How To Submit A Sitemap?

Submitting your sitemap to the major search engines helps to ensure that the spiders find your sitemap and crawl your site comprehensively. A well-constructed sitemap helps the search engines understand how your site has been designed and how all of the pages fit together. A well-organized site makes it easier for Google to crawl and find important pages you hope to rank for. Search engines such as Google are committed to displaying the most relevant results for people for any given search query. To be effective, they use site crawlers to read, organize and index information on the Internet.

What to consider before submitting a sitemap?

1. Determine how your site is organized
2. Organize your pages in relation to each other
3. Begin coding your URLs
4. Check your coding by validating your sitemap.

Submitting a sitemap to Google

1. Understand the structure of your page
2. Format URLs with XML tags
3. Verify URL codes
4. Add sitemap to robots.txt
5. Set up Google Search Console
6. Submit sitemap to Google

Step 1: Understand the structure of your page

Step 2: Format URLs with XML tags

• Last modified - 2020-06-04
• Location - http://www.example.com/foo.html
• Changed frequency – weekly

Step 3: Verify URL codes

Step 4: Add sitemap to robots.txt

Step 5: Set up Google Search Console

Step 6: Submit sitemap to Google

1. Navigate to Crawl
2. Click on Sitemaps
3. Click on Add/Test sitemaps on the top corner of the screen.
4. This step allows you to test your sitemap for existing errors
5. Click submit

Definition

Submitting your sitemap to the major search engines helps to ensure that the spiders find your sitemap and crawl your site comprehensively. A well-constructed sitemap helps the search engines understand how your site has been designed and how all of the pages fit together. A well-organized site makes it easier for Google to crawl and find important pages you hope to rank for. Search engines such as Google are committed to displaying the most relevant results for people for any given search query. To be effective, they use site crawlers to read, organize and index information on the Internet.

 

When a site is well-constructed, it is easier for search engines to understand the depth of the material and then adjust rankings based off of user experience, optimization and many other factors. A well-designed site structure allows users to move about the site and gather information they need – thus resulting in a great user experience and more time spent on the site.

What to consider before submitting a sitemap?

 

Before you submit a sitemap, you need to make a sitemap. There are four principal steps in making a sitemap. They are:

1. Determine how your site is organized
2. Organize your pages in relation to each other
3. Begin coding your URLs
4. Check your coding by validating your sitemap.

You can better understand how to work through these steps with this full guide to creating a sitemap. Once you have created and verfied a sitemap with search engines, you can submit.

 

For Google or Bing, you can easily submit the profile through your site tools. Go into your Google Search Console and open the sitemaps portion to submit the address of your sitemap. The Bing process is similar, simply involving visiting your Bing Webmasters Tools and navigating to the sitemaps widget. You can find out more about building out and submitting a sitemap on Google here.

Submitting a sitemap to Google

 

1. Understand the structure of your page
2. Format URLs with XML tags
3. Verify URL codes
4. Add sitemap to robots.txt
5. Set up Google Search Console
6. Submit sitemap to Google

Step 1: Understand the structure of your page

 

Sitemaps are a blueprint of your website that help search engines find, crawl and index all of your website’s content. Sitemaps also guide search engines toward which pages on your site are most important. 

 

Here, you can consider the unofficial three click rule but it is not required as there’s no evidence behind success or failure to adhere to it. Still, consider maintaining shallow depth for your sitemap in order to easily find important pages. To begin this process, you can create a hierarchy of pages based on the importance of the page and content. Prioritize your content into tiers that follow a logical hierarchy.  

Step 2: Format URLs with XML tags

 

Below is an XML coding format example for you to follow:

 

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9"> 

  <url>

    <loc>http://www.example.com/foo.html</loc>

   <lastmod>2020-06-04</lastmod>

  </url>

</urlset>

 

The following information is included in the code:

• Last modified - 2020-06-04
• Location - http://www.example.com/foo.html
• Changed frequency – weekly

Note that Change Frequency must be accurate otherwise Google and other search engines are unlikely to pay attention to it. If you tell Google the URL changes weekly but it actually changes yearly, most search engines will not increase their crawling on the URL.

Step 3: Verify URL codes

 

With manual coding, human errors are possible. In order for your site to function properly and have an opportunity to rank well, strive for error free pages. You can use an XML sitemap validator to make sure your sitemap is error free. 

Step 4: Add sitemap to robots.txt

 

After validating your sitemap and your URL coding is functional, you should add  your sitemap to the robots.txt. The Robots.txt file tells polite spiders which file directories should be avoided. 

Step 5: Set up Google Search Console

 

You’ll leverage your GSC dashboard to submit a sitemap to Google.

Step 6: Submit sitemap to Google

 

When the aforementioned steps are complete, you are ready to submit your sitemap to Google where you can easily navigate submission. 

Follow these steps to submit your sitemap:

1. Navigate to Crawl
2. Click on Sitemaps
3. Click on Add/Test sitemaps on the top corner of the screen.
4. This step allows you to test your sitemap for existing errors
5. Click submit

Submitting a sitemap will make it easier for the search engines to crawl all of your site’s pages and ensure that all of your important pages have the opportunity to rank. Take the time to generate and submit a sitemap to ensure that your pages are ready for search engines and users.

 

 

How To Make A Sitemap?

4 steps to making a sitemap

In the age before GPS, people used maps to help them navigate streets and highways to get to unfamiliar destinations. It helped them get a better idea of how the different streets connected and the most efficient means of getting to a destination. A sitemap serves a similar purpose. It documents and records how different pages connect and how the pages of your domain interact so that search engines can crawl it more efficiently and better understand the site as a whole. Knowing how to make a sitemap, therefore, plays an important role in SEO.

Creating a sitemap does not have to be a confusing or challenging process, but it does have several steps that site owners should follow.

• Determine how your site is organized
• Organize your pages in relation to each other
• Begin coding your URLs
• Check your coding by validating your sitemap

1. Determine how your site is organized. You want to begin by looking at how the key sections on your site are organized. For example, begin at your home page. Record this page at the top. Then, list the pages that link directly to your home page. These would be the pages that likely appear in your menu bar or other navigational features on your page.

From these opening pages that connect to your homepage, you want to branch out and find the pages that connect to those pages, and so on. This will help you detail how your site is organized.

As you build your list of pages, make sure that you only use the pages that you want publicly crawled by these search engines. You do not want to include the login page for a member, for example, or the thank you page for a purchase.

2. Organize your pages in relation to each other. Now, you want to consider the priority of the pages. Every site should have a hierarchy of pages that are more or less important to the domain. Your most important pages should connect more closely to your homepage, while your less important pages get further and further from this core part of your domain. You can add a wight factor to each page listed in the sitemap.

In your list of web pages, you will want to make sure that the pages are similarly organized in order of importance. For SEO purposes, you want to aim to build a more shallow sitemap, with pages organized in shorter categories rather than deeper categories. Pages that are close to the core of your domain will generally rank higher than pages that start to get really deep - and far away - from your core domain.

3. Populate your URLs. Once you have organized your pages, you will next populate each one. This coding process will involve collecting important information on each URL. Specifically, you will want to collect the location of the page on your domain, the last time the page was updated, how often the page is updated, and the priority of the page within the domain.

4. Check your coding by validating your sitemap. You should not have any errors in your coding. Yet, everyone makes mistakes. Therefore, you will need to validate your sitemap before you submit it to Google or any other search engine. Fortunately, there are a number of tools that you can use to validate your site map and ensure that it has been set up correctly.

If this process appears too complicated for you, many tools and plugins can help with the entire site map generation process. Google offers a list of popular options.

Following this process to create your sitemap will boost your SEO and give you a strong sense of the organization of your site. You will make it easier for search engine robots, as well as your visitors, to find important information and engage with your content.

How To Do Video SEO?

Steps to succeed with video SEO

Video has become an increasingly important part of building a strong digital presence. Customers watch over a billion hours of video on YouTube alone every day. Video has also become increasingly popular on social media platforms and on brand websites themselves. Knowing how to do video SEO, therefore, can help brands ensure that their content receives the attention it needs on the SERPs. Here is what you should know about video SEO and how to begin optimizing for it.

• Target a topic
• Transcripts
• Build up the entire YouTube channel
• Share and promote video

1. Target a topic. Like any other type of SEO, you want to focus your efforts on the topics that matter the most to your target customers. Think about the persona that you want to reach with this video and their position on the buyer’s journey. Then consider the list of target topics that you think they will want to engage with. You want to think about the search volume of particular keywords which will help you understand the level of interest in particular topics.

Once you have the main idea that you want to target with this video, begin to create notes that will guide the content. You will also want to use the keyword you target in important areas of the video such as the title and in the tags that you give the video.

Keep in mind that videos allow you to offer a more intimate look at your organization, such as to customers who want to hear from the leaders of your organization or even from other customers. Therefore, do not only think about the topic you want to cover but also who you can use in your organization to help you deliver the message.

2. Write transcripts. As sophisticated as Google has become, it cannot yet understand video. It still relies on the textual clues given about the video, along with people’s reaction to the video, when determining how a video should rank on YouTube or their regular search engine.

Therefore, including a transcript of your video can benefit your SEO. This provides any search engine with a good idea of what the video is about. With this additional information about the content contained in the video the search engine will be better able to rank your video. It also helps to build up your perception of expertise on the topic.

3. Build up the entire YouTube channel. Particularly on YouTube, the internal search engine does not only look at the metrics for this particular piece. It also closely examines how customers respond to the rest of your channel. If your channel has a variety of videos around a particular topic and customers respond well to the material you produce, it speaks highly to your level of trustworthiness and expertise. When the channel itself is well-regarded, the individual videos will be as well.

To build up a channel, focus on increasing the number of videos you produce on the topic. Similar to building up a blog, you will want to create material on a variety of topics that will interest customers.

4. Share and promote the video. Once you have created the video, you need to promote it to potentially interested audiences. Let people know about your new video so that you can attract traffic to the page and encourage people to watch what you have created. You can promote the video through other social media channels as well as your own website.

Consider again the people you want to target with this particular video. Then, analyze where you will likely interact with them during this stage of the buyer's journey. Use these types of platforms to target people interested in the video. This will help you attract the largest possible audience. The more people who watch the video, particularly those who watch the video all of the way through, the higher your video will rank.

Employing all of these strategies together will help your videos obtain the highest possible rankings.

How To Do Local SEO?

Three key areas for local SEO success

For businesses that want to target customers in a particular geographic location, understanding how to do local SEO is critical. For example, if you own a restaurant serving people in Phoenix, Arizona, you do not want to waste time and energy working to appear highly on the SERPs for people in Chicago. Instead, you want to appear for people searching for restaurants in Phoenix. You can work on your local SEO best practices best with a local SEO company with a robust platform, like BrightEdge. Here is what you need to know about how to do local SEO successfully.

• NAP
• Google My Business
• Local-focused content

1. NAP. The first step to a local SEO strategy is ensuring that your name, address, and phone number are accurately and consistently recorded across the web. Businesses want to get themselves listed in a variety of online directories, including popular review sites, such as Yelp. You want to make sure that your business’s information appears the same on each site. Submit your information in a consistent format, such as always using the ‘&’ versus writing out ‘and’.

When your information appears the same, it helps both search engines and customers connect the different listings to one business and can help customers discover your business and improve your rankings.

2. Google My Business. When it comes to local SEO on Google, few pages are more important than your Google My Business page. When you claim your Google My Business page, you can create a customized experience with images, reviews, and other means of engagement with your intended customers.

Take your time to really fill out your My Business page. Upload quality images that help your organization look welcoming and inviting. Make sure that your contact information, hours, and other important points are accurate and filled out. Improve the discoverability of your page by carefully selecting the industry and other categories that Google offers you.

If you receive questions from potential customers on your Google page, you will want to answer these as quickly as possible. Remember the importance of demonstrating commitment to your users and recognize that the speed with which you answer questions will help improve your reputation and their perception of your responsiveness.

3. Local-focused content. Finally, you also want to create content that targets your specific region and the type of people interested in your business. Create material that helps you to incorporate local landmarks and other features that people might use to find businesses in your area. Also consider the information that your customers might be interested in. A home improvement store might write articles about DIY projects and an organic foods restaurant may write about where to shop or offer recipes for local favorites. Know what will speak to your specific customers, particularly those in your targeted area.

When it comes to attracting and engaging customers within your geographic area, understanding how to use local SEO by focusing on these main points will help your content get the attention it needs.