Today I received a phone call from a potential client who found our website searching Google for companies that could help increase traffic to her website. For the purpose of this article, lets call her Tammy. I initially started the conversation asking Tammy what types of marketing she is currently doing to help generate traffic to her website. She mentioned she has setup Google AdWords and Yahoo! Sponsorship campaigns for her business, but is unfortunately not generating any sales. I said ok, thats a great start. I then asked her what else she is doing. Tammy said, Nothing thats why I need your help. We both laughed.

This is a very common conversation that I have with my clients on a daily basis. Everyone wants to know how to increase traffic to their website because as we all know - increased traffic equals increased sales. For many, its the unanswered question that they struggle to find an answer for every day as they try to expand their business online. Well, today Im going to show you how you can increase traffic to your website in the most effective manner possible. Im going to provide you with a cost-effective solution that will increase traffic to your website through organic search marketing.

As we all know, the Internet is made up of millions of websites, encompassing billions of pages of content. When we do a search in Google, some results appear on the first page, others appear on the third and then there are those that dont appear at all. What makes a website appear before another? Is it because they have better keywords in their site or is it because their site is more popular? Well to be honest, there is a whole slue of reasons why one website might appear before another. For the purpose of this article, Im only going to talk about the leading reason why I believe one site appears higher another - and that is Relevance.

In order to appear in the search engine for a particular keyword search, your website must be relevant for that particular search term " makes sense right? Ok, so then wouldnt you also agree that if your pages are more relevant to that search term, then they should appear higher in the search results, right? Well I hope youve answered yes because its 100% true. If your Web pages contain more relevant content than another site, there is a greater chance you will appear higher then they will in the search results.

If relevance is the answer then how do I make my site more relevant?

Thats a great question and Im so glad youve asked. The answer is hidden in the Content of your website. If your site contains more relevant search terms, you will become more visible in the search engines for those terms guaranteed! Content is the key to success on the Internet. With good, quality and relevant content, you will find it much easier to generate traffic and produce online sales.

Ok, so if content is the key to my success, then what do I need to do?

The following are some of the best ways to make your website more relevant and to increase the exposure of your business online. Some of these are adjustments that you need to make to your existing website and others are changes that will help you get more content indexed and indexed faster.

Add a blog to your website

Adding a blog to your website will enable you to increase the amount of content that is relevant to your business. With a blog in place, you can post articles about your industry, feature your new products, share specific ideas that may benefit your audience and simply show that youre a business that is specialized in your chosen profession.

I recommend setting up a blog on a sub-domain off your website. For example, if your website is http://www.hudsonhorizons.com, then you can add your blog or article section to http://articles.hudsonhorizons.com. By doing this, when your articles or blog entries are located in the search engines and a user clicks on the result, your website will appear; hence, directing them to the source of where you need them to be.

Submit OnlinePress Releases

Submitting press releases about your company can be a great resource to generate new business and make a name for your company on the Internet. There are many ways to submit a press release. A great way is to use a company like PR Web. You can signup for an account and they will distribute your press release for a certain fee. I recommend submitting a new one every month. You will notice your releases getting indexed on numerous websites on the Internet, getting indexed in the search engines, and in such important places like Google News and Yahoo! News.

Be creative with your press releases. Come up with a story that others want to hear. Maybe its the launch of a new product or maybe its to announce a partnership with another firm. Whatever it may be, make it interested so others will want to read it. Add links back to your website so when others are reading, they can be directed to your site for more information.

Submit your pages to Google and Yahoo! directly

Google Sitemapsand Yahoo! Site Exploreroffers you a way to submit a complete listing of your site's URLs to their search crawlers,informing their search engines about all the pages in your website.

With Google Sitemapsand Yahoo! Site Explorer, you can keep their crawlers informed of all the pages in your site and if done on a regular basis, provides fresher search results and a smarter crawl of your website in their search engines.

Submitting your URLs directly to Google and Yahoo! is a great way to increase the visibility of your content and increase traffic to your website. I recommend submitting them on a frequent basis to ensure that your pages are consistently being added and to increase the rate at which your pages are being indexed.

I hope you find these three things to be beneficial to the success of your business online. Remember, if you can focus to increase the amount of relevant content thats in the search engines, you will be sure to increase your sales.

I wish you much continued success!

The Web Development Company of the Future

As the Internet is rapidly changing, its difficult for many Web development companies and solution providers to stay abreast of all the latest industry developments and as more advanced technology becomes readily available, companies desire more for their website. Businesses no longer want a static website, they are in need of a more dynamic, customizable and interactive site for their business.

With the birth of content management, blogs, RSS, content distribution, social networking communities and interactive websites, the Internet is no longer a place for companies to display a website for information purposes only. The Internet has matured into a resource for companies to interact, communicate, share information and build an online existence that exceeds the offline companies of the past.

To see how this has all developed, lets take a brief look at the Web industry just a few years ago. Back in the year 2000, the Internet was a place for companies to have a presence on the Web; a presence that was primarily used for informational purposes. Because of the simplicity of the Internet back then, any company could easily find success in obtaining a Web designer or developer to create a website for their business that met their expectations.

That was then and this is now.

Much has changed since the year 2000. Over the past several years, the Internet has exploded and brought on a totally new idea and acceptance to use the Internet in hundreds of new and exciting ways. Now companies are interested in managing their website on their own, providing online networking communities for their members, pulling RSS feeds from other sites, distributing their products and content to various places on the Internet, integrating e-commerce, and receiving search engine optimization and e-marketing services to help promote and brand their company online. The Internet is no longer only a place to provide information, but also a place to create brand awareness, streamline internal business processes and increase sales, all at the same time.

As these changes are occurring before our very eyes, many outdated Web development companies lack the knowledge and experience to offer these services to their clients and unfortunately many of them are simply fading away. There is a positive light at the end of the tunnel however; with the loss of these older companies there is a new breed of Web Company that is beginning to emerge. These are the Web solution providers that have the comprehension and skills to provide these services, offering a promising future that will drive the development of the Internet for the years ahead.

Because of the vast potential in the Internet today, companies should no longer be seeking a company that is just focused in design or static Web development. Companies need to consider the possibilities and seek a Web provider that can not only design and develop a website with true precision but one who is specialized at providing such additional services as content management, e-commerce integration, RSS content distribution, search engine optimization, e-marketing services and the development of custom applications such as blogs, newsletter systems, online payment solutions and any other Web application that may be needed to help simplify their business.

As this is obviously the Web development company of the future, many companies are finding it difficult to locate a provider who is basically their one-stop-shop for all their e-business and e-marketing needs. The future of the Internet is unimaginable; however, the future Web development company cannot be. They must and will be the company who can not only design, develop and maintain a website of high caliber but a company who can also customize, distribute and market their clients into the future. These are the only types of providers who will survive in this rapidly changing Internet world.

If youre interested in seeking a provider who is the Web development company of the future, then contact Hudson Horizons today. We are an e-business product, solution and marketingcompany specializing in creating highly sophisticated customized websites, web-based software applications and providing e-marketing and SEO services for small and mid-sized businesses.

Our vision and ultimate ambition as a company is to always strive to be "The New Light for e-Business." By offering new, innovative and extremely competitive products and solutions to our clients, we provide better ways to run and operate a business online.

Why Google Sitemaps are so important for the Success of your Business

Some say Google is God. Others say Google is Satan. But if they think Google is too powerful, remember that with search engines unlike other companies, all it takes is a single click to go to another search engine. This quote was made by Sergey Brin, one of the co-founders of Google with Larry Page.Search engines have become so powerful and vital to the success of every business. Whether or not you think Google is God, Satan or just an ordinary search engine, the fact still holds true that the success of every business on the Internet is in part determined by the results of their search engine marketing. Because Google is so popular, the companies who are most visible in Google are the companies who find great success because of their search engine optimization efforts.

The solution is in Google Sitemaps!

Today, I want to talk about Google Sitemaps - the most basic way to increase your websites visibility in the Google search engine. This is something that is mostly performed by Web developers because it requires knowledge of hosting; but today I am going to show you how the average/everyday person can utilize and implement Google Sitemaps for their business.

To provide you with a story of its importance - recently, we setup Google Sitemaps for one of our clients and the results were staggering. Before we implemented and submitted their sitemap file to Google, we checked the number of pages that were indexed and it came to approximately 3,000 pages. After two week of submitting their sitemap file to Google, that number increased to 8,000. This means that we were able to more than double their number of Web pages that were indexed in the Google search engine.

A few days later, the client called me to share some great news. They just made a $2,000 sale from one of their new online products they recently listed on their website, just a week ago. Why was this amazing news for them? Well first of all, it was a nice profitable sale but more importantly, this means that the sitemap process was able to index their new content in Google within days. If they did not have a sitemap process setup, the rate at which their new product could have been indexed could probably been closer to 60 days if not ever. By submitting a file directly to Google with their new Web page, Google was able to take that information and immediately index the new content in their search index.

This is just one example of how Google Sitemaps has increased our clients sales and achievements on the Internet. I could share many other stories of Google Sitemaps success but for the purpose of this article Id like to share with you how our Sitemap Manager product which will allow you can easily implement Google Sitemaps for your business without worrying about creating and submitting the process manually and on a frequent basis.

Hudson Horizons HH Sitemap Manager allows you to register online to create and automated a sitemap submission for your website to Google Sitemaps and Yahoo!s Site Explorer. The HH Sitemap Manager will greatly improve the visibility of your website bysubmitting your Web pages to the Google and Yahoo! index three times a week.

The HH Sitemap Manager willprovide better crawl coverage and fresher search results to help people find more of your web pages. The following are some of the features and benefits of using the HH Sitemap Manager.

• Automated submission to Google Sitemaps three times a week.


• Automated submission to Yahoo!s Site Explorer three times a week.


• View and trackthe statistics of each Sitemap submission.


• Ease of Use! After the Sitemap is setup for your domain, it will run three times a week automatically, completely eliminating the process for you to do it manually and on a frequent basis.


• Improved URL visibility.


• Better crawl coverage of your website.


• Fresher search results.


• Faster indexing of your Web pages and their content.


• Signup today to improve the visibility of your website in Google and Yahoo!

Google Sitemaps has provided much success for my clients on the Internet. Im confident that if you implement Google Sitemaps for your business, you will greatly increase your visibility, sales and success in a very short period of time.

Forget Ranking - Focus to Increase your Websites Visibility Instead

A common question my clients ask is, How do I get on the first page of Google for all of my keywords? My answer to them is one they find difficult to accept at first, until I show them the way to succeed in Google. My response is, John, Im going to be honest with you; it is very unlikely that you will find your website on the first page of Google for all your keywords. We might be able to land you there for a few but for all of them is just not feasible but let me show you how you can increase your sales, without focusing to increase your ranking.

Now, Im definitely not saying it's not possible to increase your ranking in Google, Im just saying that it should not be your primary focus - so hear me out on this one.
Any e-marketing person that tells you they will get you on the first page of Google for all your keywords is lying and completely manipulating you because of your lack of knowledge for how search engines operate - they are probably just interested in your money and not your success. In the past, it was possible to guarantee this because there were tricks we could do to fool the search engines and increase our ranking in Google. Google now detects these tricks and will penalize you for making any attempt to fool their engine. This could sometimes completely ban you from their index. Once you are banned, it is difficult to find your way back without some good due diligence.

In todays e-marketing world it all comes down to the amount of content you have and the page rank of your pages in Google. So to get my clients focused and headed in the right direction, I ask them to completely change their search engine vocabulary. Instead of saying, How do I increase my ranking in Google? - I ask them to say, How do I increase my websites visibility in Google? This small change in vocabulary is a huge change in behavior. Increasing your websites visibility in the major search engines should be your primary focus if you want to increase sales and drive more traffic to your website. Get rid of the notion that you want your website to be on the first page of Google - at least for now. Over time you will start to see your ranking improve because by being more visible in Google, you will ultimately increase your traffic and increase your ranking at the same time - whether or not you are on the first page. Its a process that takes time and requires effort on your part.

How do I increase my websites visibility in Google?

A very basic way is to utilize Googles services to further index and enhance the visibility of your content in their search engine. The following are two services offered by Google that will instantly provide positive results. I highly recommend using both for your business.

Google Base - is a place where you can easily submit all types of online and offline content. The items you submit to Google Base will be included in the Base directory and depending on your items relevance, can be posted in such places like Google, Froogle and Google Maps. The items you submit can include labels and attributes that help describe what youre uploading so people can easily locate your items. Attributes are words or phrases that help describe the characteristics and qualities of your items. For any given attribute you may enter multiple values separated by commas. Labels are any keywords or phrases " such as recipe, event, or product " that can be used to classify or describe your item.

Google Base is a great resource to help distribute and share information with others that you would not otherwise know how to reach. With Google Base, your information is almost instantly added and viewable by people searching for your items. Froogle has even been integrated with Google Base. Now products that need to be submitted to Froogle, are submitted through Google Base and no longer a separate program, like it was in the past.

You can submit all types of content to Google Base. Examples include the following: Articles, Events and Activities, Hotels, Jobs, People Profiles, Products, Real Estate, Reviews, Recipes, Services, Vehicles, and much more.

Google Sitemaps - Well, we have to remember that there are billions of Web pages out there and for the Google crawlers to index your site every few days would not be feasible. Because of this issue, Google has created what they call Google Sitemaps. It is a way to tell Google about all the pages in your site. By creating and submitting a Sitemap file, you take control of the first part of the crawling/indexing processes: which is Googles discovery of the pages. This may be particularly helpful if your site has dynamic content, pages that aren't easily discovered by following links, or if your site is new and has few links referencing it.

Google Sitemaps helps speed up the discovery of your pages, which is an important first step in crawling and indexing your website. By submitting a Sitemap file, you could see your content being indexed in days rather than months.Google Sitemaps provides an additional view into your site (just as your home page and HTML site map do). This program does not replace Googles normal methods of crawling the Web. Google still searches and indexes your site the same way it has done in the past, whether or not you use this program. However, its still one of the basic ways to increase your websites visibility and the rate at which your content is being indexed in the Google search engine.

If you begin to utilize both Google Base and Google Sitemaps, you will be sure to increase your websites visibility in the Google search engine. By increasing your visibility, I am confident you will increase your sales. Both of these services allow you to register to setup up an account and submit the information on your own. If youre looking for an automated solution, Hudson Horizons can setup a process that will automatically submit your content to Google Base and submit your Sitemap to Google every three days, completely eliminating the time and effort for you to do it manually andon a frequent basis.

So forget the idea of being on the first page of Google and focus to increase your websites visibility instead - you will instantly reap the benefits of this small change in behavior. I wish you much success!

Yahoo!s New Site Explorer - Submit and Track your Website Today

Yahoo! recently expanded their search engine service and now offers users the ability to access information that Yahoo! has about a site's online presence. You can see which sites and sub-pages are indexed by Yahoo! Search, track sites that link into a webpage, and view the most popular pages from any site.

The Site Explorer is Yahoo!s latest strategy in an attempt to increase the quality of their search engine to compete with Google. Matt Mayernik, VP Technology of Hudson Horizons, has been using and testing Yahoo!s Site Explorer over the past few weeks. His experience with the new service so far has been positive. Mr. Mayernik states, Yahoo! Site Explorer is Yahoo!'s version of Google Sitemaps. The service allows webmasters the ability to gather more information about the status of their website in the Yahoo! search index. Yahoo! has developed an API that allows developers to download reports about their site, a very useful feature. I feel the new application is an enormous step forward for Yahoo! and will most likely provide a valuable resource for webmasters in the future.

The new Yahoo! Site Explorer can be used to:

• Find which sub-pages within a URL are indexed by Yahoo!


• Find pages that link to that site or any page. (in-links)


• Submit and track feeds for your sites.

If you are exploring a site you have authenticated, you can see additional information about the site URLs, such as:

• Sub-domains from the site known to Yahoo!


• Last crawled date of your site's URLs.


• Language detected for the site's URLs.


• Additional details on the status of your site feeds, such as when they were last submitted and processed.

Exploring a site is as easy as doing a web search but instead of entering a "query term" you will enter a site's URL. A Site Explorer search will not return the same results that a web search would. Instead, Site Explorer uses the URL you submit to return particular information related to the structure of that URL in the Yahoo! Search database and on the Web.

If youre interested in submitting a feed, you can submit them through their FREE Search Page or through their Site Explorer API. They support the following feed submission formats: RSS 0.9, RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0, Atom 0.3 or a text file containing a list of URLs, each URL at the start of a new line. The filename of the URL list file must be urllist.txt. The filename for a compressed file must be: urllist.txt.gz.

You can track the feeds for any site that you have submitted to Yahoo! Search once you register the site with them. You can also see more detailed information including the status, last processed date, and last submitted date for the feed, once you authenticate a site.

Yahoo!s Site Explorer is their latest attempt to improve Yahoo! Search to become a stronger competitor in the race for the most widely used search engine on the Internet. Currently Google is estimated to receive 40% of all searches performed online, with Yahoo! at a close second with 30%, followed by MSN with 16%. Will the new Site Explorer help Yahoo! to improve their search engine and take more of a hold in the search engine market? In my opinion, this is a positive start.

I believe Yahoo! is on the right track and believe it or not, I think Yahoo! has a chance to surpass Google within the next three years. Is this possible? Lets place our bets!